Ariadne's Thread on Ethical Relativism
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John
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Ayesha
 
 

Cultural Relativism

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Ann Speaking
I'm dying to try to answer your question, but I know you don't want us to do that right now.

So here are some questions that a moral philosopher might ask an anthropologist like Herskovits: 

  • What does it mean to say that one moral system is superior to another? Or, we might ask how we should go about deciding whether a moral system is superior?

  • What does it mean to say that two moral systems are equally valid? Or, just as above, we might ask how we should go about deciding whether two moral systems are equally valid?

I think these questions are crucial. One thing I have learned by being a philosophy major is that we have got to know what we are saying. We can't discuss whether claims are true until we know what they mean. For example, we can't decide whether all moral systems are equally valid until we figure out what it means to say that they are. To me, that's basic.
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