Why is Moral Relativism Being Challenged?

Morality is universally considered as one of the foundational aspects of our human existence. We make countless moral judgments every day and all our cries for justice are found in the knowledge that something is wrong and that it needs to be addressed. With the rise of Modernism and Post-Modernism in the mid-twentieth century, man who had disposed of hitherto frames of reference and found himself lost, placed greater emphasis on morality as being constructed and something he could change if he had the need to. However, the roots of this theory can be traced back to ancient Greece. It challenges the claims of moral objectivism which posits an objective moral standard from which we derive our notions of right and wrong. Relativists oppose this considering that nothing can exist so objectively, and the possibility of an overarching deity is not considered. Therefore, it is inconceivable to relativists that objectivism is tenable. However, one can only reject or approve the validity of an idea by looking at the other options available, and if they explain reality better.

While moral relativism was considered as a given in the absence of a God, it is being challenged by many philosophers in current scholarship. This includes many eminent scholars and even pop atheistic philosophers like Sam Harris who tries to posit an objective standard even though he fails to justify why it should exist. There are different kinds of moral relativisms such as subjectivism or perhaps the most popular of all, cultural relativism. The reason for the challenge is simple. The notion runs into multiple fundamental philosophical problems. We will discuss a few of those here.

Firstly, morals being relative to culture does not let us arbitrate between cultural conflicts without someone pointing out how it is immoral to impose one culture’s morality on another. This also assumes that cultures have morals that are vastly different but when one looks into this assumption, we do see a pattern of universality in many fundamental moral principles we hold to. The differences are mostly superficial and not fundamental. Rape is never considered as ever being objectively okay, neither is genocide or murder or any kind of harm. So, one is forced to say that this can only mean that there is an objective standard that everyone knows and is universal which is why it shows up in all cultures, but that our ways of knowing it and how we interpret it is different. This will explain why there have been cannibalistic cultures and regimes that have killed many of its own people. It was not because they thought murder was okay since they wouldn’t allow any of their kin to be murdered, but that they considered the murder of another who is not part of their community as necessary for the survival of the community, which leads us to power struggle and hierarchy rather than relativistic morals. We condemn slave owners and the Nazis even though we say that at that time, what they indulged in was not considered wrong by the morality of that time. We don’t however use that to justify their actions since we say they should have known better.

This leads us to another problem with relativism: it cannot make any sense of moral progress. If everything was relative, why do we consider some practices better than others and try to change what is right? Should not we just accept it as our culture? And attributing such standards to culture is also problematic since culture doesn’t exist apart from humans. If the answer is that we oppose certain practices because all people should be treated equally, we would have to answer why we are equal at all. Our definition of ‘equal’, as well as our idea of all people being equal, will also be only mere opinions if everything is relativistic. Particularly today, we hear about “progress” being made and us being “better” than our ancestors morally. But we can only use the term “better” when we know we are moving towards the best. Without a standard, how do we even know where on the scale of progress we are?

Philosophers opine that objective morality can be known just as physical reality is known, that is through experience. The feeling that we are wronged when someone hurts us or oppresses us testifies to our inner reality of being moral creatures. In fact, we are unable as humans to think outside this framework. The most common objection is that moral relativism can be used to legitimize almost anything. This article barely scratches the surface of the complexity of the issue. While philosophers are trying to salvage the idea of relativism by offering arguments and with constant engagement, there is still a need for proper justification of this notion.  One has to wait and see how this debate turns out, but in the meantime try to learn for oneself, understand both sides of the argument and come to decide what is more rational and can be believed with reasonable surety.