Relativism

Anthropologist Franz Boas is well-known for promoting the concept of cultural relativism. Meaning, practices, beliefs, and ideas within a certain culture make sense within that culture. As an outsider, certain beliefs or practices of cultures that are different from our own can easily be misunderstood or interpreted incorrectly. Although cultural relativism promotes the idea of respecting and understanding the beliefs and practices of different cultures, when does a certain practice/belief…

Cultural relativism may be defined as a theory that advocates the idea of subjective morality. To extrapolate, this theory entails that “different cultures have differing moral codes” and these variances are merely arbitrary. Although this is a seemingly sufficient theory, there are key issues with this school of thought. James Rachels suggests several issues with accepting cultural relativism. He criticizes cultural relativism by stating that the theory is absurd as it entails severe…

In William Shaw’s essay about Relativism in Ethics he analyzes the matter of what is ethically wrong and right and how relative it is to an individual or to one’s own culture. He defends to argue that ethical relativism of either side is unjustified. Shaw examines that some relativist may think that morality is relative to only the individual and not one’s own culture. This theory considers that what is right and what is wrong is determined by what an individual may think is right or wrong.…

Cultural Relativism is a rule of behavior. It restricts a natural instinct to judge, sort, and distinguish loosely and forbids any form of action. John Rachels’ The Challenge of Cultural Relativism outlines and attacks the theory of cultural relativism. He pays particular attention to the results of Cultural Relativism, and employs various examples to poke holes in the argument. What is important to remember is that his argument must exist under the assumption that a standard of morality that…

Cultural Relativism is in many aspects what one group of people finds acceptable may not be accepted by another. For example, the styles of clothing that are popular and considered acceptable among American women is not the same standard of what is acceptable to women whose cultural origins are of Middle East. The case of the Hmong man kidnapping and raping an American woman is one that would be considered of extreme cultural relativism. To be completely honest upon first glance I was appalled…

Cultural relativism is the thesis that there is no universal truth within ethics. This can also be explained that one’s culture determines what they see as right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, or even normal or not normal. For example, most are aware that many cultures view eating insects as a delicacy. However, in the United States culture, this seems odd and the majority of the population would not be okay with practicing this. In this example, neither culture can look at the other and…

Cultural Relativism Cultural Relativism is a prevalent theory that is used to explain the variety of differences within cultures and their morals. In this paper I will address the claims of James Rachels and Ruth Benedict, and their opposing views on cultural relativism. The authors have their own theories, against and for cultural relativism. Benedict illustrates that diversity is apparent even on the topics of morality where we would expect to agree. I believe Ruth Benedict’s claims of…

the use of relativism in public discourse. In it, he makes solid claims against a certain kind of strong relativism, in which any kind of moral evaluation is thought to be unwise. But thankfully, relativism is a more capacious idea, and can help show us how to be more persuasive in our arguments against Trump. Specifically, Levinovitz lambasts “cultural relativism,” which he loosely defines as “reluctance to take one culture’s norms as authoritative”. He then states that such a relativism…

that morality is accepted based on what society this is right or wrong. She is auguring for the latter. 2) according to Pojaman the different between culture relativism and ethical relativism is that in culture relativism it a belief that the fact of morality rule is different society to society and the ethical relativism is that people in different group should have different opinion about following on if something is what is right or wrong.…

Cultural or moral relativism cannot be correct as all humans share and follow universal norms as they live their everyday lives. Each individual is faced with decisions at time to time, and they make their decision based on what they believe is correct. Most of the things that humans believe in, which are correct, relate back to universal norms. If groups or majorities believe something is right and they teach or praise this belief around the world it can be known as a universal norm (Demuijnck,…