Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism, or CR, is the view that good and bad are determined by the beliefs of a society, or in other words, moral principles are based upon the culture’s collective norms of what is good and bad. Normality is culturally defined. This implies that morality is a social construct and therefore the moral codes you hold, are a direct reflection of the societies codes in which you live. Further, the morals held by your society are not objective facts, but rather, varied from culture to culture. Neither side is wrong in their belief, despite the fact they are different beliefs. Relativism argues that not passing judgments against cultures allows for a greater sense of cultural appreciation. We don't lock other cultures in judgments, but rather are tolerant and accepting of them. Cultural relativism teaches us to view other cultures with a nuanced outlook, and to not immediately assume (as many people do) that our own preferences are the absolute best ones. Many (though not all) practices, customs, and beliefs may seem odd or even repulsive, but they’re generally harmless as far as their ethical consequences. From the tolerance and open-mindedness offered by cultural relativism is a chance to learn about other cultures and ways of doing things.
Opponents of cultural relativism offer some strong arguments against this theory. First, it doesn’t allow you to question society’s norms. In asking whether slavery was right or wrong, you would merely be asking whether it was approved of in a certain society – if you challenged that society with the notion of equality, the cultural relativist would be forced to dismiss your arguments out of hand, because any position contrary to what society approves of is automatically wrong. Put another way, a cultural relativist living in a country where slavery was approved of would have to either agree that slavery was good, or disagree with cultural relativism. Second, CR is inherently intolerant of minority views; any minority view is automatically wrong. Cultural relativism also oversimplifies moral problems, which are normally problems because people disagree about them, making out that there is a point of view that ‘society’ approves of. If good and whatever was socially approved of were the same, then we would never contradict our society or question its values. Gensler criticizes that CR is ignorant of the fact that everyone belongs to many overlapping subcultures, which often have conflicting values and accepted norms. CR fails to address these conflicting norms between these societies and subcultures to which we belong. He goes on further to say that the objective view says that independent of how anyone thinks or feels, some things are inherently right or wrong. In short, cultural relativism definitely has some weaknesses and doesn’t seem to offer a complete or satisfying ethical approach by which to guide our lives (or our society). But at the same time, its flaws – as well as some admitted strengths – do inform our understanding of the nature of morality and its intersection with sociocultural factors. In a similar way, we should view our own culture within that paradigm; cultural relativism reminds us that our own standard of what is “normal” and “rational” could otherwise be seen as strange or unacceptable to others. In that sense, such an outlook can build bridges and make us more empathetic. Even if cultural relativism is wrong in claiming that there is no absolute moral truth, we can still find ourselves learning from or even adapting certain moral concepts that we would have never otherwise known about.