The year was 1943. Hundreds of Jewish people were being
marched into the gas chambers in accordance with Adolf Hitler's
orders. In the two years that followed, millions of Jews were killed
and only a fraction survived the painful ordeals at the Nazi German
prison camps. However, all of the chaos ended as World War II came to
a close: the American and British soldiers had won and Hitler's Third
Reich was no more. A certain ethical position would state that the
anti-sematic Nazi German culture was neither right nor wrong in its
actions. In fact, it is this view of the cultural relativist that
assumes all actions considered right in a culture to be good for that
culture alone. Moreover, the relativist claims that these actions
cannot be judged according to their ethical correctness because there
is no absolute standard by which they could be compared. In the above
case, this position would not allow for the American and British
soldiers to interfere with the Nazis; the relativist would claim that
the Allies were wrong in fighting the Germans due to a cultural
disagreement. In truth, it is the relativist position which has both
negative logical and practical consequences, and negligible benefits.
The first logical consequence of relativism is that the
believer must contradict himself in order to uphold his belief. The
view states that all ethics are relative while putting forth the idea
that no absolute standard of rightness exists. If this is the case,
then what is cultural relativism relative to? From a purely logical
point of view, this idea is absurd, for in assuming that something is
relative one must first have some absolute by which it is judged. Let
the reader consider this example to reinforce the point. A young woman
is five feet tall, and her older friend is six feet tall. The younger
female considers herself short because she looks at her friend and
sees that she is taller than her. It would be illogical to say that
the first woman is short if she were the only female in existence; if
this were the case then there would not be anyone for her to be
relative to in height. However, this logical fallacy is what the
relativist assumes by stating that there is no standard of rightness
for relativity. Quite simply, the cultural relativist is stating that
he is relative to an absolute which ...
... middle of paper ...
...at there cannot be any moral progress in a culture per-say. As
discussed, the negligible benefits of cultural relativism such as
tolerance, lacking of an absolute standard, and an open mind can only
be applied to a limited range of instances. As previously shown,
extreme relativism "in its vulgar and unregenerate form7" leads to
stagnation of cultural morals and passive acceptance of ethical
injustice. Of course, just as in any ethical theory, there are some
things to be learned from it. One of these is the idea of not being
too critical of other cultures. Also, the theory shows the importance
of not becoming so culturalcentric that one looses the ability to
learn from other socities. In truth, if more cultures tempered their
tolerance with wisdom, then many of the evils that plague us could be
effectively eliminated.
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End Notes
1. Rachels, James. "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism."
Reason and Responsibility. Ed. Joel Feinberg. p. 454.
2. Rachels, p. 454.
3. Rachels, p. 454.
4. Rachels, p. 455.
5. Rachels, p. 455.
6. Rachels, p. 457.
7. Williams, Bernard. "Relativism." Reason and Responsibility. Ed.
Joel Feinberg. p. 451.
the many things that can be learned from it, instead of looking at it passively. You grow
well as lessons into the nature of all men. Most important in these lessons on
"Who's to judge who's right or wrong?" In the case against moral relativism Pojman provides an analysis of Relativism. His analysis includes an interpretation of Relativism that states the following ideas: Actions vary from society to society, individuals behavior depends on the society they belong to, and there are no standards of living that apply to all human kind. An example that demonstrates these ideas is people around the world eat beef (cows) and in India, cows are not to be eaten. From Pojman second analysis an example can be how the Japanese take of their shoes all the time before entering the house. In Mexico it is rare that people take off their shoes. They might find it wired or not normal. In his third analysis he gives that sense moral relativism and cultural relativism are tied together, that their can be no
Teaching a child right from wrong is another point it brings up but I feel I have covered this point in the section above.
Even nowadays, there still an issue that connected with language and related to cultures such as cultural relativism and ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism is a behavior in one culture that should not be judged by another’s value system which basically is a belief of own culture practice with respect and understand the different of other culture. While ethnocentrism is the opposite of cultural relativism. It is the ideal that one’s own culture is the main standard and better than other cultures such if other’s culture practice is contrary to your cultural norm, that practice would be immediately wrong. In Language Myths provide many examples of this issue in many chapters which I will be discussing below.
From this story, three main concepts stand out to me: ignorance and disrespect of others’ values, proving your identity, and the impact of discrimination.
Ethics are not universal throughout the world due to the many different persons and cultures that have different moral beliefs and ethics. However, within an area where the culture is similar and the majority of the people in society believe in the same morals and beliefs, all of their ethics can be said to be relative. Rather than believing if an action is good or bad, morals from different cultures and settings are viewed as being either accepted or not accepted. As long as an action is viewed as being accepted then that is a moral of that culture. An example of a moral being accepted in a culture when other cultures do not accept it is killing. There are some cultures that believe in the concept of suicide and/or homicide, while other
All so called "Native Americans," were once immigrants. There were two waves of immigration between the early 1800’s through the early 1900’s. The first wave of immigrants called the "old immigrants" came to America between 1890-1897. They were primarily from Northern Europe: Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. The second wave of immigrants called the "new immigrants" came to America from 1897-1924. The "new immigrants" primarily came from Southern and Eastern Europe countries such as Poland, Russia, and Italy. Nativist parties, like the Know-Nothings and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner verbalized their distaste and disapproval of immigrants. Actions and regulations against immigration did not begin until near the end of the "old immigration" and the beginning of the "new immigration." Nativists had many fears and concerns regarding immigrants. These concerns included being socially ill-suited to live with the older stock Americans, stealing jobs from the native work force, and bringing new, radical ideas to the country. These fears and concerns caused nativists to come up with schemes to keep immigrants out of the country. These strategies had a great impact on immigration in our country.
The lessons are numerous and range from trivial to profound, but there’s one that's had the most impact on my life. Fortunately, I was born into a unconditionally loving family with good health and parents that I feel comfortable talking to under almost any circumstance. Until I got to really know my friends, I was aware that not everybody’s lives were like this but never really understood what a life without those privileges was like. But then my perspective changed when I found out that a couple of my friends have terrible relationships with their parents and suffer from depression and anxiety. Another one of my friends suffers from chronic migraines and has been hospitalized three times in the past year. All of my friends are incredible individuals, and knowing in detail of what they withstand on a daily basis has made me more empathetic to the people around me. I think we all forget sometimes that other people are people, we subconsciously go into this state of mind thinking we’re the center of the whole world. But in actuality, that is not the case; everyone else has their own unique lives and issues they’re dealing with. So what I’ve learned by knowing of my friends’ distinctive stories is just to be more cognizant of others. It's difficult to have that state of mind all the time, but in doing so I have better relationships with
Every individual is taught what is right and what is wrong from a young age. It becomes innate of people to know how to react in situations of killings, injuries, sicknesses, and more. Humans have naturally developed a sense of morality, the “beliefs about right and wrong actions and good and bad persons or character,” (Vaughn 123). There are general issues such as genocide, which is deemed immoral by all; however, there are other issues as simple as etiquette, which are seen as right by one culture, but wrong and offense by another. Thus, morals and ethics can vary among regions and cultures known as cultural relativism.
Nearly all of mankind, at one point or another, spends a lot of time focusing on the question of how one can live a good human life. This question is approached in various ways and a variety of perspectives rise as a result. There are various ways to actually seek the necessary elements of a good human life. Some seek it through the reading of classic, contemporary, theological and philosophical texts while others seek it through experiences and lessons passed down from generations. As a result of this, beliefs on what is morally right and wrong, and if they have some impact on human flourishing, are quite debatable and subjective to ones own perspective. This makes determining morally significant practices or activities actually very difficult.
In this class various lessons were learnt when it came to helping people. The first lesson that encompasses a very broad spectrum is “The 8 Commandments” as the book Peer Counseling by V. D’Andrea and P. Salovey calls them. I consider this the core lessons that I learnt in this class as each commandment taught me a great deal.
Objectivism can be broken into 5 main categories. They are Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics. Each of these makes up Ayn Rand’s philosophy, which is called objectivism.
Conceptual relativism is concerned with truth and knowledge and belongs specifically with the ability of the human mind to construct different realities, people have different versions of realities but there is no one reality as is the same with truth there is no one absolute truth there are only truths. (Lazar 1998)Many authors have described the nature of this in their own languages and this has bought about many different views of conceptual relativism. It was Daniel Little’s belief that conceptual relativism was concerned with the fact that as the world is separated into so many different countries, cultures, religions and beliefs. It would not be possible to only have one theory on the structure of everything inside the world, for all individuals think differently, how can one theory be more plausible than another. (Lazar 1998) Peter Winch had a more radical view and argued that Science had absolutely nothing to do with explanations on what existed. He stated that human beings are more than just physical objects and that if human action was not being understood from the inside, how could the social sciences understand human action at all. He went on to say that the majority of sociology was not in fact a science it was a masked type of philosophy. Winch’s claims against the social sciences caused problems and some ethnomethodological sociologists changed the way they studied society and developed a non scientific route. (Lock 2010)However rationalists such as Popper reject the idea of relativism as he believed that unless all individuals shared the same framework of basic knowledge, there could never be agreements made. (Benton 2001)
In explaining Cultural Relativism, it is useful to compare and contrast it with Ethical Relativism. Cultural Relativism is a theory about morality focused on the concept that matters of custom and ethics are not universal in nature but rather are culture specific. Each culture evolves its own unique moral code, separate and apart from any other. Ethical Relativism is also a theory of morality with a view of ethics similarly engaged in understanding how morality comes to be culturally defined. However, the formulation is quite different in that from a wide range of human habits, individual opinions drive the culture toward distinguishing normal “good” habits from abnormal “bad” habits. The takeaway is that both theories share the guiding principle that morality is bounded by culture or society.