“Moral relativism is the declaration that there are no fixed absolutes; or, if there are, they cannot be known by human beings.” This quote from the philosopher Alister McGrath gives a basic understanding of moral relativism, it points out the most important characteristic. Therefore it stands in contrast to the deontological theory. But maybe this view is wrong, maybe moral decisions should always take into account the different circumstances of each situation?
As said before moral relativism is mainly based on the precondition that there are no universal rules. Thus the morality of an action is “relative” to the situation and motives of a person concerned. Moreover there is no way to establish moral principles and values, but both of them are given within a social setting. Morality is therefore subjective which J.L.Mackie supports “It is not morality that shapes our societies but that, our societies shape our morality.” Hence each culture would shape their own morality and therefore absolute moral rules could not be justified in a world with different views on morality.
Understanding the principles of moral relativism some advantages appear quite obvious: Firstly using moral relativism, one can arrive quickly, easily and especially painless to an ethical standpoint on a moral issue. To decide what is right and what is wrong one only has to look on one’s own culture, its habits and moral principles. And one do not has to be afraid that one might be attacked because of the decision made. This comfort is given by moral relativism because it forbids to criticise ethical principles of a culture from the outside. For example within an atheistic society a woman is allowed to have an abortion. A Roman Catholic would never allow that. Nevertheless this woman does not have to care about him because he is not allowed to criticise her from the outside.
Moreover this theory derived from the principle of tolerance. This point sounds reasonable. Everyone should be free to make his own decisions as long as his culture accepts them and they should not be questioned from the outside.
The point perhaps most worthily is that moral relativism is very flexible. It takes into account all circumstances of a situation such as history, culture, society, motives and even relationships. This strength becomes even stronger using the example of euthanasia. Deontologists would not accept it because they have the absolute rule that killing is wrong. But in this case the patient has chosen to die because he does not want to live with the pain anymore. But the intention of the doctor and the relatives is to release him from pain. Thus their motive is to help the patient and not to kill him. Hence I strongly believe that circumstances have to be taken into consideration when coming to judge moral decisions and hence universalising absolutism in a multi cultural society cannot be justified.
However it is important to not that there are also arising problems from a relativist view: To illustrate my first weakness I will illustrate the culture of the Inuit’s. Inuits leave their elderly out in the snow to die; thus they freeze to death. Our society is mostly shocked about this ‘tradition’ and would never accept such an act as morally justifiable. Although moral relativism presupposes tolerance it is really difficult to tolerate actions that just seem intrinsically wrong to us which would lead me back to Plato’s idea of some universal truth beyond our normal perception of the world.
Moral relativism does not believe that there are any forms of intrinsically wrong actions out there, actions, which many societies would want to be condemned. Here I do not agree with the relativist view and would rather support absolutism, because I think that humans possess some sort of natural intuition that ‘justifies’ our intrinsic judgements concerning some actions (rape).
An important observation concerning this point was made by Tony Stuart who identified that if there are no intrinsically wrong actions we all should be okay with “the Third Reich’s Solution (elimination of the Jewish people); Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds; the practice of crashing and binding infant Chinese girls’ feet; torturing political prisoners in Turkey, ..., and so on”. But we are not. Although the society may have accepted those actions in the past, today we do not accept them anymore. Our intuition tells us that such actions are wrong and they are always wrong. It does not matter under which circumstances. Therefore in such crucial cases, I do believe that some absolute moral rules should be justified even in a multi cultural society.
A quite ironic point is that even though moral relativism suggests avoiding absolute rules, this avoiding of absolute rules is an absolute rule itself.
Another reason to view moral relativism with suspicion is the problem about culture itself. In moral relativism the morality of an action depends strongly on the culture. But what is a culture? How many people can form a new culture? 50? 100? 1000? Moral relativism gives us no answer. Moreover it focuses only on the society and not on the minority or individual. But are not our moral principles that everyone should be able to make ones own, free decisions? Moral relativism claims that those decisions should be based on the moral principles of your culture and not on ones own opinion, which again is in disagreement with our intuition.
Although the idea of making our moral decisions dependent on circumstances may firstly appear convenient, after having explored different views and its weaknesses I think it will not work out. In my opinion, there are many crucial weaknesses which can hardly be disproved. Although it sounds reasonable following the principle of tolerance or that our decisions are more flexible using Moral Relativism I would say there are always disadvantages, which can undermine those strengths. If you should tolerate actions of which your intuition tells you they are intrinsically wrong, will you nevertheless accept them? I do not think so. Intuition is more powerful than stranger authorities such as moral theories. Therefore I do think that some absolutist moral rules can be justified to a certain extent. However, as shown, moral values can never be totally independent on circumstances. I conclude, that one could use moral relativism with restrictions (acceptance of intrinsic universal values) and more developed ideas in a multi cultural world.