Moral relativism: differentiating between good and evil

Something that seems so clear on paper, such as good and evil, begins to raise doubts when we begin to delve deeper. One answer to these doubts and the apparent contradictions they generate is one that is based on moral relativism.

Morality is understood as a set of norms, beliefs, values ​​and customs that guide people’s behavior (Stanford University, 2011). Morality is going to be what dictates what is right and what is wrong and it will allow us to discriminate which actions or thoughts are correct or appropriate and which are not. Let’s look at this issue in depth.

Morality and ethics

Morality is neither objective nor universal. Within the same culture we can find differences in morality, although they are normally smaller than those found between different cultures. So, If we compare the morals of two cultures, these differences can become much greater.. Furthermore, within the same society, the coexistence of different religions can also reveal many differences (Rachels and Rachels, 2011).

Closely related to morality is the concept of ethics. Ethics (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) is the search for universal principles of morality (although There are authors who consider that ethics and morality are the same like Gustavo Bueno). To do this, those who study ethics analyze morality in different cultures in order to find what they share, which will be the universal principles. In the world, ethical conduct is officially included in the declaration of Human Rights.

Western morality

Years ago, Nietzsche (1996) labeled Western morality as slave morality, since he considered that the highest actions could not be the work of men, but only of a God that we had projected outside of ourselves. This morality that Nietzsche shunned is considered Judeo-Christian due to its origins.

Despite criticism from philosophers, this morality is still valid; although it presents some more liberal changes. Given colonialism and the dominance of the West in the world, Judeo-Christian morality is the most widespread. This fact can sometimes present problems.

This thought that considers that each culture has a morality is called cultural relativism.. In this way, there are people who disregard human rights in favor of other codes of good conduct, such as the Koran or the Vedas of Hindu culture (Santos, 2002).

Cultural relativism

Evaluating another morality from the point of view of our own can be a totalizing practice: normally, when doing so the evaluation will be negative and stereotyped. Thus, the morals that do not adapt to ours, almost always, we are going to reject them questioning even the moral abilities of people with other moralities.

To understand how the various morals interact, we will take Wittgenstein’s (1989) explanations. This explains morality with a very simple scheme. To understand it better you can do a simple exercise: take a piece of paper and paint many circles. Each circle will represent a different morality. Regarding the relationships between the circles, there are three possibilities:

That two given circles do not have any space in common. Perhaps, that a circle is inside another circle. That two circles share a part of their common space, but not all.

Evidently, The fact that two circles share space will indicate that two morals have aspects in common. Furthermore, depending on the proportion of shared space, they will be more or less. In the same way as these circles, the different moralities overlap, while at the same time they diverge in many positions. There are also larger circles that represent morals that integrate more norms and smaller ones that only refer to more specific aspects.

Moral relativism

However, there is another paradigm that proposes that there is no morality in each culture. From moral relativism it is suggested that each person has a different morality. (Lukes, 2011). Imagine that each circle in the above diagram is the morality of a person rather than the morality of a culture. From this belief, all morals are accepted regardless of who they come from or in what situation they occur. Within moral relativism there are three different positions:

Descriptive moral relativism (Swoyer, 2003): This position defends that there are disagreements regarding the behaviors that are considered correct, even when the consequences of such behaviors are the same. Descriptive relativists do not necessarily advocate tolerance of all behavior in light of such disagreement.Meta-ethical moral relativism (Gowans, 2015): according to this position, the truth or falsity of a judgment is not the same universally, so it cannot be said to be objective. The judgments will be relative when compared to the traditions, convictions, beliefs or practices of a human community.Normative moral relativism (Swoyer, 2003): from this position it is understood that there are no universal moral standards, therefore, other people cannot be judged. All behavior must be tolerated even when it is contrary to the beliefs we hold.

Examples of philosophical currents that support moral relativism

This idea that morality is not the same for everyone has been worked on at different times in history. Apart from Friedrich Nietzsche and his particular vision of morality, there are two main currents:

The sophism: This group of Greek philosophers stated that no objective truth can be known, so establishing a universal ethical code is impossible.Postmodernism: In a similar way to the previous ones, postmodernists say that there is no separation between the objective and its interpretation, so all conceptions of good and evil would be valid.

The fact that a moral explains a greater range of behaviors or that more people agree with a specific moral does not imply that it is correct, but neither does it imply that it is not correct. Moral relativism assumes that there are various morals that will give rise to disagreements, which will not give rise to a conflict only if conflict occurs. dialogue and understanding (Santos, 2002). Thus, finding common ground is the best way to establish a healthy relationship, both between people and between cultures.

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