Objectivism or Relativism?

1. Objectivism or Relativism? • Moral Objectivism (Universalism): Moral truth IS the same for all people, at all times, at all places. • Moral Relativism: Moral truth is NOT the same for all people, at all times, at all places. • Moral truth is relative either to individual persons or to particular cultures.

2. Thus, the same activity, e.g. abortion, can be morally impermissible for one culture or individual and morally permissible for another culture or individual. • Why do people claim to be Moral Relativists? • Over the centuries, various cultures and individuals have subscribed to incompatible moral visions.

3. Unlike with disputes over questions of fact, disputes over morality seem irresolvable because there is no way for one moral vision to gain ascendancy over its competitors. • Response to Moral Relativism • People never live relativistically. • Often, when they are in a nice, warm philosophy classroom, some people claim they are moral relativists. • When, however, those same people leave the philosophy classroom, they do not live their lives as moral relativists.

4. They live their lives as moral universalists, especially when they believe they have been wronged. • People exaggerate differences among cultures and individuals • “If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teachings of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own . . . . Men have differed as regards

5. “what people you ought to be unselfish to – whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But, they have always agreed that you ought not put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

6. Lewis’s point is that people often agree about moral principles, but disagree on how, or to what extent, they should apply. • For example, both pro-choicers and pro-lifers agree that murder (i.e. the killing of an innocent human being) is immoral. • What they disagree about is whether a fetus is an innocent human being.

7. People who seem to be advocating moral relativism really are not. • Take, for example, those who advocate the view that individuals should be allowed to live whatever lifestyle suites them best. • Now, these advocates don’t mean that every lifestyle is morally acceptable. • No one argues that the lifestyle of a mafia hit man is morally acceptable.

8. Usually the lifestyles these advocates refer to have to do with people living, without fear of any sort of discrimination, lifestyles consistent with their sexual orientations. • Still, there are limits even here. • These advocates might claim that two men or two women have as much of a moral right to marry each other as a man and a woman.

9. Very few of these advocates, however, claim that pedophiles have a similar moral right to live a lifestyle consistent with their sexual orientation. • What’s more, when these advocates claim two men or two women have a moral right to marry, they are clearly making a claim they take to be universally true.

10. Thus, they advocate, through such organizations as the United Nations, universal recognition of gay rights. • They advocate such recognition even in cultures, e.g. Islamic cultures, where such a concept is totally alien and inconsistent with the indigenous morality. • Moral disputes do not go on forever. Disputes over morality are resolved.

11. Take, for example, the dispute that took place in the USA over the moral equality of the races. • When the USA was founded there was great disagreement over this point, with those believing the races to be morally equal in the decided minority. • After much anguishing, which included fighting a civil war, Americans have come to the moral consensus that all races are morally equal.

12. Moral Relativism and Tolerance • Tolerance: To put up with, rather than suppress, what one takes to be evil or wrong. • If we all admit upfront there is no objective moral truth, we will not try to “impose” our moral beliefs on others and then all of us will just “get along.” • Why put up with what one takes to be evil or wrong? • Because one might believe suppressing the evil would produce more evil than putting up with the original evil.

13. For example, tolerating (not suppressing) false beliefs. • Protect the Peace • Protect the Truth • “On the side of suppression we might plead, ‘After all, the opinions in question are false, aren’t they? Then, isn’t it a gain to get rid of them?’ But, on the side of toleration, we might ask, ‘What better engine have we for honing truth than to try it against error in a fair fight?’” J. Budziszewski, “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality”

14. “We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error, so long as reason is left free to combat it.” Thomas Jefferson • “[W]e must always put the two evils, the evil that suppression engenders and the evil that it prevents, on a scale. When the evil that suppression engenders equals or exceeds the evil that it prevents, we ought to put up with the thing in question instead of suppressing it.” J. Budziszewski, “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality”

15. The bottom line is that true tolerance requires that the state canNOT morally neutral. • “The truly tolerant point will always be somewhere between the two endpoints of the continuum [i.e total acceptance or total suppression], its location depending on the act in question and on the circumstances. But, precisely where it is along this line will vary.

16. “The location of true tolerance can be determined only by the exercise of case-by-case judgment about the goods and the evils involved . . . . [Thus,] tolerance cannot be neutral about what is good, for its very purpose is to guard goods and avert evils.” J. Budziszewski, “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality” • For example, one might tolerate the expression of racist views, but not permit people to act on those views, by banning hate crimes.

17. And, no matter how tolerant a state is, someone will always feel “out of place.” • “[A] society self-consciously guided by principles of the Lockean, Smithian, Hayekian, or Aristotelian sort will, obviously, be a society of a generally conservative character, while a society self-consciously guided by principles of a contractarian, utilitarian, or ‘economistic’ sort will, equally obviously, be a society of a generally anti-conservative character. The point is not that the former sort of society will explicitly outlaw bohemian behavior

18. “or that the latter will explicitly outlaw conservative behavior. The point is rather that the former sort of society is bound to be one in which the bohemian is going to feel out of place, while the latter is one in which the conservative is going to feel out of place. In either case, there will of course be enclaves here and there where the outsider will find those of like mind. But, someone is inevitably going to get pushed into the cultural catacombs. In no case is a . . . [state] going to be genuinely neutral between all the points of view represented within it.” Edward Feser, “The Problem with Libertarianism”

19. The Ox Bow Incident • 1943 movie set in Nevada in the 1885. In the movie there are two groups. • One espouses a form of moral relativism. • The other espouses a form of moral objectivism. • As you watch the movie, ask yourself which group’s view is more likely to result in everyone’s “just getting along.”

20. “We want the freedom to believe what we like, ignore facts, sugar-coat reality, but then we have to recognize that there is a price to pay. If we abdicate reason and clear thinking and reality checks, the result is not only that pesky scientists can’t gainsay our beliefs – neither can we gainsay those of fundamentalists, theocrats, obscurantists, Nazis, Holocaust deniers.

21. “We have to choose, we can’t have it both ways, we can’t embrace irrational ideas we just happen to like and reject the ones we don’t. If you insist on setting sail for the realm of hunch and intuition and thinking with your gut, you’re likely to meet some fellow voyagers who are not all peace and love and light.” Ophelia Benson, “Paradigms U Like”

22. “Can ethical relativism function . . . in a country as diverse as ours, where we often find opposing values (‘Looting is antisocial’ versus ‘Looting is a righteous act for the dispossessed,’ for example) within the same neighborhood? Because a multicultural ethic asks us not to think in terms of one dominant set of rules, some might opt for an attitude of total moral nihilism instead: No values are better than any other values, because no values are objectively correct.

23. “Such nihilism might well result in the breakdown of the fabric of a society; and, possibly, in a greater cohesion within subgroups, with different groups battling one another. Rather than describe these battles as gang wars, we might call this phenomenon Balkanization ―when groups have nothing or very little in common except hatred for what the other groups stand for.” Nina Rosenstand, The Moral of the Story, p. 131

24. “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a premonitory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and, therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne, “Meditation XVII”