Cultural relativism asserts that within a given culture there may be moral standards that are true for that culture. But there is no objective standard of morality which transcends individual cultures and which can serve as a basis for evaluating individual cultures. Cultural relativism is also known as conventional relativism. This view is widely prevalent among anthropologists, sociologists and others
but not among philosophers. Cultural anthropology began at the Columbia University and its chief proponents are Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovits.
These writers argue that various cultures of the world disagree on their conceptions of right and wrong. Some cultures practise polygamy whereas others condemn it. Eskimo culture permitted infanticide. This led cultural anthropologists to conclude that there are no moral standards which transcend a culture and by which the standards of a culture can be judged. There may be moral truths within a society but they are relative to and valid for that culture.
There are two ways of stating cultural relativism. One form is that what is considered as morality varies from culture to culture. The second form is that morality changes from society to society. These two formulations need to be considered against the following two positions.
(1) There is a universal standard of morality which transcends individual cultures and which enables us to judge the moral standards of any culture.
(2) There is no universal standard of morality by which we can judge the moral standards of individual cultures.
According to (1), we can look at the practices of a culture and determine whether they correspond to the universal standard. If slavery or infanticide is practised in a culture, it can be regarded as failing to measure up to the universal standard of morality. According to (2), no such evaluation is possible.
In the later part of the twentieth century, moral relativism has become increasingly popular. The main reasons for this popularity are the decline of religious belief in the West and the increasing awareness of cultural diversity in the world. Religion prescribes a morality that is independent and often opposed to human inclinations. Decline of religion has led to secepticism about objective morality. As Dostoevsky says, “If God doesn’t exist, everything is permissible”. Increasing knowledge of cultural diversity in the world has created doubts about objective morality. For example, anthropologist Ruth Benedict argued that this diversity shows that there is no single objective morality and that morality varies with culture.
Problems with cultural relativism
Cultural relativism leads to many unacceptable implications. There is no harm in admitting and even admiring the interesting diversity found in cultures. But some practices and value systems of cultures can be positively harmful. For example, a culture may try to marginalize or decimate a minority. It cannot be justified on the ground that it is admissible within that society’s ethos. Even if one’s own society is wanting in some ways, they will appear justifiable within its cultural context. This will run counter to the concept of moral progress in a society. There will also be no way of resolving the differences within any individual culture. Any idea that differences should be settled by majority will lead to odd results. What if the majority for one side is wafer thin? In that case, the view cannot become an accepted feature of the culture. From these points of view, cultural relativism is thus flawed.
Before proceeding to consider the next challenge to Ethics, we may mention the doctrines of emotivism. It is the view that moral judgements are simply expressions of an individual’s emotions. If X judges that something is good, it means he approves of it and that it evokes happy feelings and thoughts in him. If X judges that something is bad, he disapproves of it and it evokes negative
feeling in him. This view reduces good and bad to the level of individual emotions. As emotions, they will not be fit subjects of logical or objective discourse. As we have discussed emotivism in the section on twentieth century thinkers, we will not pursue it further here.
