cultural relativism

• Culture


  That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of the society
• Edward B. Tylor: 'Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of the society.'
• Cultural relativism


  Morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits.
• Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (1934): 'Morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits.'
• Herodotus, a king of ancient Persia, was intrigued by the variety of cultures he met in his travels
• Cultures Herodotus encountered


  • The Callatians, who lived in India, ate the bodies of their dead fathers
  • The Greeks practiced cremation and regarded the funeral pyre as the natural and fitting way to dispose of the dead
• Different cultures have different moral codes
• What is thought right within one group may horrify the members of another group, and vice versa
• The Eskimos of the early and mid-20th century had practices like lending of wives to guests as a sign of hospitality, the dominant male getting regular sexual access to other men's wives, infanticide, and leaving elder family members out in the snow
• Cultural relativism


  Different cultures have different moral codes, there are no universal moral truths, and every standard is culture-bound
• Claims of cultural relativism

  • Different societies have different moral codes
  • The moral code of a society determines what is right within the society
  • There are no objective standards to judge one society's code as better than another's
  • The moral code of our own society has no special status
  • It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures
• The Cultural Differences Argument is unsound because the conclusion does not follow from the premise
• Even if the Cultural Differences Argument is unsound, cultural relativism might still be true
• What would follow if cultural relativism were true

  • We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own
  • We could no longer criticize the code of our own society
  • The idea of moral progress is called into doubt
• There is less disagreement between cultures than it seems, as customs may vary for reasons other than just differing values
• There are some moral rules that all societies must embrace, because those rules are necessary for society to exist
• Examples of practices judged to be undesirable


  • Excision (female genital mutilation) practiced in 28 African nations, where about 135 million females have been painfully excised
• The controversy around Fauziya Kassindja's case was about how we should regard the customs of other cultures
• Culture-independent standard of right and wrong


  Does the practice promote or hinder the welfare of the people affected by it?
• Thoughtful people may be reluctant to criticize others' cultures due to nervousness about interfering, desire for tolerance, and not wanting to express contempt
• The moral code of a society is closely tied to what people in that society believe to be right, but that code and those beliefs can be in error
• It is difficult to think of ethical principles that hold for all people at all times, but if we are to criticize certain practices, we must appeal to principles not tethered to any particular society
• The moral code of our own society has no special status, but to say it is "merely one among many" implies they are all equally good
• We should be tolerant, but not tolerate everything - human societies have done terrible things, and it is progress when we can say those things are in the past
• What we can learn from cultural relativism

  It warns us about assuming our practices are based on absolute rational standards, and it can help broaden our minds by seeing our feelings may be due to cultural conditioning