1. Do you think Sommers’ observations; “Conceptually and culturally, however, today’s young people live in a moral haze,” and that they, “are incapable of making even one confident moral judgment,” is generally/somewhat accurate- why or why not?
This article brought up new and interesting ideas that I have been contemplating a lot on recently. The idea that Sommers mentions closely relates to my interpretation of relativists today. In society today there is a strong pull towards relativism. The belief that anyone and everyone can believe whatever they want without using any means of moral guidance from outside forces. The individual can structuralize and create his or her own moral compass. As long as the actions that any given person commits do not inflict harm on others, then it is not right of anyone to impose judgment upon that person. This way of thinking is horrendous in my mind. They fact that my generation is inclined to this way of thinking disturbs me. With the absence of moral guidelines that are not objectified, comes a corrupt society. Society will soon lose all sense of absolute truth and ethics if this way of thinking continues. Sommers illustrates this “relativism craze” perfectly in his observation.
In my experiences, people nowadays tend to believe that no concept of belief applies to everyone. Individuals create their own concepts to believe in. When confronted with criticism on their action of “beliefs” (I put beliefs in quotation because I believe that if this people reject the ideas of morals and right and wrong being applicable to all people, then anything they “believe” in is not actually a belief) they reply that no one person has the right to impose judgments on other peoples beliefs. I find ...
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...re were two aspects of the essay that I found particularly interesting. First, the prospect that there are people in today’s society that are questioning the horrific facts of the Holocaust was interesting to me. I was unaware of this until now. I think more people should become aware of this crisis. This is problematic. If people don’t see the Holocaust as factual events that took place, we loss the lessons we learned from the mistakes that were made. I believe that this problem should be approached and solved. The other interesting aspect was that of the “Hippie” relativist’s problem with hygiene. By ignoring society’s norms, these relativists suffered health problems. I was also unaware of this and believe it should be made aware to more people. If people knew of this effect relativism can have, they may be more inclined to have morals fitting to societal norms.
Cultural Relativism is a moral theory which states that due to the vastly differing cultural norms held by people across the globe, morality cannot be judged objectively, and must instead be judged subjectively through the lense of an individuals own cultural norms. Because it is obvious that there are many different beliefs that are held by people around the world, cultural relativism can easily be seen as answer to the question of how to accurately and fairly judge the cultural morality of others, by not doing so at all. However Cultural Relativism is a lazy way to avoid the difficult task of evaluating one’s own values and weighing them against the values of other cultures. Many Cultural Relativist might abstain from making moral judgments about other cultures based on an assumed lack of understanding of other cultures, but I would argue that they do no favors to the cultures of others by assuming them to be so firmly ‘other’ that they would be unable to comprehend their moral decisions. Cultural Relativism as a moral theory fails to allow for critical thoughts on the nature of morality and encourages the stagnation
In the introduction, Blackburn constructs a clear antithesis between absolutism and relativism, and illustrates their focuses with colloquial words like “bullshitting” and “fetish”. Although this way of expressing ideas is kind of rude, it makes audiences easily understand the ongoing conflict between these two ideas and intrigue them to read more. The rest of the article continues such fun style of writing until the part where the author begins to point out the problems within the prevalent idea, relativism. The author’s reasoning against relativism starts with an imaginary debate where pros and cons are discussing the validity of banning fox hunting. Then the author introduces a relativist, Rosie, who tells the pros and cons that “The truth you are holding is relative; what you believe is true may not be true for the other.” Since this point, the author’s reasoning begins to become intense. First, he argues that what Rosie suggests doesn’t contribute to the debate because with or without her intervention, the debate will remain controversial. Then he digs deeper by suggesting that Rosie may want to emphasize toleration is essential yet such claim is actually absolute, which contradicts the relativist value that Rosie believes. Finally, Blackburn states that in order to avoid such paradox, Rosie may assert that “You have your truth; I have mine”, yet it still doesn’t contribute anything to the
Cultural relativism was introduced in the U.S. by Frank Boas in 1887 (ibid). This theory postulates that cultures must be understood in terms of the values and ideas of that specific culture; the underlying objective here was to delegitimize notions of ethnocentrism (the belief that one culture may judge another based on their cultural standards) (Miller, 12-3). Though this theory seems to provide a framework to eliminate a discriminatory belief, it would not allow then, for example, people to attack the events that took place in Germany circa 1930s-40s (Miller, 23). Critical cultural relativism avoids this ‘homogenizing trap’
To begin, Matthaus suggests that one should not focus on whether the argument for uniqueness is important (to which all reviews seem to suggest), it should focus on whether the book helps us have a better understanding of the holocaust . It should question if it produces new insights, and provides us with the origins and driving forces behind genocide. What is being argued here is that historians should look at whether analysing the holocaust in a way Bloxham does, helps to understand the wider context of national genocides as well as understanding this specific event. By focusing on the books core narrative, the review comments on ...
Finally, in Beckwith’s fourth point, he evaluates the absurd consequences that follow moral relativist’s arguments. In his final critique, Beckwith uses typical philosophical examples that Mother Teresa was morally better than Adolf Hitler, rape is always wrong, and it is wrong to torture babies. Beckwith argues that for anyone to deny these universal claims is seen as absurd, yet it concludes with moral objectivism that there are in fact universally valid moral positions no matter the culture from which those individuals
(1) Schafer, Karl. "Assessor Relativism and the Problem of Moral Disagreement." The Southern Journal of Philosophy 50.4 (2012): 602-20. Web.
He wants nothing but the central idea of how society has done wrong, but the same society must stop their wrong doings, to be engraved in each and every being’s mind. He not only aids humanity of their mindsets, but also beautifully uses point of view, rhetorical questioning, and parallel structure to do it! However, all differences aside, society has learned from this experience one way or another. Perhaps, it has taught society to become better beings, or taught others to support the Holocaust and the Nazis. Others may still believe that the Holocaust does not matter, or did not even exist, but that is still learning from the event. However, at the end of it all, Elie Wiesel is just one of the survivors, and one out of hundreds of authors who composed books, articles, and speeches about what he, and humanity, observed and took part
The Holocaust tends to be a bitter memory and an unpleasant subject to discuss. Although this event took place many years ago, repercussions are still present in the twenty first century. Especially in Germany, the Holocaust not only influences patriotism, but it also influences education and immigration policies. In contrast to other countries where nationalism is common, Germany has been forced to lessen the sense of nationalism in order to dispose false beliefs some individuals have of German racism. By allowing people from other countries to become German citizens, Germany avoids transmitting the sense of being a better and a cleaner race. A further sector influenced by the Holocaust is the education system. Approaches to teach about this event are difficult since the Holocaust is a sensitive issue and continues having vital importance in numerous families. Although the Holocaust continues conveying negative influences, the Holocaust also led to positive medical and technological improvements. In fact, numerous improvements are unknowingly implemented in societies today. Therefore, the Holocaust is one of the most horrific and influencing events in history whose repercussions are still felt in Germany today. However, in spite of the horrific occurrences, the associated medical findings and technological improvements make it intricate to look at the Holocaust as plainly evil. Thus, societies should view the Holocaust with a broader perspective.
... things up to the worst of it all. The readers can take away that just because you believe something different then somebody else, doesn’t make them or you a bad person or different in any way. This topic shows that long before the concentration camps, Jews were being singled out and treated terribly. The study of the Holocaust matters to show people what happened so that others can learn from it and learn to accept people no matter what their religion. It must not be forgotten because the people who suffered in it should be remembered. It was a terrible time that should never happen again. All of the laws passed leading up to the Night of the Broken kept increasing Hitler's power and ability to persecute the Jews because there was little reaction to his actions; the violence and persecution increased leading to the final solution because of this indifference.
Jewish American writer, Elie Wiesel in his reflectional speech, The Perils of Indifference, argues the danger of Indifference. He evolves his message through emphasizing the importance and danger of what indifference can do to a society. Specifically, Wiesel mentions, “So much violence, so much indifference.” Wiesel explains that freedom and equality were difficult to be found with so much hate in our world. Finally, he mentions, “Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.” He further describes that during the holocaust is different meant sinning. Wiesel’s purpose is to inform why indifference is inhuman to create awareness that being different than others is wrong and a sin. He establishes a thoughtful tone for readers by using stylistic devices such as syntax, imagery, and word choice to develop his message. Wiesel’s message about the inhumanity of indifference and the importance of resistance is still happening today.
To his credit, Vaughn acknowledges that “diversity of moral judgements among cultures is a reality” (15). He also rightly states that just because such diversity exists does not mean that there is no objective moral truth. I can also find no issue with Vaughn’s assertion that such disagreements “may simply indicate that there is an objective fact of the matter that someone (or everyone) is wrong about” (15). However, neither does it logically follow that there is an objective moral truth – I will return to this issue in a moment. Vaughn then goes on make a similar argument against cultural relativism as he did subjective relativism, “if a culture genuinely approves of an action, then there can be no question about the action’s moral rightness” (16). As with his assertion that a murder’s moral acceptance of his crime implies its moral rightness, this claim confuses cultural relativism’s larger point, which is that morality is an agreed upon cultural convention, not an objective law like those governing like gravity or evolution. Outside cultures would not be wrong to question another culture’s moral rightness. They would simply be doing so according to their own moral standard instead of some objective one. Vaughn then goes onto say “cultural relativism implies there cannot be any such thing as moral progress” (16). The question arises, why are we assuming that there must be moral progress? His following argument is that social reformers cannot exist in cultural relativism. This claim arises from an overly narrow definition of a culture. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. may have been wrong according to the conservative white culture of his time, he was right according to the African American culture of his time. Cultural relativism does not deny that cultural trends can shift over time, so the modern prevalence of his morality does not undermine the theory. Cultural relativism
Among these modern principles are instrumental rationality, rule following, the ordering and categorization of all of social life, and a complex division of labor. When analyzed, all of these principles played a role in the mass extermination of the Jewish people. For Bauman, postmodernity is the result of modernity’s failure to rationalize the world and the amplification of its capacity for constant change. Bauman describes that there are two ways to minimize the significance of the holocaust as the theory of civilization, modernity, and of modern civilization 1) to present the holocaust as something that happened to the Jews as an event in Jewish history, and 2) to present the holocaust as an extreme case of a wide and familiar category of social phenomena. These perspectives make the Holocaust part of an individual history, not relevant or representative of the morality of modern
Moral relativism is the concept that people’s moral judgement can only goes as far a one person’s standpoint in a matter. Also, one person’s view on a particular subject carries no extra weight than another person. What I hope to prove in my thesis statement are inner judgements, moral disagreements, and science are what defend and define moral relativism.
Rachels, J. (1986). The Challenge of Cultural Relativism. The elements of moral philosophy (pp. 20-36). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
First of all, Rachels outlined the argument of the CER theory so that it can be easily to understood and critiqued. The argument for Cultural Ethical Relativism