Moral Relativism Failure #1: No Standard to Judge

Moral relativism does not provide us with a standard to judge the actions of other cultures, leaving us with no intelligible difference between the good or evil actions of other cultures or individuals. If moral relativism is true, we cannot judge other cultures as morally wrong.

A moral relativist might respond by saying that the world would be a better place without its Bonnie and Clydes, Manson’s followers, and the Nazis, but we cannot say that these groups were “wrong” for doing what they did because, as one moral relativist, Gilbert Harman has written, “they are beyond the reach of the relevant moral considerations.” In other words, since they are outside of the group that we have formed, we cannot place our judgment upon them. What was wrong for the world might have been right for the Nazis and we have no place to say otherwise. They can only be judged by their own version of morality which, by the way, made their actions perfectly legitimate. There exists no ultimate standard with which to judge them by. Any collection of individuals can, at will, determine what is and what is not moral.

If such a belief was actualized in the real world, however, human civilization would be destroyed. There would no longer be any moral reason to stop the Hitlers or the Mansons or even the Bonnies or Clydes of the world from completing their evil missions. Thus, the group of commuters had as much of a right to urge the suicidal woman to her death as Hitler had to murder countless numbers of Jews.

On the other end of the spectrum, there would also be no reason to praise social do-gooders like Mother Teresa. Since there are no “bad” acts, there are also no acts that are inherently “good.” Under the guidelines of ethical relativism, Mother Teresa is Hitler’s moral equal. Both are “right.” However, when attempting to define a system of morality, surely one can do better than to create a system that shows no difference between an individual that most of the world has viewed as “good” (Mother Teresa) and another individual that most of the world has viewed as bad (Hitler). Moral relativism’s lack of discernment between these two extremes disqualifies it as a practical—and therefore acceptable—system of morality.