Memorial of Rootedness “What is happening here- with these driven from their homeland no less than those who have remained?”[1] Martin Heidegger believed that man’s rootedness, or autochthony, is being threatened and lost to today’s technology and thoughtfulness. I believe that Heidegger would have been appalled by the white man’s actions towards the Ibo people in the Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Heidegger would have probably told the white men to let them be in their own rootedness. He may have not stood by all their views and traditions, but no man’s traditions should be neither superior nor inferior to another’s. As one of the characters in Achebe’s novel says, “What is good in one place is bad in another.”[2] The quote suggests that the Ibo people’s view was that of ethical relativism. This suggests that they know other cultures may view their beliefs as bad or unmoral, and they accepted this. This also suggest that the Ibo people accepted the cultural relativist view that good and bad differ from one cultural groups to another. Ethical relativism is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths in ethics and that what is morally right or wrong varies from person to person or from society to society. Ethical relativism means that there are no set ways of life. Every person has their own set of beliefs that differ from another person, even within the same society. I believe to fully believe in ethical relativism that there would have to be no judgment placed on people or societies. I do not believe that this could be accomplished, no matter how open-minded one thinks they are. We all judge others, even without realizing we do it, so I am not sure that there can be true relativist. Based on what some of the Ibo people say in the novel, I do not believe that I can say that the entire clan was not ethical relativists. I can say that Okonkwo was not an