OPPapers.com

Review Of "The Challenge Of Cultural Relativism"

Introduction
In this article, the author explores the major meta-ethical theory of Cultural Relativism.
According to it, Cultural Relativism states that all morality is relative to culture, that
the truth of ethical claims is relative to an individual or group's perspective. Cultural
Relativism holds that an action is morally right or morally wrong because of the beliefs
and values of the culture in which the action takes place. Therefore cultural relativism
denies the possibility of any objective foundation for moral rules or obligations.
Comments
In the sections 2.1 and 2.2 The author defines what Cultural Relativism is all about by
giving us a glimpse of different cultural practices form more accepted funeral
cremation by Greeks to barbaric (to us) flesh eating practice of Callatians to going
against our institution of marriage Eskimo practices or polygamy and "wife swapping".
The third section considers one argument in support of cultural relativism and then
offers objections to that argument.
She goes on setting up 6 claims of Cultural Relativism:
1. Different societies have different moral codes.
2. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another.
3. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.
4. There is no "universal truth" in ethics-that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.
5. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society.
6. It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures.
With rules 4 and 5 more essential for Cultural Relativism definition then others. At this
point she doesn't say whether Cultural Relativism is a valuable theory or not,...