But is there some point at which you are forced to say, these people are nuts, wrong, immoral -- no matter who they are or where they're from?
It may be that we have no disagreement. I just don't think that relativism admits of degrees, I guess.
See what you think of this:
People often confuse tolerance with relativism. As a tolerant person, you would naturally think that intolerance is wrong. But a true relativist would say that intolerance is just as dandy a moral point of view as tolerance.
So if you want to argue that the intolerant are wrong, that requires an explanation of morality that is somehow independent of individual or cultural points of view.
Another path to this same conclusion: I'm sure that you can think of an example of some behavior, based upon some belief system that is abhorent. Killing female infants because you need sons. Ethnic cleansing. There are other examples. If you're willng to say that such beliefs and actions are morally wrong, no matter who you are, that judgment requires and explanation of what there is about us all that we share, despite our more and less tolerable differences. This is why I say that tolerance takes a tremendous amount of work sometimes and why I say that a belief in tolerance isn't a belief in ethical relativism because, by definition, a true relativist would put up with anything, no matter what. This leads us to moral absolutism.
I'm an absolutist. What does that mean?
What it doesn't mean is that I've got this list of rules -- ten let's say, that I hold inviolable. The absolutist is looking for the one rule -- the summum bonum -- that explains morality. There have been a number of candidates. One fairly recent one is that morality is all about acting in such a way the generates the greatest amount of happiness/well-being/eudaimonia and/or the least amount of suffering in the long run. Hold that one rule as absolute and the rest follows. Sometimes we should lie and kill. Sometimes we shouldn't. It all depends on the predicted consequences of our actions. So if it's reasonable to argue that driving a plane into an office building isn't going to generate more well-being than suffering in the long wrong, then those people behaved immorally, absolutely. |
