I would argue that the physical world is real. We argue about the nature of that more or less independent reality in the process of trying to better understand it. (I'm leaving certain weird implications of quantum mechanics out of this)
The same is true of 'moral reality' -- similarly independent, misunderstood, but we're working on it.
This is all just to say that I'm not a full-blown ethical relativist. What do you think of the following argument:
If I admit that whatever's right for you is right for you, just because you believe it, then you need no reasons at all for your point of view, but the price you pay for this automatic rectitude is that your moral/ethical beliefs are no more firmly grounded than your tastes in hot-dog toppings. No matter what you believe, you're right, just because you believe it. So everybody's right, no matter what they believe and everybody's happy? Clearly not.
But, if you believe, for example, that Hitler was wrong, then there must be something more to ethics than whatever this or that person happens to believe. And off we go trying to solve the problem of what it means to be good that is truly independent of what this or that person might happen to think, which is at least as difficult a problem as physics has dealt with for a couple of thousand years, what's stuff made of?
Another relevant point:
Ethical relativism doesn't get you tolerance, because as a true relativist you would have to admit that even the most xenophobic, INtolerant, vicious point of view is just as valid as views belonging to the most airy-fairy, achingly earnest, love-everybody naive dipwad you could find. Real tolerance takes the work of deciding what can't be tolerated.
Who's to say what right or wrong? We are. But it has been and will continue to be an (apparently) long and difficult road discovering the truth. It's frustrating and painful but perhaps we would do well not to be so surprised at this difficulty? That's my main beef with relativism: You don't have to think. It makes ethics too easy. It turns ethics into a fashion show which, clearly, it's not.
So I don't think good and evil are man-made constructs. I think that it's 'just' and enormously difficult problem figuring out what good and evil are and that's why we argue. |
