Ethical Relativism, Natural law and Human Rights, and Virtue Ethics, are 3 powerful schools of ethical philosophy. These three schools are vastly different within their perspectives, for example, Ethical Relativism is based around the theory of knowledge. A skepticism if you will, about our ethical reasoning. One reason for skepticism is the historical fact that different cultures disagree about moral values. Meaning, our values are derived from our cultural views and what we have perceived from the world; no absolute values or objective values. This is such a complicated issue when looked at from the eyes of a metaethical viewpoint. Ethical relativism asks you to strip away all other views and contexts and really asks you to consider morality
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Descriptive ethical relativism is the factual claim that there are different ideas about values (46). For example, different cultures may practice certain rituals or hold a specific viewpoint that other cultures may condone. Considering the practice of female genital mutilation, in some countries it is an honor, and seen as a coming of age tradition. But, here in America we see it as horrific and animalistic. This is just one of many examples of descriptive ethical relativism. Normative ethical relativism claims that there are no objective or absolute values that apply to one person at a time, because what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ varies from one society to another. From this point of view, values are simply the beliefs, opinions, practice, or feelings of individuals and cultures (47). Unlike natural law, ethical relativism believes in the diversity amongst societies and their moral …show more content…
This theory is grounded on the idea of human nature; everything on earth has a purpose, and that purpose is to live a good happy life. In those terms, anything that prevents someone else from fulfilling their purpose is doing ‘wrong’. This implies that the principle of what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is the same for everyone. Cicero explains natural law as “uncontradictable by any other law, and is neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscious… this law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings”. This line of thinking died out by the medieval period, due to christian traditions deriving from scripture and greek and roman ideas eventually entered into european cultures. But these ideas had a great impact on our forefathers and authors of the founding documents of the United States. Often the strongest characteristic of this theory are its belief in the moral values and the notion of good as human
Descriptive ethical relativism is the factual claim that there are different ideas about values (46). For example, different cultures may practice certain rituals or hold a specific viewpoint that other cultures may condone. Considering the practice of female genital mutilation, in some countries it is an honor, and seen as a coming of age tradition. But, here in America we see it as horrific and animalistic. This is just one of many examples of descriptive ethical relativism. Normative ethical relativism claims that there are no objective or absolute values that apply to one person at a time, because what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ varies from one society to another. From this point of view, values are simply the beliefs, opinions, practice, or feelings of individuals and cultures (47). Unlike natural law, ethical relativism believes in the diversity amongst societies and their moral …show more content…
This theory is grounded on the idea of human nature; everything on earth has a purpose, and that purpose is to live a good happy life. In those terms, anything that prevents someone else from fulfilling their purpose is doing ‘wrong’. This implies that the principle of what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is the same for everyone. Cicero explains natural law as “uncontradictable by any other law, and is neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscious… this law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings”. This line of thinking died out by the medieval period, due to christian traditions deriving from scripture and greek and roman ideas eventually entered into european cultures. But these ideas had a great impact on our forefathers and authors of the founding documents of the United States. Often the strongest characteristic of this theory are its belief in the moral values and the notion of good as human