Reclaiming Relativism...

The moral relativist is quite prepared to recognize virtuous and wicked behavior. But the relativist insists that living a moral life is not a simple matter. Such a life is complicated, not by an absence of moral rules, but rather by the abundance of such rules and the resulting conflict amongst them.

Ernest Partridge, A Moral Philosophy for Progressives

This really nice article tries, in part, to reclaim and rehabilitate the concept of moral relativism as a basis for liberal morality.  The author correctly notes that ethics are always relative to context (the details of the situation), relative to language (what the words of our laws and commandments mean), and relative to conflict (deciding between opposing moral principles).  Even moral absolutists do these computations all the time, they just convince themselves that they are acting consistently.

The ultimate defense of absolutism is to redefine any failures as not a failure of the ideology, but a failure of the person implementing the ideology.  Jonathan Chait captures the humorous hypocrisy of this in Always right, never wrong: "Rather than reexamine their [Conservative's] failed strategy, they're simply writing Bush out of conservatism."

There's another sense of moral relativism, however, which the right may rightly ridicule.  This is the version of cultural relativism which forbids you from judging another culture's system of ethics since your own system of ethics would cloud your judgment.  Its extreme form, popular in some liberal academic circles, ultimately implies that not only is there no right or wrong, but that there is no true or false either.  "Knowledge" is just opinion shaded by the observer's built-in biases.

This is utter claptrap, and no one seriously believes it.  Even the post-modern professors who spout this drivel can only do so by obscuring their ideas in gibberish posing as technical jargon, or by contradicting themselves by their very utterances if they manage to speak clearly.  These are our left fringe, our extremists, and should be shunned.

- jack*

Comments

[Zenji]

I think a lot of people on the academic left who aren't necessarily hard core po-mo followers subscribe to your latter form of cultural relativism. In some ways it does make sense....we judge other cultures with reference to our own cultural norms and ideas, we cannot easily escape that. I have always understood moral relativism not to mean 'relative to context...language...and conflict' but rather relative to one's own cultural norms. I agree with you that this is not an easily tenable position at the extremes.

It makes a certain amount of sense to notice something like that christians in contemporary america declare Homosexualty to be morally wrong, while ancient greeks for example felt quite differently, and how are we to judge between these competing claims without simply repeating our own personal biases? If you feel that there are Absolute Moral Principals, then you can argue that something is 'Right' or 'Wrong'. But substantial numbers of people on the left will deny that there are any absolute moral principals. And really, it is quite difficult to back up one's claim to absolute correctness regarding a moral principal -- the Christians claim it, but many of us would argue with them, for example.

However, if ethics have any meaning at all, it is hard to give up the idea that, say, the Holocaust was Absolutely Wrong and Evil. Of course, to the people who carried it out, it was percieved as a good...at least so i assume.

So on what basis do we argue with them?
How could they have been so blinded to Truth as to not notice that they were breathtakingly, archetypically Evil? I think that is a VERY important question.

[jack*]

This is the nub of the question, Zenji, and you pick a very salient example. While we have social conventions to avoid open conflicts about contentious issues ("don't ask, don't tell", "never talk politics at a dinner party"), I don't think that anyone would ultimately agree that these moral positions are equal. It's true that fundmantalist Christians and liberals disagree about the morality of homosexuality, but neither side, not even the most liberal academic, is willing to agree that both positions are equally valid. Cultural sensitivity aside, any morality that says that contradictory statements can both be moral resigns itself to meaninglessness.

It's instructive that even though Christians amongst themselves will quote scripture as the rationale for their beliefs, in the court of public opinion they try to find factual support. Fundamentalists push a narative that says homosexuality is a lifestyle choice and fear monger by talking about "recruitment." The facts, the evidence, the truth or falseness of this question will eventually weigh in on the question of morality.

It used to be homosexuality was considered a mental illness to be treated. This was finally changed by hundreds of couragous psychiatrists, homosexual and not, who saw what a terrible toll this took on the mental health of their patients and themselves. Here the facts, the actual effects on people and families, determines the medical position. Likewise no position which contradicts the facts can stand as moral.

[Zenji]

Well, you make a very good point, namely that even theoretical supporters of moral relativism don't actually support it in real life. That is, thier own morals are always 'correct' to the detriment of all the others.

But they still are bringing up an interesting point, which is, that our moral beliefs are socially conditioned. The things we think of as moral and Good are essentially the things the people who raised us, and who we live among, feel are moral and Good (with minor personal variations). Other societies often have other ideas, and how do we differentiate between these conflicting ideologies *without reference to our own social conditioning?* That is, is there an "objective" viewpoint we can look at morality from, or is such a (necessarily hypothetical) viewpoint unreachable?

Science generally claims to be talking about objective truth, things that are true regardless of viewpoint....can science do the same thing with Morality and Ethics?

I was really disappointed that this discussion didn't go any further. I find the subject fascinating.

I'm going to try to gin up some more enthusiasm for the topic by responding again to your last response.

Cultural sensitivity aside, any morality that says that contradictory statements can both be moral resigns itself to meaninglessness.

Cultural relativism doesn't state that 2 contradictory moral statements exist simultaneously. Cultural relativism says that the Christian is making a moral decision *relative to his understanding*, and the leftist is too. So the Christian is being Moral by adhering to Xtian Morality, and the Leftist is being Moral by adhering to Leftist Morality. Now, objectively, this is what they are doing: adhering to a moral framework.

That the 2 frameworks disagree is of course noted, but i think your problem is that in theory, Relativism provides no way to arbitrate between the 2 frameworks, and pronounce one of them "Correct" and the other "Incorrect." I think that is frustrating to a lot of people, including myself. And as you note, most people come to some decision as to how to arbitrate for themselves, and thus aren't true to the Relativist ideal.

Still, it is an interesting conundrum. how to find a truly Ultimate Morality that can arbitrate with finality. Naturally, everyone thinks they have such a morality, sort of Authoritative Morality that you can point to and say, "See, people believe this and that, but the Truth is HERE."

Unfortunately, very few people can even begin to back up their claim to moral authority with a proper argument.

I'm interested in disussion your scheme, and mine. Your scheme claims to be fact-based. In as much as it is, i think that admirable.

However, can we first decide on a neutral meaning for "Moral"? Christians' say it is "adherence to God's Will." I doubt either of us are happy with that.

I'm gonna take a stab and guess you're a Utilitarian of some type: the action that produces the most good for the most people while hurting the fewest people is Moral. Am i right?