4.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Ethical Relativism

Here are some of the main strengths and weaknesses attributed to Relativism as an ethical approach:

Strengths

Cultural Relativism offers a healthy recognition that ethics requires an awareness of the diversity of cultures and worldviews.

It recognizes that not all values are set in stone, and that moral systems can evolve over time.

Relativism exhibits cultural humility and tolerance by showing that one’s own culture is not necessarily better than others and that the attempt to impose our culture’s values on other cultures may be irresponsible.

Weaknesses

Too much tolerance becomes negligence. Certain behaviors, even if cherished by another group, demand condemnation and sometimes actions to end those behaviors; consider slavery, human trafficking, and genocides, for example.

Relativism cannot acknowledge moral progress; if new moral systems (e.g.: women’s rights) are not better than old systems, but merely different, then there is no way to claim that we or another society are improving, becoming better as we learn from past errors.

Relativists can be accused of intellectual and moral laziness. To simply say “Well, that’s the way they do it there” is not only an excuse to not think about serious moral practices of other people but to walk away from our actual responsibility to help the oppressed and to do the hard moral thinking required to justify our efforts to help them.