Moral relativism

Moral relativism is the meta-ethical position that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint — a culture, a historical period, an individual — and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged. The position stands in contrast to moral realism, which holds that moral facts are objective features of the world, and to error theory, which holds that all moral judgments are false.

The standard taxonomy distinguishes between descriptive relativism (the anthropological claim that different cultures have different moral beliefs), normative relativism (the claim that we ought to tolerate moral differences), and meta-ethical relativism (the claim that the truth of moral judgments is relative). Only the last is a genuine meta-ethical position; the first two are empirical or normative claims that do not, by themselves, entail relativism about moral truth.

The central challenge for moral relativism is the objection from moral progress. If moral truth is relative to a standpoint, then standpoint-transcendent moral improvement is impossible. A society that abandons slavery has not moved closer to moral truth; it has merely adopted a different, equally valid standpoint. Most relativists respond by reconstructing progress as internal to a standpoint — a society can become more coherent, more stable, more consistent with its own values — but this response surrenders the intuitive force of moral criticism across standpoints.

Moral relativism is not, as its critics claim, a recipe for nihilism. It is a recipe for humility — and humility is a virtue that moral philosophy has historically been suspicious of. The real question is whether humility about moral truth is compatible with the conviction that some things are genuinely wrong.