Relation to others· Morals
Relativism
Axis: Status of norms (metaethics) — Do moral norms hold for everyone, everywhere, and always?
Moral norms vary across cultures, eras, and perspectives: none can claim absolute validity. What we call "the good" expresses a particular custom, history, or form of life.
Movements 3
Romanticismexplicit
Against the Enlightenment's abstract universalism, which measures all peoples by one and the same reason, holds that each culture bears within it its own , its values and its meaning, incommensurable with the others. There is no single model of civilization but a diversity of forms of life, each legitimate in its time and place. This historical and cultural relativism undermines the idea of a linear progress toward a universal norm.
Herder, This Too a Philosophy of History · Herder, Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humanity
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Taoisminferable
Zhuangzi's perspectivism issues in a relativism: what is beautiful, right, or useful for one is not so for another, and no standpoint overlooks the rest. A man sleeping in the damp falls ill, but not the eel; which of the two knows the right dwelling? Sharp moral distinctions lose their claim to universality.
Zhuangzi, ch. 2 (On the Equality of Things)
Empiricisminferable
By anchoring morality in sentiment and experience rather than in universal reason, the school relativises moral foundations. It is Hume in particular who derives the virtues from their felt usefulness and agreeableness and treats justice as an artificial virtue born of convention rather than of a given nature. The weighting blends a core of human constants with a large share of relativity and social construction.
Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, sections III and V · Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, III, 2 (of justice as an artificial virtue)
Philosophers 5
Zhuangziexplicit
Beautiful and ugly, permitted and forbidden, great and small are not inscribed in things: they are correlative carvings, relative to the scale and the use of whoever judges. An oriole finds delicious what disgusts a human; a beautiful woman makes fish flee: where is the "correct" taste? Zhuangzi generalizes this relativity of norms against the claim to fix the right and the ritual. Unlike , who dissolves human distinctions only to replace them with the single norm of the , Zhuangzi rebuilds no positive norm: he invites us to "equalize" viewpoints and to move freely among them, which brings him close, without that modern vocabulary, to a relativism of norms.
Zhuangzi, ch. 2 (On the Equality of Things)
Nietzscheexplicit
Rather than asking whether moral values are true, Nietzsche asks what they are worth and where they come from: this is the method. It uncovers that the pair was born of the of the weak, inverting the aristocratic « good / bad ». Moralities are thus not facts but symptoms of types of life, to be assessed and, where needed, transvalued.
On the Genealogy of Morality · Beyond Good and Evil, §108
Michel de Montaigneexplicit
In "Of Cannibals", Montaigne turns the European's gaze back upon himself: we hold barbarous whatever departs from our usages, never seeing that our own would look just as strange from elsewhere. "Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice". The diversity of customs across the world shows that our moral certainties owe less to reason than to , "other world, other laws". This relativism stays prudent, though: it serves to disarm fanaticism and cruelty, not to permit everything, for the cruelty of the conquerors is judged worse than that of the "savages".
Essays, I, 31, "Of Cannibals" and II, 12
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Sextus Empiricusinferable
In his ethical books, Sextus sets the inexhaustible diversity of peoples' laws, customs and beliefs against the claim that anything is good or bad "by nature": were anything so, all would hold it such. Lacking a criterion, he on the existence of universal norms and regulates his conduct by the "law and custom" of his country, without holding them true. From this relativism-by-suspension follows a null universalism and only a thin constructivism, since following convention is not grounding it: it is conforming to it in the absence of any established moral truth.
Outlines of Pyrrhonism, III, 168-238 (things good and bad) · Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 145-163 (the tenth mode, on customs)
Pyrrhoinferable
The verdict of indeterminacy applies to values as well: nothing is just or unjust, beautiful or ugly "by nature", but only by convention and custom. reports that for Pyrrho "nothing is beautiful or ugly, just or unjust" in itself. Lacking a criterion to decide, the sage on the existence of universal norms and regulates himself, by default, on received usage, without holding it true. Hence a null universalism and a thin constructivist strand, since following custom is not grounding it: it is conforming to it in the absence of any established moral truth.
Aristocles (after Timon), cited by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV, 18 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, IX, 61 and 101
Characters 1
Calliclesexplicit
Callicles unmasks received justice as a contrivance: the weak, being the majority, framed the laws and the words "just" and "unjust" to bridle the strong and secure equality for themselves. That justice is mere (nomos), variable and self-serving; the only real norm is that of nature (physis), where the better rules and holds more. His position thus blends a corrosive relativism toward established morality with the assertion of a natural right of the stronger that he takes to be a fact.
Plato, Gorgias, 482e-484c (the nature/law distinction) · Plato, Gorgias, 483b-d (the weak make the laws)
Equalizing perspectivesRuleAttested · Zhuangzi
What is "this" for one is "that" for another: before you decide, let the other side speak.
Inspired by Zhuangzi's "On the Equality of Things" (Qiwulun): our judgments of true and false depend on the standpoint from which we pronounce them, and each side holds its own as self-evident. The rule is, in the heat of a dispute, to voice the matter yourself from the opposing position, then from a wider standpoint, so as to loosen the fixation on your single angle. Today it helps you step out of sterile oppositions and judge with more suppleness.
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The foreign gazeRuleAttested · Montaigne
Each calls barbaric what is not of his own custom.
Reflecting on the so-called "savages" of the New World, noticed that "each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own custom" (Of Cannibals). Before you let your reflex of disgust pass for a moral verdict, turn the gaze around: ask how your own would look to that other eye. The point is to tell a real wrong from mere unfamiliarity, so that "it's not how we do it" stops counting as "it's wrong".
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- Descriptive Thought experimentTo each their customs?
Peoples horrify one another with their usages, each holding its own self-evident. Does this deep disagreement prove no morality is true, or can we still judge some better than others?
the customs of other peoples - DescriptiveAre there moral truths?
When I say "that is wrong", am I describing something real, a property of acts, or only my preferences? Nothing in the facts contains an "ought": where, then, would the truth of a moral judgment come from?
a moral fact - DescriptiveTolerance, how far?
If all moralities are equal, in whose name condemn slavery or cruelty elsewhere? And is "we must respect other cultures" not itself a rule claimed to hold for all?
the critique of another culture - DescriptiveFound, imposed, or made?
Is a norm inscribed in the nature of things, is it merely might dressed up as justice, or do we make it through a fair procedure? And can a rule that is merely constructed still bind?
the moral rule