Cultural Relativism: Vice And Virtue In Everyday Life

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Cassie Krone Dr. Gunes Ethics 8 September 2014 The readings in “The Elements of Moral Philosophy” and “Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life” make extremely strong arguments for both the ethical theories of cultural relativism and objectivism. After discussing these theories, I will show that objectivism is in fact the more defensible position between the two, and therefore should be the more widely accepted position in our society. Cultural relativism is the theory that all moral standards comes directly from the culture, traditions, and customs of each society, and that every culture has a different set of morals . This means that whatever the majority of the culture accepts at that given time must be morally correct and true. According to …show more content…

No two people are the same; we have different personalities, opinions, and upbringings, so the idea that we would be unable to question society undermines the existence of free thought. Taking away free thought creates a breeding ground for voiceless crimes to be committed, because society no longer has a right to consider whether or not the acts are ethical or unethical. In addition, if cultural relativism were true, this would also eradicate the use of law enforcement. This is because police officers, judges, and other officials wouldn’t have any more of an authority to determine the wrongness of an action than the rest of the community, so they would be unable to take any action to end or prevent …show more content…

This means that many times the definition of a culture becomes very blurry and that following the standards in each culture is quite difficult. An example of this in our world today can be seen in China’s underground Christian church movement. These are citizens of China who because of the government forbidding the act of preaching to other citizens are supposed to abide by the laws of the land, but are also obligated as Christians to preach the Gospel to those around them. They are wholly Chinese and wholly Christian, so forcing them to choose between the two is a difficult decision that many times leads to great persecution from the government. No person should be forced to conform to one culture, and it is close-minded and unrealistic to expect someone to obtain all of their morals from their geographical

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