Relativism

An Ethical Tangent

Travis Joseph Rodgers

There is much to be said about the various forms of relativism. Since James Rachels wrote his “Challenges of Cultural Relativism,” it's become common to begin a lesson on relativism by pointing out two sorts of relativism. Cultural Relativism is a methodology in the social sciences. That methodology asks the scientist to understand what cultural practice means in the context of the culture rather than by appeal to other cultural frameworks. That's not the relativism Rachels was criticizing.

Rachels was criticizing the view now sometimes called Cultural Moral Relativism. This is an ethical theory (there's a possibility that it's a metaethical theory; I'd like to bracket that concern for now) that says that the right thing to do is whatever our culture approves of. There are some interesting wrinkles that emerge immediately from that analysis. What is a culture? What is my culture? And what is cultural approval?

I want to stress that these three questions become important because of an assumption about ethics. Ethics is to be action-guiding. The reason we care about right and wrong is that we want to know which actions are available to us and which should be off the table. We want to know when there is good reason to praise or blame, reward or punish, people for their actions. If a relativism is to be action-guiding in this sense, then it must deal with these three questions.

What is a culture? The authors of Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, suggest the following: “Culture is a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds groups of people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways” (7). They suggest that defining culture is difficult but also important. If “culture” is to play a crucial role in guiding action, there must be a culture. Perhaps to the extent that cultures have clear boundaries, the relativist is better equipped to offer action-guiding advice.

Don’t misunderstand this last point. If relativism is a theory about what makes actions right (an ethical theory), rather than a theory of how we learn how to behave (a sociological or anthropological theory), then there must be a standard. Whether we are aware of the specifics of the standard is a different question. It may be one informed by answers to the other two questions.

What is my culture? On one hand, “my” culture means something that I am indeed a member of. So, the cultural relativist needs an account of how one becomes a member of a culture. Arriving at a solution to that problem will not yet make the theory action-guiding. Suppose Moses is a member of an Islamic-ruled theocracy and that that religion dominates the people’s lives to the extent that they share beliefs, practices, and symbols. Moses is also a rabbi. He speaks and writes in Hebrew, shares beliefs, practices, and symbols with many Jews. It seems, at least on the face of it, that Moses (Maimonides, author of The Guide for the Perplexed) is a member of two cultures.

The people of Cordoba, where Maimonides lived, Muslims, and Jews almost certainly make different recommendations. Moses was likely a member of multiple cultures. If cultural relativism is to offer action-guidance, then it must tell him without contradiction whether he should perform some action. Should he act in accordance with Sharia or Halakha, for instance?

The reader’s situation is probably not much different from Moses’s. You live in a country, have certain cultural heritage, and have an interest in other existing cultural groups running from religious affiliation to fantasy football leagues. If even two of these things are “your” culture, the possibility arises that one of your cultures disagrees with another of your cultures. In fact, if the definition from Perspectives is accurate, any two cultures must diverge in at least one way. If cultural relativism is to be action-guiding, it must tell us what to do when two or more cultures of which we are members disagree with one another.

What is cultural approval? Perhaps approval is nothing more than however people in a culture “typically” behave in a situation. This seems the position expressed by William Graham Sumner in his Folkways: “The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right” (1906, 28). If members of a culture typically behave in bigoted ways, then that counts as cultural approval of bigotry, so members of the culture should behave in bigoted ways.

Even within a culture, however, there are physical actions and non-physical motivations. These motivations include beliefs about truth, judgments about what matters, and expectations. Perhaps cultures perform certain actions while explicitly rejecting certain interpretations of those behaviors. In doing so, they may be privileging certain beliefs, values, or expectations. If this privileging is somehow more important to the culture, then perhaps it, rather than the typical behavior, amounts to cultural approval.

The problem has not disappeared, of course. If these privileged beliefs and values are to provide action-guidance, they must be something. There must be some process by which they are added to the list that is the standard. A mature relativism must offer an account of that process and that list.

Ethnocentrism

Note that relativists need not be ethnocentrists. They need not think their culture is better than any other. They might believe that every culture is equally binding on its members and that no culture is binding upon any non-members. This is the core of relativism. Rightness is relative to the culture of the agent performing the actions. Some act that is right for me may not be right for you. What settles the matter is our cultural membership.