Moral Relativism Makes Cross-Cultural Comparisons Impossible
Moral relativism holds that morality is merely a product of culture, and that morality therefore varies between cultures; different cultures produce different moral laws. All moral judgements are therefore taken to be restricted to their own cultural setting; to say that slavery is morally wrong is to say that it is morally wrong within one’s own cultural setting; it is not to say anything about any other cultural setting.
One effect of this is that cross-cultural moral judgements are reduced to statements of cultural prejudice. When I assert that the Romans were morally inferior to us in that they upheld the institution of slavery, I am judging another society by my own standards. This, though, is unreasonable; I should judge them by their own standards, according to which keeping slaves was fine.
To see that such judgements are mere statements of prejudice we can imagine the situation in reverse: if a Roman slave-keeper were to judge our society to be inferior to his because we deny slave-owners property rights over their slaves, we would reject this judgement on the ground that it is judgement according to the wrong moral standard. How, though, are we to judge which societies are morally better or worse if cross-cultural comparisons are mere prejudice?
To make cross-cultural comparisons, we need cross-cultural standards; we need a standard that is culturally neutral. Given such a standard, we can uphold our criticism of ancient Rome as using the right moral standard, and dismiss the Roman criticism of modern society as using the wrong moral standard. The dispute will be resolved, and the abolition of slavery will be vindicated.
Cultural relativism, though, is nothing more than the view that there are no cross-cultural standards. As cross-cultural standards are necessary for cross-cultural comparisons, cultural relativism therefore makes cross-cultural comparisons impossible. If cultural relativism is true, then our criticism of slave-owners is no more valid than slave-owners’ criticisms of us.
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