Is Moral Relativism Right?

Associate professor of philosophy David Jensen deconstructed

the writings of Thomas Nagel and the idea of moral relativism
at a recent installment of the Philosophy Lecture Series.
PROVO, Utah (Oct. 27, 2016)—In 2008, Christian Smith,
a sociologist from Notre Dame, conducted

a  survey of a wide sample of

young adults across America about their opinions on the
morality of several key issues. Overwhelmingly the
response was that morals were a matter of personal taste
with a typical answer being something along the lines of
“Who am I to say what is right for them?” This is a classic
response in theories of moral relativism.
David Jensen, an associate professor of philosophy at
BYU, tackled the idea of moral relativism in a recent
lecture. “[Moral relativism is] not people having different
beliefs of morality,” Jensen explained. “But the position
that different, even contradictory moral views are equally
correct or true in some sense. Moral truths or facts vary
from person to person and group to group.”
Thomas Nagel in The View From Nowhere highlights the
difficulty of philosophers in tackling ideas of moral
relativism. “This is more than the usual wish to transcend
one’s predecessors, for it includes a rebellion against the
philosophical impulse itself which is felt as humiliating and
unrealistic,” quoted Jensen. He continued by expressing
the difficulty of the theoretical problem of moral relativity:
“It’s just really difficult to give a correct and convincing
theory of morality.”
There are two types of practical moral relativism: individual
and cultural. Individual moral relativism is the idea that
values vary from person to person and each person has
their own valid set of morals. There is no concept of
correct moral principles; everything is based on what an
individual desires.
The problem with individual moral relativism is that it lacks
a concept of guiding principles of right or wrong. “One of
the points of morality is to guide our lives, tell us what to
do, what to desire, what to object to, what character
qualities to develop and which ones not to develop,” said
Jensen. If morality is already based on personal desire, he
continued, there is no way to distance oneself from a
situation to find a truly objective moral ground and make a
decision based on what is right.
Cultural relativism suggests that a “culture has various
standards and those constitute morality.” This viewpoint
solves the guidance problem, but also raises the issue that
most people identify with several different cultures which
could have oppositional values. There is also the issue of
tolerance. While thinkers of cultural relativism are clear
that it is wrong to impose one’s own cultural values over
another, some cultures hold a central value of intolerance.
An example given by Jensen was religious extremist
groups. In those cases, groups often have a moral
principle of destroying cultures that are different than
theirs, thus unseating the notion that cultural relativism is
always tolerant. For tolerance to be a true part of cultural
relativism, Jensen explained, “tolerance has to be
regarded as a universal moral value” which makes it no
longer relative.
There are other problems with cultural relativism as well.
“[The issue of cultural relativism] is the idea that
something is and is not right at the same time,” said
Jensen. “The category of a culture is not precise enough
to do the work of morality because it’s a loose sort of
generalization.”
—Hannah Sandorf (B.A. Art History and Curatorial Studies
’17)
Hannah covers events for the Department of Philosophy for the
College of Humanities. She is a junior pursuing a degree in art
history with a minor in art.
Image of David Jensen