Jim's Mailings

ethical relativism

the view that what is right or wrong and good or bad is not absolute but variable and relative, depending on the person, circumstances, or social situation. The view is as ancient as Protagoras, a leading Greek Sophist of the 5th century BC, and as modern as the scientific approaches of sociology and anthropology.

Many people's understanding of this view is often vague and confused. It is not simply the belief, for example, that what is right depends on the circumstances, because everyone, including the absolutists, agrees that circumstances can make a difference; it is acknowledged that whether it is right for a man to enter a certain house depends upon whether he is the owner, a guest, a police officer with a warrant, or a burglar. Nor is it the belief that what someone thinks is right is relative to his social conditioning, for again anyone can agree that there are causal influences behind what people think is right. Ethical relativism is, rather, the view that what is really right depends solely upon what the individual or the society thinks is right. Because what one thinks will vary with time and place, what is right will also vary accordingly. Ethical relativism is, therefore, a view about the truth status of moral principles, according to which changing and even conflicting moral principles are equally true, so that there is no objective way of justifying any principle as valid for all people and all societies.<<<<
The above quote is part of the Encyclopedia Britannica's definition of ethical relativism part of which is mentioned in connection with Pope Benedict XVI, and Dick Cheney in Maureen Dowd's 23 April column in the NYT. It appears that absolutism is about as well known as communism, but that little solid agreement surfaces with the word relativism. We were recently visited by Otto von Hapsburg, a descendant of the Holy Roman Emperors, and the Hapsburg Empire. As explained in Olga Opfell's book, "Royalty Who Wait" Otto and his father were beneficiaries of "The Pragmatic Sanction" in which the Emperor in 1713 chose his daughter to succeed him, in variance with over 1000 years of application of the Salic Law to select only male heirs to the crown. I think this was a case of the use of ethical relativism. What do you think?

posted by James E. Opfell @ 6:41 PM