“well, that’s just like, your opinion, man…”

moral relativists, even if moral relativism were right, would still be wrong

It has been observed that different cultures embody diverse mores and ethical structures. Employing the moral standard set forth by one culture to the practices enacted by another can lead to conflicting judgements. From the obvious fact of cultural relativism, moral relativists arrive at the conclusion that what is right is merely what is commonplace. Ruth Benedict sums up this view when she asserts, “mankind has always preferred to say ‘it is morally good,’ rather than ‘it is habitual’...But historically the two phrases are synonymous.” Someone brought up the example of female genital mutilation in certain African tribes and observed that, while we may condemn the practice, it is clearly accepted in their culture, as evinced by its wide practice. From this she concluded that no one culture should condemn the practices of another. Needless to say, a premise in the indicative mood does not of itself support a conclusion in the imperative one. Still, a conclusion can still be true even if an argument in support of it is invalid. In this case, I don’t think it is, and it seems that she doesn’t either, for a reason I will try to illustrate. What if someone responded with the following?

That’s fine: they have their culture and I have mine. And in mine, we have a custom of anathematizing female genital mutilation in theory, and in practice, arresting and putting to trial anyone whom we catch attempting to violate a woman in that way. Let it be so.

A more felicitous and wittier expression of the same sentiment is handed down to us by General Charles Napier:

This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs. 

He was a British General partly responsible for the British colonization of India. Of course, the same type of person who is liable to condone female genital mutilation will likely find it offensive that the British colonized India. And yet, the same line of reasoning exposes the vacuity of the objection: if a moral relativist is to object to colonization, or anything else, for that matter, it must be on the basis of her own culture’s moral sentiments and not on those of another and definitely not on an absolute standard of value, the existence of which the doctrine explicitly denies. That our culture stems from a civilization steeped in a thousand years of Christendom provides—despite that for many the influence has been obscured by adventitious political impulses—to this day, the wellspring of our most powerful moral intuition. As a dyer colors cloth, Christ’s injunctions in the Sermon of the Mount colored the moral fabric of Western civilisation. If moral relativists seek the ultimate basis for our objection to running roughshod over other cultures, this is where they should look. 

Naturally, moral relativism can’t possibly be true without upending our most basic intuitions about morality so I am liable to consider it false until someone can adduce a convincing account of it. To do so, it would be necessary to show that human nature does not exist, and that living well as a human being does not differ essentially from living well as a chimpanzee , or caterpillar, for that matter. As long as this difference remains, human nature must be said to exist and it will never be right to act in ways essentially contradictory to it. That is the basic precept of natural law ethics. Hence, the discussion above was not intended to cast doubt on these ideas. Instead, it was intended to expose the spurious and gaslighting nature of arguments purporting to invalidate our ordinary moral sense on the basis of moral relativism. Even by its own logic, these claims are wrong.

Photo by Erik Karits on Unsplash