STEPHEN LAW - THINKING BIG

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1 STEPHEN LAW - THINKING BIG T H I S I S T H E W E B S I T E / B L O G O F P H I L O S O P H E R S T E P H E N L A W. S T E P H E N I S T H E E D I T O R O F T H E R O Y A L I N S T I T U T E O F P H I L O S O P H Y J O U R N A L T H I N K. H E H A S P U B L I S H E D S E V E R A L B O O K S A N D I S C U R R E N T L Y L E C T U R E R O F P H I L O S O P H Y A T H E Y T H R O P C O L L E G E, U N I V E R S I T Y O F L O N D O N. S U N D A Y, F E B R U A R Y 1 1, Moral Relativism Despite its popularity, moral relativism, especially when it's politically motivated, is a confused and often pretty poisonous point of view. Here's the transcript from an Australian radio interview I did on the subject. Relativism was in the news recently along with female circumcision, which involves cutting off parts of a woman's genitalia, including her clitoris. Some Sudanese people routinely practice female circumcision on young girls. It's part of their tradition. But many Westerners are horrified. Female circumcision, they say, is cruel life-blighting surgery. It's morally wrong. Now it's here that the relativist steps in. 'Ah, wrong.' They say. 'Wrong for you, perhaps. But you're assuming that your truth is the only truth. In fact what's true for you is false for those Sudanese people. There's no objective fact of the matter as to which moral point of view is correct. All moral perspectives are equally valid.' 'And so', says the relativist, sternly pointing their finger at you, 'it's wrong of you to judge'. As I say, this sort of relativism is pretty popular in certain circles. Indeed, to reject it is to risk being branded politically incorrect, or worse. But the fact is that this brand of moral relativism is fashionable, politically correct baloney. Here are four reasons why. First, for us Westerners to think that what's right or wrong is ultimately not just a matter of opinion, but a matter of objective fact, is not to assume that we must have unique and privileged access to those facts. Sure, in the past, we've often just arrogantly assumed that we know best, and that we have the right to force our particular moral point of view down everyone else's throat. The church has had a particularly poor track record in this respect. Of course we were wrong to assume that. We now realize that we should be more open-minded and tolerant. We know we get it wrong.

2 We know that there can often be a great deal to learn from other cultures. But of course we can embrace all this good, liberal stuff without signing up to moral relativism. To say that there's an objective fact of the matter about whether or not female circumcision is wrong is not to assume that our Western opinion is inevitably the right one. Those who reject relativism need not be jack-booted bullies intent on ramming their beliefs down everyone else's throat. Second, the relativist who points a finger at the Westerner who judges female circumcision to be wrong and says 'It's wrong of you to judge' ends up condemning themselves. For of course they are doing exactly what they are saying you shouldn't be doing. They are judging you, and saying that you are doing something morally wrong! So all that politically correct finger wagging is downright hypocritical. Third, relativists tend to apply their relativism pretty inconsistently. Take some remote forest tribe, for example, that does something that we Westerners think barbaric and wrong. "You shouldn't judge" says the relativist. 'In their culture, this sort of behaviour is perfectly proper. And their opinion is just as 'true' as yours.' But of course, if some big multinational comes in and hacks down the forest and kicks out its inhabitants, the relativist will be down on them like a ton of bricks. 'That's wrong' they'll say. But of course they can't say that, can they? If they are going to be true to their relativism, then they have to say that if the corporate culture deems it acceptable to destroy the rainforest and barbeque its inhabitants, then for them it is acceptable, and who are we to judge? Finally, notice that it's only if we reject moral relativism that we are free to promote tolerance and open-mindedness as universal virtues. Take some religious culture that thinks it okay to be deeply intolerant. The relativist is going to have to say that, hey, if these religious zealots think it right to chop up those with whom they disagree, then for them it is right, and who are we to judge. The relativist can't consistently condemn the intolerance of others. It's only those who reject relativism that are free to do that. So the truth is that relativism really doesn't have much going for it. We can be good, right-on liberals without embracing relativism. And, at its worst, relativism is politically correct baloney of a rather nasty sort. P o s t e d b y S t e p h e n L a w a t 8 : 0 2 P M L a b e l s : M O R A L R E L A T I V I S M 6 C O M M E N T S : Ed said...

3 Well said. I suspect it s post-colonial guilt or a kind of reverse-racism that leads people to espouse relativism in its one-way form; an over-blown awe and respect for ancient and authentic cultures combined with a loathing of modernism. Something like that anyway. FEBRUARY 12, :01 AM stephen wallace said... you paint an extreme view of a moral relativist, and that seems to be unjust for those that agree with it, and follow it, but do so without the hypocracy or preaching of sorts. i believe moral relativism on the whole is wrong, but certainly, as you say in a fashion, not every bit is a bad ideal. FEBRUARY 12, :04 AM Dr Zen said... As usual among "antirelativists", you don't actually produce an argument beyond handwaving. On the first count, how do you determine what is "morally wrong"? I agree with you about female circumcision, but then I would. But what is your ground for it? Talking about moral rights and wrongs as "matters of fact" is ridiculous. What you wish to say is that our morality is "better". You just don't have the balls to say it without pretending there's an absolute involved. The second point is just silly. The relativist discusses grounds for judgement, not the act of judging. You make yourself sound a bit foolish by pretending that they admonish you for judging. The third point is sound but rather meaningless. It implies that all protestors against globalisation are at the same time relativists. Again, you confuse a dispute over grounds for judgement for a discussion of judgement itself. The fourth point is entirely wrong. You can condemn people for not meeting

4 your values without needing to believe that your values are "universal" in the sense you are employing. You can simply believe that your values are "superior" (they increase happiness or wellbeing, or whatever ground you might find for believing that your morals are "better" than others'). FEBRUARY 12, :41 AM The Barefoot Bum said... Who actually saysthis? I read liberal blogs a day, and I never see anyone say anything remotely like the words you put into relativists' mouths. Generally speaking, responsible people rebut arguments that others actually make, they use quotation marks to indicate what others actually say, and they disclose the actual sources of those words. I think we can safely leave invented dialog to the writers of fiction. I suppose there might be some weird academic types who construct such poor arguments for ill-defined conceptions of relativism, but academia has long ago become almost completely dissociated with and irrelevant to political liberalism. In addition to the straw-man fallacy, you also employ the fallacy fallacy: Even if it were true that some people had made a poor argument for an illdefined version of moral relativism, that still would not be any sort of an argument for moral objectivism. This is logic 101. I'm puzzled and disappointed that you would employ such poor argumentation even in a blog posting. FEBRUARY 12, :06 PM Anonymous said... Yes, I agree with several of these posts-- the "relativist" is a straw man who needs to be retired for good. At the very least, it's not particularly productive to rail against vague "fashions" without citing examples of respectable

5 figures who practice them. Too often, it's a facile way of dodging the real debates, which are the very heart of liberalism, about what's right and wrong, and why. FEBRUARY 12, :04 PM C said... Soon after his recent inauguration, Pope Benedict XVI decried the "dictatorship of [moral] relativism" as the "central problem of our faith today." I once heard the catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre give a wonderful rejoinder to this pronouncement. Although he admitted it was "always dangerous to disagree with the holy father," MacIntyre disputed whether moral relativism was even a problem at all because, as MacIntyre put it, the only moral relativists he had ever met were American undergraduates (who, he seemed to be implying, would cease to be so upon graduating). I find myself in agreement with MacIntyre's sentiment that moral relativism is a straw man, a view held by practically nobody. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz once described himself as an "anti-antirelativist." Relativism and anti-relativism, Geertz says, are not really positions that anyone has ever held; rather, they are rhetorical stances people adopt for the sake of argument: relativism calls people forth from their parochial provincialism; anti-relativism calls them back to accept their judgments as their own. Like MacIntyre, Geertz thinks we should simply avoid the excesses of either rhetorical trope, lest we ape sophomoric American undergraduates and their interlocutors. Geertz goes on to say that anti-relativism is the more insidious of the two poles because it permits antirelativists to close their eyes to the sheer variety of the other anti-relativists around them ("the sin [of relativism] is one, but the salvations many"). I couldn't