Question

7.1

mc

Write a response to the gollowing passage on your opinion

Relativism is defined as "there are no absolute truths in ethics and that what is morally right or wrong varies from person to person or from society to society" (Rachels, 2018). This is useful in situations where there are extenuating circumstances when deciding what should be done regarding a crime committed or when personally deciding what course of action to take after looking at the consequences of each of those actions.

However, relativism is not such a good argument when it allows more for the emotional over a reasonable consideration of how to act as a human being and how to react to human situations. The laws in various countries can go from stoning to courts ruled by theosiphists to blind justice and are a pathway to constant conflicts between different cultures, especially with regard to womens' and children's human rights (Rachels, 2018).

Absolutism as determined by Kant relates to the laws and social mores of a society and is usually inflexible in those applications, i.e. the ten commandments. It requires that all of a society behave according to the ethics that have been established through the rule of church and/or law (Mohn, 2015).

Even though absolutism can be inflexible, this type of ethics has its value in establishing a baseline for the overall behavior of humans by joining different cultures and societies in their treatments of each other and forming a more humanistic society. While there are many differences between religions, countries, and societies, there are also these baseline ethics that are woven into each of those religions, countries, and societies. The application(s) or misapplication(s) of those ethics is why there are so many conflicts in the world today.

Answer 1

The fact that several ethical principles intersect between religions, countries and societies supports moral relativism. This observation allows us to conclude that while certain laws maybe specific to time and place, we can expect most societies and cultures to hold certain actions as deploying. In this case, moral relativism in some way is fulfilling the function of holding certain ethical principles more or less constant across boundaries. I would also like to state that establishing absolute laws in itself would be relativistic depending on who conceives them.