The Sevenoaks School Journal of Philosophy - Volume Two APORIAii_digitalversion - Volume 2 | Page 7

S ONYA V ERKHOTUROVA
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This essay will now proceed to examine cultural relativism in the context of op-
posing moral views and illustrate how it fails to permit any moral progress. Sup-
pose Jack and Jane are disagreeing whether donating to charity is a moral
obligation or a supererogatory action. A moral relativist would mention that
they will struggle to persuade each other, since there is no set of absolute rules
they can refer to which would guide them through this argument: both of them
hold moral truths relative to their own culture. I insist that this exposes the
fundamental pragmatic problem with any moral disagreement: any type of rela-
tivism fails to function as a guide in moral conflicts. As Simon Blackburn por-
trayed in his similar example on the topic of “fox-hunting”, the moral relativist’s
contribution to the disagreement seems frivolous, as he asks the question: “[why
should we] tolerate another point of view simply on the grounds that someone
else holds it?”. 2 There seems to be no other grounds for me to tolerate another
person’s position apart from the value of respect. So, moral relativism seems to
bestow the absolute value on toleration, while arguing for that not to happen
with morals. Surely, if moral relativism is true, it should be my choice whether
to tolerate other person’s beliefs or not. Furthermore, the contribution of a
moral relativist is foregrounded to be pointless, because by making the logical
contradiction and stating that there exists a plurality of moral truths, one does
not solve the disagreement. In this way, if morality is relative, then pragmatical-
ly moral debates seem to be problematic. The significance of the moral debate is
that it is a necessary condition for moral improvement, because by rejecting the
prevailing views and arguing them to be mistaken, one can promote moral
correction. If it was not due to moral debates on controversial topics and bold
reformers — such as Nelson Mandela, who went against the general consen-
sus — it is likely that unjust treatment and discrimination might have still been
morally permissible. In this way, moral relativism seems to threaten the mere
possibility of moral debate and thus to go against our conception of the instru-
mental goodness of moral progress.
One objection to the view that, under the conditions of absence of ab-
solute morality, moral progress cannot be achieved, is provided by Jesse Prinz.
2.
Simon Blackburn, Truth: A Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 63.