Universalism or Relativism?
• Moral Universalism: Moral truth IS the
same for all people, at all times, at all
places.
• Moral Relativism: Moral truth is NOT
the same for all people, at all times, at
all places.
– Moral truth is relative either to
individual persons or to particular
cultures.
• Relativism as a basis for tolerance
– If we admit upfront that each
individual (or each culture) has
his/her (its) own moral truth, then we
will not try to impose our beliefs on
others.
– We will then all “just get along.”
• Why do people believe you have to be a
relativist to be tolerant?
– “Nietzsche claimed that if men took
God seriously, they would still be
burning heretics at the stake. In the
same spirit, one supposes, are the
notions that if men really cherished
moral truth, they would suppress all
beliefs that they considered wrong,
and that if men still cared about the
sanctity of the marriage bed, they
would go back to making adulterers
wear the scarlet A.
– “Today two different groups of people
agree with . . . [Nietzsche’s conditional
statement]. In the first group are the
ordinary bigots, who are always among
us. The second are a kind of modern
backlash – call it the reaction – found
principally among the ‘cultural elite.’ For
instance, whereas the bigots respond to
Nietzsche’s conditional by saying, ‘Yes,
that’s why we should burn heretics,’ the
reactionaries respond to it by saying, ‘No,
that’s why we should suppress the public
expression of belief in God.’”
J. Budziszewski, “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality”
– Of course, the “cultural elite” would also
suppress any public expression of belief
in universal moral truth.
– At least, they would suppress using
such beliefs in the formation of public
policy.
– But, is this really necessary to support
tolerance?
– Or, to ask it differently, are those who
believe in universal moral truth
necessarily committed to forcing
adulterers to wear a Scarlet A and other
things of the like?
– Tolerance: To put up with, rather
than suppress, what one takes to be
evil or wrong.
– Why put up with what one takes to
be evil or wrong?
• Because one might believe
suppressing the evil might produce
more evil than putting up with the
original evil.
– For example, tolerating (not suppressing)
false beliefs.
• Protect the Peace
• Protect the Truth
– “On the side of suppression we
might plead, ‘After all, the opinions
in question are false, aren’t they?
Then, isn’t it a gain to get rid of
them?’ But, on the side of toleration,
we might ask, ‘What better engine
have we for honing truth than to try it
against error in a fair fight?’”
J. Budziszewski, “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality”
– “We are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate
any error, so long as reason is left
free to combat it.”
Thomas Jefferson
– “[W]e must always put the two evils, the
evil that suppression engenders and the
evil that it prevents, on a scale. When the
evil that suppression engenders equals or
exceeds the evil that it prevents, we
ought to put up with the thing in question
instead of suppressing it.”
J. Budziszewski, “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality”
–
The bottom line is that true
tolerance requires making definitive
(universal) moral judgments.
• “The truly tolerant point will
always be somewhere between
the two endpoints of the
continuum, its location depending
on the act in question and on the
circumstances. But, precisely
where it is along this line will vary.
• The location of true tolerance can be
determined only by the exercise of
case-by-case judgment about the
goods and the evils involved . . . .
[Thus,] tolerance cannot be neutral
about what is good, for its very purpose
is to guard goods and avert evils.
J. Budziszewski, “The Illusion of Moral
Neutrality”
• For example, one might tolerate the
expression of racist views, but not
permit people to act on those views, by
banning hate crimes.
• The Ox Bow Incident
– 1943 movie set in Nevada in the
1870’s. In the movie there are two
groups.
– One espouses a form of moral
relativism.
– The other espouses a form of moral
universalism.
– As you watch the movie, ask yourself
which group’s view is more likely to
result in everyone’s “just getting
along.”
– “We want the freedom to believe
what we like, ignore facts, sugar-coat
reality, but then we have to recognize
that there is a price to pay. If we
abdicate reason and clear thinking
and reality checks, the result is not
only that pesky scientists can’t
gainsay our beliefs – neither can we
gainsay those of fundamentalists,
theocrats, obscurantists, Nazis,
Holocaust deniers.
– “We have to choose, we can’t have it
both ways, we can’t embrace
irrational ideas we just happen to like
and reject the ones we don’t. If you
insist on setting sail for the realm of
hunch and intuition and thinking with
your gut, you’re likely to meet some
fellow voyagers who are not all peace
and love and light.”
Ophelia Benson, “Paradigms U Like”
– “Can ethical relativism function . . . in a
country as diverse as ours, where we
often find opposing values (‘Looting is
antisocial’ versus ‘Looting is a righteous
act for the dispossessed,’ for example)
within the same neighborhood?
Because a multicultural ethic asks us
not to think in terms of one dominant set
of rules, some might opt for an attitude
of total moral nihilism instead: No
values are better than any other values,
because no values are objectively
correct.
– “Such nihilism might well result in the
breakdown of the fabric of a society;
and, possibly, in a greater cohesion
within subgroups, with different groups
battling one another. Rather than
describe these battles as gang wars, we
might call this phenomenon
Balkanization ― when groups have
nothing or very little in common except
hatred for what the other groups stand
for.”
Nina Rosenstand, The Moral of the Story, p111
– “No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main. If a clod be
washed away by the sea, Europe is
the less, as well as if a premonitory
were, as well as if a manor of thy
friend’s or of thine own were. Any
man’s death diminishes me because I
am involved in mankind, and,
therefore, never send to know for
whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
John Donne, “Meditation XVII”