Relativism

9 Pages 2197 Words

The year was 1943. Hundreds of Jewish people were being marched into
the gas chambers in accordance with Adolf Hitler's orders. In the two
years that followed, millions of Jews were killed and only a fraction
survived the painful ordeals at the Nazi German prison camps. However, all
of the chaos ended as World War II came to a close: the American and
British soldiers had won and Hitler's Third Reich was no more. A certain
ethical position would state that the anti-sematic Nazi German culture was
neither right nor wrong in its actions. In fact, it is this view of the
cultural relativist that assumes all actions considered right in a culture
to be good for that culture alone. Moreover, the relativist claims that
these actions cannot be judged according to their ethical correctness
because there is no absolute standard by which they could be compared. In
the above case, this position would not allow for the American and British
soldiers to interfere with the Nazis; the relativist would claim that the
Allies were wrong in fighting the Germans due to a cultural disagreement.
In truth, it is the relativist position which has both negative logical and
practical consequences, and negligible benefits.

The first logical consequence of relativism is that the believer must
contradict himself in order to uphold his belief. The view states that all
ethics are relative while putting forth the idea that no absolute standard
of rightness exists. If this is the case, then what is cultural relativism
relative to? From a purely logical point of view, this idea is absurd, for
in assuming that something is relative one must first have some absolute by
which it is judged. Let the reader consider this example to reinforce the
point. A young woman is five feet tall, and her older friend is six feet
tall. The younger female considers herself short because she looks at her
friend and sees that she is taller than her. It...