Identity Crisis: Seattle

            In our post-modern society, and particularly culture hubs like Seattle, often times there are particular views and ideas which are labeled as "enlightened" or "transcendent." A particularly popular and heeded philosophy is moral relativism.

 As a definition moral relativism is: an action “X” (performed by a particular culture group “G”) is right if and only if the moral norms that are accepted by “G” permit the performance of that action.

With this, the “enlightened” individual is able to make many arguments that on the surface appear to be quite compelling.  The argument must say something like “there are no correct moral norms or principles that are valid for all cultures at all times; but rather only moral principles that are accepted by a culture group at a particular time and that those accepted principles make actions right. Often times this is the basis for an argument that often takes a self-righteous tone of accusing a lesser “enlightened” being of judging where they have no place to judge.

However, when examined, this particular argument has serious logical problems.

1) This argument says that there are no absolute moral norms or principles, or absolute truth. Yet the argument itself makes an absolute claim. In other words, from what absolute vantage point does the moral relativist theory make the claim that there is no absolute truth?

2) This argument gives us no logical way in which societies view’s change. In fact, by definition, a culture’s views should stay constant under this theory. How is it that different cultural principles come about (as is evident that they do)

3) By this theory, what a society believes is right is right, and it’s right because the society believes it is. From this vantage point, the moral relativist must succeed that if one country, call it invasia, had moral principles that called it to invade other countries, it is right for them to do so. By this theory, if it is granted that Nazi Germany as a culture held the moral principle that killing Jews was a good thing, then for Nazi Germany, killing Jews was the right thing to do.

4) Does the rightness or wrongness of an action simply come from what the majority of a culture believes? Is the morality of abortion really stem from just what we believe as a society? I’m not sure this is something that would hear a resounding yes even if you did believe abortion was morally permissible. If it was so, why not put everything to a vote and be done with it?

Works consulted: "Disputed Moral Isssues" by Mark Timmons & "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller