An Argument for Moral Absolutism

How Moral Relativism Has Led to an Explosion of Deviance

Heckler - On Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is the idea that morality is not absolute. It holds that a standard of morality in one culture may not be the same in another culture, and that, similarly, moral standards differ from person to person. The former is said to be cultural relativism and the latter ethical subjectivism. Proponents of moral relativism contend that morality is situational, and that virtually all actions deemed as immoral can be changed and relabeled as moral in the right circumstance. It is conceited to think, so they say, that one culture has reached a level of higher morality than another since cultures arise from fundamentally different circumstances, historical contexts and backgrounds, which naturally yield diverse and inconsistent standards of morality. In the view of the relativist, it is therefore incorrect to say that morality is absolute, but is instead relative to the situation. (Moral Relativism, no author)

But, is it misguided to say that the dangerous and even barbaric actions of another culture could somehow be rationalized as moral?

Let’s examine some cultures that moral relativists would be disinclined to label as immoral. There are Aboriginal tribes in Australia, for example, who peel the skin from the male child’s penis and cut a piece of tissue from underneath as part of a ritualistic celebration of his maturity. There are various African tribes that ritualistically cut the forehead and face of initiates with the intent of leaving deep lasting scars. In yet another example, older males of the African Maasai tribe ridicule and deject boys who make any sound, groan, or even the slightest painful grimace during ritualistic circumcisions. (Lewis) There are no grounds for the moral justification of such barbaric acts. Ritualistic mutilation is culturally endemic to the tribes who practice such cruelty, and are not in any way isolated or anecdotal.

Contrast this with an incident that occurred in the Canadian Arctic that involved the death of an elderly Inuit woman who was left to freeze to death by her son, during a difficult trek across the frozen tundra. At first, the act seems heinous. But, then we learn that the elderly woman was hardly mobile and nearly blind, and was slowing the whole convoy significantly, which was jeopardizing the lives of all the travelers. He could let his mother die, and save the clan, or keep his mother alive, and let everyone freeze to death. He made an ethical choice to save the larger family by killing his mother. (Irvine) It was a choice that any rational absolutist would agree was moral, unlike the gruesome and inhumane rituals of the African and Australian tribal cultures discussed previously.

Moral relativists will point out, in their own defense, that moral relativism is present, actually prolific, in Christian faith. For example, no Christian believes that one should be put to death for working on Sunday, as dictated in the Old Testament, or that cursing one’s parents is to be punished by death, as provisioned in the New Testament. So, in this respect, the Christian is a moral relativist if he concurrently believes the Bible to be the Infallible Word of God, and parent cursing teenagers to be unworthy of lethal injection. Similarly, relativists point out the hundreds of divisions and splinter groups that exist within organized Christianity. So, is the self-proclaimed absolutist not, after all, a bit more relativist than she would have hoped to be? (Hammerlinck) In fact, these perceived inconsistencies do not point to moral relativism at all. The death penalty is just that: a penalty. It is not morality, nor is the various interpretations of doctrine that exist between denominations. The critical distinguisher is to understand that differences of opinion with regard to how Christians arrive at moral decisions do not necessarily mean differences in moral standards themselves exist. Moral standards are virtually the same across all Christian sects, though different interpretations of morally neutral subjects do exist.

What are the consequences of moral relativism? Deviance.

The exponential increase in the number of crimes, the break-down and devaluation of the family unit, and the relabeling of mental illness are all examples of how society has grown increasingly tolerant of deviant behavior since the social revolution of the 1960’s. As crime and single-parent families have increased substantially, society has continued to lower the standard for defining acceptable behavior, so as to preclude behaviors previously labeled as deviant from the dynamic, newly revised definition of deviance. In much the same way, mental illness has continually been redefined, and the consequences have been an incrementally smaller population with the designation of “mentally ill.” As a result, society is speckled with profoundly ill people living atrociously and inhumanely in gutters, cardboard boxes, and boxcars – people who would have been institutionalized just sixty years ago. (Krauthammer, pg 384)

We arrived at this point by indoctrinating generation after generation to believe that truth and morality are subjective. Today’s youth view knowledge through the lens of post-modernism, and consider Western morality, which has evolved over thousands of years, to be merely a social construct. There is no objective truth; knowledge is just a social construct. Some have even gone so far as to question the truth of the holocaust as a “conceptual hallucination.” An alarming number of students are afraid, or are unable to judge Hitler’s fascist and barbaric deeds as right or wrong, or to objectively state whether or not America was on the right side of World War II. In fact, some even question whether the historical facts of the war actually occurred. (Sommers, pg 391)

Personal morality, such as honesty, truthfulness, philanthropy, etc., is rarely, if ever discussed in ethics classes. The focus on and study of social morality has displaced the focus on individual morality. This one-sided approach has cast upon generations of students the impression that social morality comprises the whole of morality by deemphasizing and neglecting personal morality, which is, in fact, the other half of ethics. Ethics teachers often throw out specific moral dilemmas, to which the students are required to argue for or against the morality of the given prompt. This exercise, though beneficial in many, does have an unintended consequence and byproduct. That is, students are left with the impression that all ethical issues are open for debate, and that ethics has no basis, no foundational truths, and no absolutes. (Sommers, pgs 394 & 395)

The emergence of moral relativism has ushered in a new era of moral decay. Before a problem can be controlled, must it not first be identified and named? The unwillingness to recognize and identify immorality has led to an explosion of deviance, as the majority blindly embraces moral relativism. The mother who has taught her child to be non-judgmental, but then learns her daughter is incessantly judgmental toward her peers should cast of moral relativism to boldly address the child’s negative behavior. (Rauchut, pg 118) Our society needs a counterforce of independent thinkers to do as Emerson did, which was to refuse conforming blindly to societal trends. (Emerson, 374 – 383) As Aristotle described, the ultimate purpose of the human race is to hone and shape the rational soul. (Aristotle, pg 370) Unfortunately, most who embrace moral relativism did not obtain such a belief through the exercise of reason, but through peer pressure. The very survival of our society hinges on whether or not we go back into the cave, and free those inside from the shadows of moral relativism and the shackles of a disintegrating society. (Plato, pg 363 – 365)