Importance Of Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism enables moral differences between cultures to be all acceptable and right depending on context. This means that moral concepts can come across as morally wrong for a group in one context and pass as morally right for another in other contexts. Though I recognize the relevance of cultural relativism in establishing that it is possible to have some variations in the frameworks of truth, I believe that the truth about morality is absolute and cannot be too broadly interpreted. Morality, by definition, cannot be relative or dependent on context because the purpose of moral concepts is to help an individual or society distinguish between what is ethically wrong and what is ethically right. Hence, they must be upheld in the same …show more content…
Personal judgments are relative in the sense that they can vary depending on the experiences and lens of each individual. This does not hold true when it comes to morality due to the alleged fact that it is just not in one’s first tendency to think of morality as relative. Conventional rules can be relative, but moral rules are intended to be universally justified. For example, it is a conventional rule for college students in school to show up to an exam during exam weeks and let’s just say one student could not due to personal health reasons. When put into context, having a health issue is a justifiable excuse for the student to miss the exam and a proper judgment is to have the student take a make-up exam. Moral principles are objective true in the sense that they are not based on personal views, circumstances, or inclinations. Take academic dishonesty for example, just because you are sick or you are in a situation where you need to pass the exam to graduate, that does not make your act of cheating more ethically acceptable than that of a lazy student who cheated because he did not study. On a moral standpoint, it is ethically wrong to cheat regardless of the situations or personal opinions. As you can see here, moral standards are meant to be impersonal– only either right or wrong. It is human nature to want to put everything into context …show more content…
Some are likely to object on the grounds that morality is impossible to determine and further raise the question of who or what gets to decide what is morally acceptable and what is not. Moral universalism is possible to determined because it is a set of moral codes that are generally agreed upon by most of the societies in the world. Generally speaking, behaviors that induce pain upon others, disrupt social order, and exert a negative impact on one’s surrounding would be considered as immoral. Morals can be difficult to be clearly determined in certain situations, but that do not mean it is impossible to determine what is morally right and what is not. This can be seen in the debate surrounding the ethics of torture. Torture is often employed as a mean to gain information and it is often easier said than done to outright classify torture as unethical when in extreme circumstances, it can provide information regarding a terrorist attack that can be used in preventive security measures. The guideline of morality is indeed not easy to resolve in situation like this, however, when taken the concept of moral universalism into account, the moral nature of torture can be determined. Humans cannot be treated in the same manner as objects and purposefully inflicting pain and