Justification and discussion of moral relativism

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Michael Magill

  1. ‘Moral relativism cannot be justified’ Discuss.

In philosophy moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. In other words morals are subjective and have no fixed objective moral reality. Different people have different opinions on the above statement on whether or not moral relativism can be justified.

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Some people may strongly agree with the statement because when it comes to relativism there is no truth or knowledge in anything beyond the way it seems. For instance there is no objective knowledge, because all knowledge depends on perceptions of the person and there is no objective truth as truth is only true for you or true for me. Basically a right answer or no real evaluation can ever be found of practices such as the burning of witches, human sacrifice, slavery and the holocaust by using relativist views.

Many people will also agree with the ...

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