Cultural Relativism

Cultural Relativism

According to Rachels, All societies must share some common or universal values. It is her belief that these values center on the survival of a society. Without such shared values a society would cease to exist and stop functioning altogether. She speaks about the prohibition of murder, for example. She states that without a common value that limits the murdering of one’s neighbors individuals would interact less and become more independent. People would leave the society and form a society that does have this universal value, leaving the old society to crumble.

I tend to agree with Rachels, in that we must see the differences, but not ignore the similarities that give us all common ground as occupants of this planet. In fact, Gandhi believed that Self-suffering, non-violence and the search for truth itself were all universal values. In my own mind, I believe that some form of Altruism is a universal value that every culture displays in some fashion and relies on for progressing as a functioning society. Cultural Relativism has a use, but is anything but absolute truth, in my opinion.

I think that Cultural Relativism is a sophisticated way saying “Live and Let Live”. But as a species, we do not do that do we? But let’s hold Cultural Relativism’s hand and skip down that road for a moment.

In Cultural Relativism (CR), we say that societies draw moral and ethical standards from the context of that society, so who are we to judge them? This is a natural way that societies progress on their own. Rachels suggests that progress is replacing an old way with something better, but fails to determine how “better” is determined. If we follow a CR evolutionary standard, then whatever replaces the old way must be better, because in CR, we should not to judge, we are just to observe and accept.

Social Darwinism dominates CR. If we are to let