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If your goal is to persuade others that your solutions to actual moral problems are
correct, adopting subjective relativism is self-defeating because it is based on the idea
that each person decides for himself or herself what is right and what is wrong. Accord-
ing to subjective relativism, nobody's conclusions are any more valid that anyone else's,
no matter how these conclusions are drawn. Therefore, we reject subjective relativism as
a workable ethical theory.
If subjective relativism is unworkable, what about different views of right and wrong
held by different societies at the same point in time, or those held by the same society at
different points in time?
In the modern era, anthropologists have collected evidence of societies with moral
codes markedly different from those of the societies of Europe and North America.
William Graham Sumner described the evolution of “folkways,” which he argues even-
tually become institutionalized into the moral guidelines of a society:
The first task of life is to live....Thestruggletomaintain existence was not carried
on individually but in groups. Each profited by the other's experience; hence there
was concurrence towards that which proved to be the most expedient. All at last
adopted the same way for the same purpose; hence the ways turned into customs
and became mass phenomena. Instincts were learned in connection with them. In
this way folkways arise. The young learn by tradition, imitation, and authority.
The folkways, at a time, provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are
uniform, universal in the group, imperative, and invariable. As time goes on, the
folkways become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative. If asked why
they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive people always answer that it
is because they and their ancestors always have done so....Themorality of a
group at a time is the sum of the taboos and prescriptions in the folkways by which
rightconductisdefined....'Good'moresarethose which are well adapted to the
situation. 'Bad' mores are those which are not so well adapted. [7]
Cultural relativism
is the ethical theory that the meaning of “right” and “wrong”
rests with a society's actual moral guidelines. These guidelines vary from place to place
and from time to time.
Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars conducted a modern study that
reveals how notions of right and wrong vary widely from one society to another. Here is
a dilemma they posed to people from 46 different countries:
You are riding in a car driven by a close friend. He hits a pedestrian. You know he
was going at least 35 miles per hour in an area of the city where the maximum
allowed speed is 20 miles per hour. There are no witnesses other than you. His
lawyer says that if you testify under oath that he was driving only 20 miles per hour,
you will save him from serious consequences.
