Phil Washburn's Philosophical Dilemmas

A person, no matter where they live or what kind of history they have, always has and always will come across someone who does not believe the same way that they do. This is plainly seen in Phil Washburn’s Philosophical Dilemmas and as a result the main source of information will stem from this text concerning morals. Philosophers are most known for their work of arguing about morals and what is wrong or right however, what laymen do not understand is that they do not focus on the question of moral but rather whether or not the judgment of the morals of others is right or wrong. It is here that the idea of relativists and absolutists is born and men are challenged to take a side. According to the essays in Washburn’s text, a relativist is

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the absolutist who believes that regardless of the culture, there are some morals—not a “set of rules” but the difference between right and wrong— that apply to all people. Relativists and absolutists prove to be polar opposites when it comes to their stance on morality and after analyzing both the idea of an absolutist is the most plausible. Relativists can be described as the type of people who would say that whatever is right for one person is not necessarily right for another, and whatever is wrong for the other is not necessarily wrong for the first. Though this is a basic example, this is not what moral relativists believe as a whole. Moral relativism starts with the Greeks and what they learned in their travels around the world. According to the text, there was a group of men that were known to be teachers in early Greek culture who would teach men leadership and how to speak persuasively. These teachers, known as Sophists, were often hired in political cases and did not hesitate to switch sides if they were being offered more

The moral relativist believes that everything depends on the culture of the person and the social norms according to that society, whereas the absolutist believes that moral relativism is not a plausible definition for morality. Instead the absolutist believes that there is only one set of right and wrong and that this right and wrong spans across the nations. The relativist view is full of grey areas that could mean life or death for anyone but do not ultimately solve the question of morality, instead all it does is muddle what knowledge it actually does explain and push it and it’s adverse around with a stick in a never-ending circle. If a poor man steals the food from another man’s cupboard it is wrong in the eyes of the man with the food, but right in the eyes of the poor man who stole the food. The absolutists, on the other hand, understand that just because there is something that is widely accepted as ‘right’ does not make the action right as in the slavery example. This type of thing only justifies the judgment of the people as wrong, however most if not all people become offended if they are told that they are wrong. However, the relativist view had a point in saying that it is not possible to objectively judge the morals of any society. To a certain degree, this is true. It is impossible to objectively judge the morals of any