Criticise The Moral Practices Of People From Other Culture?

2. Is it wrong to criticise the moral practices of people from other cultures? How would a Cultural Relativist answer that question? How would you answer that question?

There are many ethical issues and beliefs that come into debate when the practices of another culture are believed to be immoral, cultural relativism is an attempt at solving these moral disputes by encouraging an attitude of tolerance to all cultural practices. The principle of cultural relativism that holds that the practices of another culture cannot be judged as right or wrong on any independent standard as morality is dependant on one’s own cultural upbringing. Morality is as they would say, “a matter of opinion”. While this at a distance this axiom seems to be perfectly sound it has a large amount discrepancies that are seen when examined closely or imagined hypothetically. Within this essay I will be examining the main arguments of cultural relativism such as the moral diversity of all cultures, the absence of any moral truths that can be universally acknowledged, that one can’t criticise or question their own culture’s practices in the name of social progress as it is intolerant and finally that cultures cannot have moral superior practices or morals that are superior to another.

As a culture’s moral system is built on the survival of it’s people (as explained earlier), their actions would only need to serve the interest of their people to be considered to be morally good. An example of this is war or the invasion of other countries for slaves and materials. These actions within their own cultures are usually morally permissible as they serve the survival of it’s people and that the survival of other societies is only a concern if they could serve as benefit to that culture. From this is it observable how cultural normative morals can be used to justify actions that destroy other