Sunday, September 6, 2009

Cultural Relativism

Cultural Relativism
The author points out in his developing argument that "However, the problem with moving from cultural perspective to cultural relativism is the erosion of reason that it causes. Rather than simply saying, “we need to understand the morals of other cultures,” it says, “we cannot judge the morals of other cultures,” regardless of the reasons for their actions. There is no longer any perspective, and it becomes literally impossible to argue that anything a culture does is right or wrong. Holding to strict cultural relativism, it is not possible to say that human sacrifice is “wrong,” or that respect for the elderly is “right.” After all, those are products of the culture. This takes any talk of morality right over the cliff, and into meaningless gibberish."




Is this really the meaning of cultural relativism? Morality becomes gibberish when speaking in terms of cultural relativism then? I'm not sure I am persuaded by that. It is a cultural relativistic belief that Americans do not believe in slavery. True right? Slavery has been abolished correct? Does that also mean that another culture should look at us and say that it is immoral for us not to have slaves? Do you see where the logic is flawed with this philosophy?


William

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