Ethical relativism

Ethical relativism, the doctrine that there are no absolute truths in ethics and that what is morally right or wrong varies from person to person or from society to society.

(Read Peter Singer’s Britannica entry on ethics.)

Arguments for ethical relativism

Herodotus, the Greek historian of the 5th century bc, advanced this view when he observed that different societies have different customs and that each person thinks his own society’s customs are best. But no set of social customs, Herodotus said, is really better or worse than any other. Some contemporary sociologists and anthropologists have argued along similar lines that morality, because it is a social product, develops differently within different cultures. Each society develops standards that are used by people within it to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable behaviour, and every judgment of right and wrong presupposes one or another of these standards. Thus, according to these researchers, if practices such as polygamy or infanticide are considered right within a society, then they are right “for that society”; and if the same practices are considered wrong within a different society, then those practices are wrong for that society. There is no such thing as what is “really” right, apart from these social codes, for there is no culture-neutral standard to which we can appeal to determine which society’s view is correct. The different social codes are all that exist.

Discover how ordinary objects work, and expand your understanding of the familiar.

SIGN UP

" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">

Thank you for signing up!"

Back to homepage

By clicking "Sign Up", you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

A second type of argument for ethical relativism is due to the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76), who claimed that moral beliefs are based on “sentiment,” or emotion, rather than on reason. This idea was developed by the 20th-century school of logical positivism and by later philosophers such as Charles L. Stevenson (1908–79) and R.M. Hare (1919–2002), who held that the primary function of moral language is not to state facts but to express feelings of approval or disapproval toward some action or to influence the attitudes and actions of others. On this view, known as emotivism, right and wrong are relative to individual preferences rather than to social standards.

Ethical relativism is attractive to many philosophers and social scientists because it seems to offer the best explanation of the variability of moral belief. It also offers a plausible way of explaining how ethics fits into the world as it is described by modern science. Even if the natural world ultimately consists of nothing but value-neutral facts, say the relativists, ethics still has a foundation in human feelings and social arrangements. Finally, ethical relativism seems especially well suited to explain the virtue of tolerance. If, from an objective point of view, one’s own values and the values of one’s society have no special standing, then an attitude of “live and let live” toward other people’s values seems appropriate.

Ethical relativism and postmodernism

Beginning in the 1960s and ’70s, ethical relativism was associated with postmodernism, a complex philosophical movement that questioned the idea of objectivity in many areas, including ethics. Many postmodernists regarded the very idea of objectivity as a dubious invention of the modern—i.e., post-Enlightenment—era. From the time of the Enlightenment, most philosophers and scientists believed that there is an objective, universal, and unchanging truth about everything—including science, ethics, religion, and politics—and that human reason is powerful enough to discover this truth. The eventual result of rational inquiry, therefore, was to be one science, one ethics, one religion, and one politics that would be valid for all people in all eras. According to postmodernism, however, the Enlightenment-inspired idea of objective truth, which has influenced the thinking of virtually all modern scientists and philosophers, is an illusion that has now collapsed.

This development, they contend, is due largely to the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and his followers. Nietzsche rejected the naive faith that human beliefs simply mirror reality. Instead, each of our beliefs is grounded in a “perspective” that is neither correct nor incorrect. In ethics, accordingly, there are no moral facts but only moral interpretations of phenomena, which give rise to different existing moral codes. We may try to understand these moralities by investigating their histories and the psychology of the people who embrace them, but there is no question of proving one or another of them to be “true.” Nietzsche argues, for example, that those who accept the Judeo-Christian ethical system, which he calls a “slave morality,” suffer from weak and fearful personalities. A different and stronger sort of person, he says, would reject this ethic and create his own values.

Explore Britannica Premium!

The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.

SUBSCRIBE

Postmodernists believe that Western society has passed beyond the modern intellectual era and is now in a postmodern period characterized partly by the realization that human life and thought is a mosaic comprising many perspectives. “Truths,” including the truths of science as well as ethics, should be recognized as beliefs associated with particular traditions that serve particular purposes in particular times and places. The desire for absolutes is seen as a misguided quest for the impossible. During the last half of the 20th century, the most prominent advocates of this view were Michel Foucault (1926–84) and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004).