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Ethical Relativism: Meaning and Types
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This learning resource discusses the meaning, nature, and dynamics of ethical relativism or moral relativism, including its major types.
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Ethical Relativism: Meaning and TypesEthical relativism or moral relativism is the view that ethical or moral values and beliefs
are relative to the various individuals or societies that hold them. Thus, according to the
ethical or moral relativists, there is no objective right and wrong. This means that what
is right for one person is not necessarily right for another or what is right in some
circumstances is not necessarily in another.
Two Forms of Ethical Relativism
There are two forms of ethical relativism, namely:
1) Personal or Individual Ethical Relativism and
2) Social or Cultural Ethical Relativism.
On the one hand, personal or individual ethical relativism holds that ethical judgments
and beliefs are the expressions of the moral outlook and attitudes of individual persons.
Hence, for the individual ethical relativists, there is no objective standard of right and
wrong inasmuch as the “individual person” is the basis of moral judgments. The ethical
relativist may, therefore, say “I have my own view and you have yours. Neither my view
nor yours is better or more correct.”
Let us take, for example, senicide or geronticide, that is, the abandonment to death or
killing of the elderly. There was a common belief that during famines or other extremely
difficult situations, the Inuit or the indigenous people of Northern America would leave
their elderly on the ice to die. If this is indeed the case, the individual relativist would
say that no one, especially the outsiders of this culture, has the right to say that the Inuit
are wrong because the morality of such action depends entirely on the individual Intuit
beliefs. Hence, in individual ethical relativism, any person has no right to say that others
are correct or incorrect since to do so would assume an objective standard of right and
wrong. As we can see, this example is considered an individual or personal ethical
relativism because it is the individual that is the basis of moral judgment.
On the other hand, social or cultural ethical relativism holds that ethical values and
beliefs vary from society to society and that the basis of moral judgment lies in these
social or cultural views. Thus, in determining the rightness or wrongness of human
actions, one must base it on the norms of a particular society. Let us take, for example,
the ancient Indian practice of Sati or Suttee.
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