To jump back on the bandwagon which I kinda started myself...
My point of view is that there exist basically two choices in dealing with the moral relativism question: either accept M.R. absolutely, or reject it absolutely. That is to say, you can't make an exception for one act, which you judge in your value/moral system to be unacceptable, as being acceptable for another society because "it's relative", and then proceed to condemn a social practice because it doesn't fit into your own conceptualization of morality. The idea of relativism is an either-or scenario. Either you can accept the idea that it's all a matter of perspective, or you can reject it. You can't just say "well, these cases are a matter of perspective, but these cases aren't. They're only a matter of MY perspective." The supposition in the latter statement being that "MY perspective" is irrefutably dervied from a univeral moral code. The problem of course is that, if you grant a deviation from the Universal Moral Code that you're in touch with in a certain instance, it's not longer universal. If it doesn't hold in at least once case, the idea that it's concrete, fundamental and holds in all cases falls apart.
So we just have to make a choice between accepting MR or rejecting it. Accepting it means refusing to judge other cultures based on our own values (almost everyone finds it at the very least very, very difficult to do this), or buy that our values are THE values and those who do not adhere to them are inherently immoral / not in touch with the grand design of good vs. evil (and this, naturally seems just the slightest bit ethnocentric).
It's a sticky situation. And I have no easy answers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment