Topics Ethics

Question What exactly is relatvism and could you give me a more elementary definition of it? I have a hard time understanding it. Here's the thing, I was having an argument on a religious forum and I said that I personally believe there is nothing wrong, immoral, or sinful with homosexuality, however if you believe that it is immoral, I'll respect that. I was called a moral relatvist and I looked that up online, and I hard a hard time understanding how that applies to me. I may not agree with your opinion, but I still respect that. Is that what (moral) relatvism is?

Accepted:
July 12, 2012

Comments

The notion of moral relativism is problematic. Here's a simple version: a moral relativist is someone who believes that what's right and wrong depends on the group/society in which the question arises. On this view, slavery, for example, could be right in one society and wrong in another. The idea is that just as it makes no sense to ask if something is tall absolutely, so it makes no sense to ask if something is right or wrong absolutely. The moral relativist says that the standard is the moral views of the relevant social group.

This raises a good many questions. What social facts determine what's right or wrong in a group? Are we confusing "believes to be right/wrong" with "is right/wrong?" It also has problems with the fact that moral critiques often come from within the societies in which the practices in question go on.

There are various ways of formulating more sophisticated versions of relativism, and perhaps one of them avoids such difficulties. But your question is whether respecting moral differences amounts to relativism. And the answer to that is surely that it needn't. When I disagree with someone on a moral matter, it's often clear that my opponent holds her belief in good faith, has thought about it, and has reasons for what she believes. In cases like this, I respect my opponent at least insofar I don't dismiss her as a fool or a scoundrel. If the issue is a difficult one, I may also be aware of my own limitations and respect my opponent in the sense that I recognize her view as not beyond the pale of what a reasonable person could think. In either case, I may still believe that there really is a single correct answer to moral question, and I may continue to believe that my opponent's view is incorrect, sincere or apparently plausible though it may be.

The way you put things, however, was vaguer. You said "if you believe that [homosexuality] is immoral, I'll respect that." The question is what "that" refers to and what kind of respect you have in mind. Perhaps one of the senses of "respect" I've described captures it. But I dare say that if the claim were that executing adulters is right, for example, you'd be less willing to say you respect that. I certainly wouldn't "respect" such a view, and the reason I wouldn't is that I think it's simply beyond the pale; it's a view that can't be held reasonably.

And so there are limits, I would suggest, to what sorts of moral disagreements we can "respect," thoug. just what those limits are can well be a matter of dispute. But if I'm prepared to "respect" any moral view whatever, this would suggest that I don't take moral questions seriously. Whether "relativism" is the right word, it's possible that this is what the folks you're disageeing with mean. Deciding whether they're right would call for getting clearer on the sense in which you respect their view — something for you to chew on!

I want to add a point of emphasis to Prof. Stairs' excellent response to your interesting question. It is quite common to hear people suggest that being tolerant or respectful towards the moral views of other people or other cultures suggests a commitment to moral relativism. It sounds like that's what people were suggesting to you.

That idea is false and might even be self-contradictory. If your being tolerant or respectful is based on your thinking that it is morally right to take a tolerant or respectful attitude towards other people (in the way Stairs suggests in third paragraph), then it might be that you take it to be a universal moral truth that one should take such an attitude towards others (barring moral reasons not to do so--e.g., because their views or behavior call for harsher attitudes).

That most liberal, politically correct people are not really relativists is suggested by the fact that most of them are not tolerant or respectful towards people who hold intolerant views. Notice how people are responding to the Chick-Fil-A founder for saying homosexual marriage is wrong.

A true relativist cannot say that the right thing to do is to be respectful towards others' moral views, unless they just mean that it is considered right in their own (sub)culture. Those of us who think that we should be "tolerant of" homosexuality likely think that there is nothing wrong with homosexual behavior, not just that we should think anything goes. (I put it in quotation marks because in that phrase it makes it sound like I think we should tolerate something that is difficult to tolerate--the word is ambiguous. Rather, I think we should recognize that homosexuals should not be discriminated against, in marriage rights or anything else--and not just in our culture.)