Culture

• What is Culture?
• What is Cultural Relativism?
• What is Ethical Relativism?
Raymond Williams describes culture
as “one of the two or three most
complicated words in the English
language.”
colere -
to cultivate, to inhabit, to
honour,
What is Culture? • William’s Three Definitions (The Analysis of
Culture): 1. The “ideal”; 2. “Documentary”; 3. “Social”

What is Culture?
• Raymond William’s Three Definitions:
• “is a state or process of human perfection, in terms of
certain absolute or universal values”
• “is the body of intellectual and imaginative work, in
which, in a detailed way, human thought and experience
are variously recorded.”
• “a description of a particular way of life, which expresses
certain meanings and values not only in art and learning
But also in institutions and ordinary behavior.”
• Culture as “a description of a particular
way of life, which expresses certain
meanings and values not only in art and
learning but also in institutions and
ordinary behavior.”

• Culture “the way of life, especially the

general customs and beliefs, of a
particular group of people at a particular
time” (Cambridge English Dictionary)
 What has Culture got
to do with Ethics?

To Recall:
Ethics Morality

“ethos” “mores”

“custom, norms”
• The employment of the terms, ‘custom’ as
the root for ‘customary,’ and the ‘norm’ as
the root for ‘normal’, lead to an inquiry of
what determines the customary and the
normal.

“the way of life”

“Culture”
 And, to recall:
Ethics is the study of
right and wrong

But what determines

‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ?
If, we concede that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are social
values that arise from the ‘general customs and
beliefs, of a particular group of people at a
particular time’ and, thus, ‘a particular way of
life’…
Then, the values of ‘right’
and ‘wrong’ are cultural values.
 If there are many cultures,
then cultural values may differ from one
culture to another.

This is called as
CULTURAL RELATIVISM.
palay – unmilled rice
bigas – milled rice
kanin – cooked rice
lugaw – rice porridge
sunog/tutong – burned rice
bahaw – left over rice
 Since, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’
are cultural values
and cultural values vary in its
meaning and employment
from one culture to another.

Then, the values of ‘right’ and

‘wrong’ are relative to the culture to
which it is employed

This is called as
ETHICAL RELATIVISM.
• “Ethical relativism is the doctrine that the moral rightness and
wrongness of actions varies from society to society and that
there are no absolute universal moral standards binding on all
men at all times. Accordingly, it holds that whether or not it is
right for an individual to act in a certain way depends on or is
relative to the society to which he belongs.”
(John Ladd’s Ethical Relativism in Louis Pojmann’s “Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong”
Seventh Edition)

A proponent for ethical

relativism is the anthropologist
Ruth Benedict.
 Normal-Abnormal
Category
“We do not elevate it to the dignity of a first principle. W e recognize
that morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for
socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say, “It is
a morally good,” rather than “It is habitual,” and the fact of this
preference is matter enough for a critical science of ethics. But
historically the two phrases are synonymous.

The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the

good. It is that which society has approved. A normal action is one
which falls well within the limits of expected behavior for a particular
society. Its variability among different peoples is essentially a
function of the variability of the behavior patterns that different
societies have created for themselves, and can never be wholly
divorced from a consideration of culturally institutionalized types of
behavior.”

Ruth Benedict (1934) “Anthropology and the Abnormal” in Journal of General Psychology
In reality, society and the individual are not
antagonists. His culture provides the raw
material of which the individual makes his life. If
it is meagre, the individual suffers; if it is rich, the
individual has the chance to rise to his
opportunity. Every private interest of every man
and woman is served by the enrichment of the
traditional stores of his civilization.”

R. Benedict Patterns of Culture, p218.