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Bruno Llatas

Professor Jo Olson

Philosophy 201

4 September 2022

Philosophical Thoughts in Everyday Life

Objectivism, Subjective Relativism, Cultural Relativism, Emotivism; It is certain

that we have heard of some of these words at least once in our lives. Although these concepts

may seem difficult to define, they are much simpler to understand than they appear. The main

objective of the following essay is to briefly define the concepts mentioned above for their easy

understanding. I will also make a statement of my judgment, revealing which of the movements I

sympathize the most with.

Before going deeper, it is necessary to define the concepts of “morals” and

“ethics”. In short, morality is nothing more than the most basic level of ethical analysis. It

represents all the evaluative judgments that we make daily, based on what is right or wrong for

our community, group, or society. Ethics, on the other hand, is responsible for developing the

necessary foundations to justify that moral judgment. So, for example, while morally speaking

the "truth" is correct, ethically speaking the "truth" is a graceful and good act because it

preserves trust between people.

Now, what is morally good and bad? What governs what is moral and immoral?

Are there absolute truths or each of us interprets our own truth? It is from these questions that the

present philosophical movements that are going to be discussed are born. Let's start with
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objectivism. This affirms that there is only one absolute truth for each possible question, and

these truths are only perceptible by our 5 basic senses; morality in objectivism is to seek one's

happiness without affecting the freedom of others in its search. Contrary to this, Subjective

relativism establishes as valid all possible points of view, abstracting the truth as relative to each

individual. In other words, there are as many truths as there are individuals. Cultural relativism

defends the values, beliefs, and practices of an ethnic group or culture and demands respect and

understanding within their context; there are no superior cultures, only different ones. However,

its limit comes when human rights are violated, for example, Bullfighting (animal abuse) and the

veil in Muslim culture (gender inequality). Finally, Emotivism presents emotions as the

foundation of our moral judgments. This means that emotions in the vast majority of the time

are the ones that govern our decisions. This is why for this philosophy there is no such thing as

true or false, only expressions of certain emotions or desires.

Having given a summary of each of these philosophies, I will now state my

opinion. I identify myself as a very open-minded and emotional person. For this reason, I mostly

sympathize with relativistic and emotional thoughts, since in most of my decisions I base my

judgment on my emotions and the good of others. Likewise, I believe that the decisions of

others should be respected since they should only be judged within their context; the "truth"

mostly varies depending on the individual and point of view. But I also think that for its part,

being objective is also justified in certain situations where the truth is absolute and should not

vary at any time, that is why we got human rights, which is where relativism in general reaches

its limit.

In conclusion, Objectivism, Subjective Relativism, Cultural Relativism, and

Emotivism are philosophical movements whose thoughts differ, but all coherently and justified.
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Every day of our lives we make decisions according to the circumstances, having to make

objective, subjective or emotional decisions. For this reason, we cannot say that only one of

these currents owns the truth, but in certain situations, they complement each other.