“What courts as a decent human being is relative to historical circumstance, a matter of transient consensus about what attitudes are normal and what practices are unjust”(Wilson).
I have to disagree with Wilson’s class. Who are we to tell as a society to tell another culture that their way of living is wrong? “We must understand that to cry “tolerance” for one principle and then “offended” when others are exercising their beliefs and freedoms is hypocritical. This problem is increasing as free societies are changing their practices of tolerance”(All About Philosophy).
To observe the theory of cultural relativism, you must first start with in open mind. In this world there are large amounts of people who belong to different cultural and societies. cultural relativism is the premise that ones beliefs, values, and morals are based on their on culture. Therefore, since morality is based on the society in which you live, and different societies have different views of right and wrong, there can be no moral absolutes. Since there are no absolutes, under this view of cultural relativism all moral views determined by ones culture is deemed true whether you agree or not. Cultural relativism is one of the many components of moral theories that deals with the idea that “moral utterances are truth-apt” and truth is decided upon the practices and beliefs held by that society. For instances take the Eskimos culture engages in infanticide. This practice is shocking to most cultures. Does it make sense for our society to say that this is immoral? No according to cultural relativism it does not.
The Essay on Cultural Studies Culture Worldview Community
All across the United States Christians are talking about this term called Worldview. What is it anyway? Many times, we release our guard and end up allowing society to change our thinking into what the rest of the "popular culture" thinks of our very being. As Christians, we should be giving scriptural backup for whatever conclusions one makes about this culture. Every society has a culture. Each ...
The Eskimo culture has its set of rule and we have our on set of rules. This argument over cultural differences leads to cultural relativism that there is no universal moral code. As moral truth is subjective, it would be as Rachel’s states “[M] ere arrogance for us to try to judge the cultures of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures”. If we as whole lived this way all cultures would live in harmony tolerating each other. Beliefs are simply a matter of opinion. “Epistemological relativism and cultural relativism basically say the same thing:” everything is relative” There is no right are wrong, true are false, apart from what people or each individual considers to be right or wrong, true or false. Truth, in the end is a subjective matter”(Arguments Against Relativism).
There are a lot of different cultural beliefs and ethical opinions, that doesn’t mean that all beliefs and opinions are true. “Relativism says truth is not fixed by outside (objective) reality but decided by the individual (subjectivism) or group of individuals (conventionalism).
Truth isn’t discovered but decided/ manufactured.” (Arguments Against Relativism).
Cultural relativism holds a key lesson in keeping our minds open to the idea that our own practices may be different from other societies. That doesn’t make our society moral codes superior over theirs. Cultural relativism appears to be to inconsistent and contradictory at times to be completely true of moral true. It does however prove that moral codes do exist.
Website:
Arguments for Cultural Relativism
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.com
Arguments Against Relativism
http://www.web.mala.bc.ca/clemotteo/arguments_against_relativism.htm Books:
James Rachels. (2007) The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Fifth Edition
The Essay on Understanding Cultural Differences And Australia Culture
Why is an understanding of cultural differences important to the business managers at BreadTalk? To assist the managers at BreadTalk to decide if they should expand to Australia, briefly describe the Australian culture. A wide range of definitions have been used for the term “culture.” Culture has been defined as the human-made part of the environment (Herkovits, 1955), including both objective ...
