Introduction

This chapter deals with an important question in meta-ethics. Meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that deals with the nature of morality. It tries to answer the questions:

• What is morality?
• Is morality objective?
• Where does it come from?
• What is the relationship between moral facts, if they exist, and this physical world that we interact with?

And so, before we figure out how we ought to be and live, we must first establish whether there even is such a thing as the way we ought to be and live in the first place. One of the most important questions in meta-ethics is whether there is a moral reality that obligates us — regardless of our judgments, opinions, and beliefs — and whether there are moral facts that are necessarily and universally true. Perhaps ethical codes are merely relative to groups of people. Perhaps there is no true and binding objective morality outside of culture, time period, and personal preferences. Is morality objective and universal? Or is it merely a matter of opinion and tradition?

Three Kinds of Relativism

Descriptive Relativism

The mildest and least controversial form of relativism is descriptive relativism. According to descriptive relativism, moralities and ethical codes are radically different across cultures — and we can observe this. For example, some cultures:

• See homosexuality as immoral, while others do not
• Think that polygamy is morally acceptable (and should even be encouraged), while others see monogamy as the moral ideal
• Practice slavery, while others find slavery morally abhorrent
• And so on

This ethical diversity is not only observed and documented now by cultural anthropologists, but even ancient writers, like Herodotus and some ancient Greek skeptics, recognized the different ways that cultures conducted marriage, burials, military discipline, and social participation.

Those who adhere merely to descriptive relativism maintain the view that moral rules are observably dissimilar across cultures. For some relativists, this suggests the falsity of moral objectivity and is used as evidence in favor of stronger versions of relativism. Not all relativists argue that descriptive relativism is evidence against moral objectivity, but relativism often starts out from the truth of descriptive relativism and makes stronger claims about moral relativity on this basis. In other words, the observation of differing moral codes across cultures does not necessarily mean that morality is relative, but some relativists use this anthropological fact as evidence for the stronger conclusions about relativism that we will look at below.

Meta-Ethical Relativism

The ancient writer Herodotus famously said, “Culture is king,” based on his observations of disparate cultural moralities (Histories 3.38.4).^[1] Upon observing radical differences in the ways that different cultures practiced religion, burial, household organization, and even eating preferences, he concluded that no standard exists beyond a culture to prescribe good and bad behaviour. Thus, culture is king.

Unlike descriptive relativism, meta-ethical relativism makes this kind of stronger claim about the nature of moral truth. Meta-ethical relativism says that moral truths are actually only true relative to specific groups of people. This means that whether a moral belief is true is dependent on, or relative to, the standpoint of the person or culture that has the belief. Someone in Singapore and someone in England can both say, “It is sunny outside,” but it is possible that the claim is only true for one of them. In a similar way, meta-ethical relativism is the position that ethical statements are only true relative to the context that they are spoken.

In other words, when someone claims that some practice x is moral, then the claim is true if their culture believes and lives as if x is moral. For example, if a culture holds the view that having pre-marital sexual relations is immoral, then for that culture, it is true that having pre-marital sexual relations is immoral. On the other hand, for the culture that believes it is morally acceptable to have pre-marital sexual relations, then “having pre-marital sexual relations is immoral” is false.

Notice that this is different from saying, “lying might be morally permissible in certain situations, such as when a murderous axe-man asks you where your family is hiding.” Meta-ethical relativism is not about this kind of situation-specific method of determining what is moral. Rather, it says that moral beliefs and claims are true or false relative to the cultures or standpoints in which they exist.

Normative Relativism

Finally, we will look at the strongest kind of relativism: normative relativism. It is the strongest kind of relativism because it goes beyond descriptive and meta-ethical relativism and makes an even grander claim. According to normative relativism, no person or culture ought to judge the ethical codes of other cultures as being inferior, nor should any culture intervene in another culture to prevent it from carrying out the specifics of its ethical code. The normative relativist says that we might prefer the specific morality of our culture and even be able to offer reasons for doing so, but this does not imply that ours is superior to that of others. Normative relativists argue that because no objective, independent standpoint from which to evaluate ethical codes exists, no culture can justifiably say that its morality is objectively superior.

On its face, this might strike us as problematic for a couple of reasons. Perhaps this principle of normative relativism itself is only specific to our culture and does not necessarily apply to all cultures. In other words, just because my culture accepts normative relativism this does not entail that all cultures must abide by the same principle (of normative relativism) and not consider their moralities superior. However, if the normative relativist insists that this principle is true for all cultures (that no culture should judge the moralities of other cultures or consider its morality superior), then this seems like an admission of a universal value that is true across all cultures irrespective of whether or not they believe it to be true. Remember that one of the reasons for which relativists deny moral objectivity is the implausibility of the existence of universal values and moral facts that we can come to know. And yet, if the normative relativist believes that no culture should criticize the morality of another culture (and that this principle holds true for all cultures), then this is exactly the kind of universal moral fact that the relativist denies.

Common Objections to Moral Relativism

What or Who Is the Moral Standard Relative To?

One of the difficulties with moral relativism in general is answering the question of what a culture is or what counts as an appropriate body of people for morality to be relative to or dependent on. Is a village a large enough population to have its own valid ethical code? Or is morality only relative to national governments and the laws set by them? Perhaps moral subjectivism is the correct form of relativism, and morality comes down to the judgments of individuals, with each individual subject being enough to form a moral community with an ethical code.

This is a serious problem for relativism because the concept of a culture is so vague and ill-defined that it becomes almost useless for ethical discussions. Consider the example of the early, abolitionist movement in the United States prior to the abolishment of slavery:

• Was it wrong for a group of people in America to hold anti-slavery views given that the majority of the country was pro-slavery and the laws reflected such beliefs?
• Is it wrong for minority groups in other nations to hold views contrary to popular opinion and written law?

If meta-ethical relativism is true, then a moral claim is true if it accords with the moral view of the culture and false if it is not. This would mean that the abolitionists held a false moral view because it diverged from the view of the wider culture.

Perhaps the relativist can respond that the abolitionist movement was large enough to count as a culture and is therefore a legitimate moral position, even though it differed from the majority view in that country. But this merely pushes the question back one step further: If the abolitionists numbered only one hundred members, would this be enough to comprise a culture? What if there were only twenty? Where if there were only two? One? On what basis does the relativist define “culture” to make it significant for ethical discussion?

That Is Absurd!

The most common responses to relativism come in the form of what is called a reductio ad absurdum — a form of argument meant to disprove a view by showing us the difficult or absurd (hence the name) conclusions that the view being responded to would lead to. If the consequences are sufficiently counterintuitive or ridiculous, then we are justified in rejecting the view as being false. For example, if someone argued that every person ought to be a full-time physician you could respond that if everyone were a full-time physician, then there would be no full-time politicians, firefighters, police officers, teachers, humanitarian workers, builders, artists, etc. We cannot have a functioning society if that person’s position were true. We need more than just full-time physicians to have a coherent society. Thus, their position leads to absurd consequences and is certainly false! This next section will first look at three major problems that relativism faces.

If relativism is true, then it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some obviously wrong behaviours are actually morally acceptable simply because some cultures practice them. Most people today think that it is really morally wrong to burn widows on funeral pyres, even though it was practiced by a large group of people at one point. The relativist’s position, however, commits them to conceding that even controversial practices — such as suttee, female genital mutilation, infanticide, and slavery — are morally acceptable to the cultures that do not see them as immoral. And because the relativist denies that some objective morals or values hold universally, then there is no independent standard by which to evaluate behaviours and ethical codes.

There is another problem along these lines that lay at the heart of the moral relativist argument. That is, there is a deep contradiction in foundational claim of moral relativism: “there are no universal moral truths.” If relativism is true, and there is no objective standard to morality, then why should we take the relativists thoughts about morality seriously at all in the first place? In other words, is the statement made by the relativist that, “there are no objective moral truths,” itself an objective statement about morality? If the relativist replies that, “no, there is not,” then it would seem that the moral relativist has no persuasive force as to why we should accept their views about morality over any other theories about morality. But if the relativist answers, “yes, it is an objective statement about morality,” then the relativist must concede that there are some objective answers about the nature of morality. Either way, the relativist position is a self-defeating one.

Some relativists, like David Wong (2009), see the force of this problem and try to circumvent it by conceding that some moralities are superior because they better meet the needs of people that are consistent across all cultures. However, this attempt to rescue relativism seems to again undermine relativism itself! By acknowledging that certain moralities are superior because they do a better job of helping humans flourish, the relativist has conceded that there exists at least one moral fact that is true, independent of culture or standpoint, namely that human flourishing and well-being are good, and we should aim to maximize them.

If the relativist thinks that this fact is true regardless of what anybody believes about it and if the cultures whose moralities better enable human flourishing and well-being are superior to the moralities or cultures that impede human flourishing and well-being, then this admission deflates the relativist position. Acknowledging that some moralities are objectively better than others presumes that there exists some independent standard or set of facts by which we can judge moralities and ethical codes. Once the admission of some independent condition(s) is entertained, then it seems that we are no longer thinking relativistically but objectively.

No Room for Social Reform and Progress

One of the strongest objections to relativism is the idea that if relativism is true, then there can be no such thing as social reform or moral progress. If each culture’s ethical code is equally good and right, then when a country changes its ethical code from being pro-slavery to being anti-slavery, this moral change is merely a change rather an improvement. Moral improvement and progress require that there be some standard toward which a society or an ethical code is approaching; they also entail that the subsequent morality is better than the prior morality, but again, this is not something that can be said if relativism is true.

When the United States abolished slavery and segregation and gave women and minorities the right to vote, its ethical code underwent a change. But to say that it underwent an improvement requires saying that enslaving African Americans, segregating white people from black people, and preventing women and minorities from voting are objectively worse, morally speaking, than their opposites. Relativism cannot consistently support such a position, for relativism entails precisely the opposite, namely that morality has no objective standards and is relative to communities. If a community decides that it wants to endorse x and then later decides to morally condemn x, then both moralities are equal. No morality is superior to another.

However, this seems like another bullet to bite. Relativism implies that certain instances of obvious moral improvement are merely instances of moral change rather than moral progress. William Wilberforce’s work to end the slave trade in the British Empire, Martin Luther King Jr.’s life — and eventual martyrdom — dedicated to advocating equality and eliminating racism, and the countless other moral exemplars who were able to see past culture, law, and accepted custom to recognize moral truths that get buried or obfuscated over time really did help bring about moral progress. To say otherwise seems strongly counterintuitive.

Relativism and the Virtue of Tolerance

This last point ties in with another argument put forward in favor of relativism, namely that it promotes tolerance. Admirably, the relativist wants us to approach the subject of ethics with humility and not rush to condemn behaviours different from ours as immoral. The idea is that if we acknowledge that no one culture’s ethical code is superior to another, then our ability to practice tolerance naturally increases, for all moralities are equal. Relativism, it is argued, makes moral superiority unjustified.

However noble this might seem, it faces the same problem we previously discussed: If all moralities are equal, then why should we think that tolerance is a universal value? If relativism is true, then no ethical codes are superior, so why should we think an ethical code that promotes tolerance is better than the ethical code that ignores tolerance? By arguing that we should prefer relativism on the grounds that it better helps us promote and justify tolerance, then the relativist has conceded the existence of at least one universal value that all moralities can be judged by, namely tolerance. The presence of this universal value — this objective fact about the way we ought to live and behave — undercuts relativism, itself, for it concedes that there is at least one value that is not relative.

Moreover, tolerance is often an appropriate reaction to interacting with positions, beliefs, and behaviours different from our own. But are some behaviours and moral viewpoints not worthy of tolerance? Surely it is appropriate to be intolerant of child abuse, indoctrination, slavery, senseless violence, oppression of the vulnerable, etc. While tolerance is obviously appropriate and even necessary in some situations, intolerance — and even indignation and moral outrage — are certainly appropriate and justified in the face of evil.

Conclusion

Much of the relativism espoused by ordinary people admirably has its roots in the virtues of tolerance for opposing views and humility about one’s own positions, and in that respect, it can be applauded. However, this kind of relativism is often endorsed without the appropriate level of critical evaluation that inevitably shows the inconsistency, unlivablity, and even the immoral consequences of relativism. Such consequences include:

• Moral progress is impossible.
• Certain obviously immoral behaviors like slavery and oppression of women and minorities are morally acceptable simply because they enjoy acceptance by a culture.

It is for these reasons, among others, that a 2009 survey found that only 27.7% of professional philosophers are anti-realists, with only a fraction of those endorsing relativism about ethics (Bourget and Chalmers 2014, 34). Relativism clashes with much of what seems to be fundamental to the human experience. We cringe when we recall the atrocities of American slavery, the Holocaust, and the Rape of Nanking. We see the wrongness of these atrocities like we see the rightness of 2 + 2 = 4. Relativism suffers from several major problems, and this should make us question its ability to explain the nature of morality.

Further Reading

Dreier, James. 2006. “Moral Relativism and Moral Nihilism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, edited by David Copp. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Harman, Gilbert. 2012. “Moral Relativism Explained.” https://philpapers.org/rec/HARMRE.

Midgley, Mary. (1981) 2003. “Trying out One’s New Sword.” In Heart and Mind: The Varieties of Moral Experience. Oxford/New York: Routledge.

Pojman, Louis. 2004. “Who’s to Judge?” In Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings in Ethics, edited by Christina Sommers and Fred Sommers, 179–189. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson.

Bibliography

Bearak, Max and Darla Cameron. 2016. “Here are the 10 Countries where Homosexuality may be Punished by Death.” The Washington Post. June 16, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/13/here-are-the-10-countries-where-homosexuality-may-be-punished-by-death-2/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d92923f8861d.

Bourget, David and David J. Chalmers. 2014. “What Do Philosophers Believe?” Philosophical Studies 170, no. 3 (September): 465–500. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0259-7.

Gallup. 2019. “Moral Issues.” http://www.gallup.com/poll/1681/moral-issues.aspx.

Herodotus. (5th century BC) 1920. The Histories, edited by A. D. Godley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kirk, Chris, Charanya Krishnaswami, Katie Mesner-Hage, and Skye Nickalls. 2013. “Reproductive Rights Around the World.” Slate. May 30, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/05/abortion_and_birth_control_a_global_map.html

Sharma, Arvind. 1988. Sati: Historical and Phenomenological Essays. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass.

How to Cite This Page

Hunter, Aiken. 2024. “Moral Relativism and Meta-Ethics.” In Introduction to Ethics, edited by Jenna Woodrow, Hunter Aiken, and Calum McCracken. Kamloops, BC: TRU Open Press. https://introductiontoethics.pressbooks.tru.ca/chapter/moral-relativism-and-meta-ethics/

Attribution

Unless otherwise noted, “Aren’t Right and Wrong Just Matters of Opinion? On Moral Relativism and Subjectivism” by Paul Rezkalla (2019) in Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics [edited by George Matthews and Christina Hendricks and produced with support from the Rebus Community] is used and adapted under a CC BY 4.0 license