“What if another culture exists that does not share the same value of tolerance? How would the moral relativist seek to remedy such a dilemma? Whose version of morality would he call on to solve this issue? Does he use his own morality or that of the other culture?”

issue? solve? relativists wouldn’t see it in those terms. the issue to solve wouldn’t be who is morally right and who is morally wrong because neither society would be, the issue would be to find some mutually agreeable way to live harmoniously. i’ll discuss some approaches later on. for now, i’ll point out that there are two ways to approach this analytically from a relativist’s perspective.

the first is to elevate relativism to a form of absolutism. your argument implicitly assigns an absolutist response to a relativist culture, so this is the natural response. if my culture is relativist then relativism is absolute within my culture. so, you’re not actually dealing with absolutism vs. relativism, you’re dealing with absolutism vs. absolutism. on the one hand you have a culture that is intolerant and on the other hand you have a culture that is intolerant of intolerance because intolerance would be considered to be absolutely morally wrong within a relativist society. that doesn’t mean that intolerance is absolutely morally wrong, it means it’s perceived that way within a relativist society; the fact that the other society disagrees in fact proves that intolerance is not a universal truth amongst all cultures. so, the relativist wouldn’t respond by saying that it can’t judge the other society, as allowing an intolerant society to be intolerant would refute a clear deduction of relativism, namely that intolerance is morally wrong. in contrast, the relativist society must oppose the intolerant society if it aims to be consistent with itself. then, is the relativist society being intolerant of intolerance? sure, but it must be if it wishes to uphold tolerance. this is not contradictory because in this circumstance the relativist society would be forced to respond absolutely in order to defend relativism against absolutism, which is perfectly consistent with relativism if relativism is treated absolutely.

the second approach is to deduce that relativism implies nihilism before you make any further deductions. this is a simple argument. if no system of morals is more correct than the next one, there is no absolute system of morals and any attempt put forward towards constructing one is nothing greater than misguided delusion. what is the statement “there is no absolute system of morals” besides moral nihilism? now, moral nihilism is not equivalent to amorality. the rejection of absolute morality does not imply the adoption of amorality, it merely recognizes that despite the hopes and dreams of humans to construct a viable system of morality that is beyond the confines of human thought this system is perpetually hopelessly doomed to failure. it’s maybe even comparable in some ways to godel’s results about arithmetic; just because we can’t construct a consistent system of arithmetic doesn’t mean that arithmetic has no value. post-godel logicians can still accept that 1 + 1 = 2. moral nihilists can accept that in 99% of circumstance it’s not beneficial to anybody to commit an act of murder and that there’s almost no situation where rape is acceptable, excluding some catastrophe that creates a severe genetic bottleneck.

as relativism implies nihilism, the whole premise falls apart because relativists cannot be held to any imaginary moral ideal whatsoever.

so, what should a relativistic society do in a situation where it’s in conflict with an absolutist one? well, it should do the following.

1) if possible, attempt a dialogue with the aims of making some kind of agreement that allows both societies to live harmoniously.
2) if this is not possible or it fails, it must fight to uphold relativism because when applied to a society relativism becomes absolutist and then necessarily implies intolerance towards intolerance.

However, I don’t agree that relativism itself prescribes tolerance. Many relativists would prescribe tolerance, and I personally strive to be understanding of different people, but I would *not* say that any objective standards would require you to be tolerant.

Relativism also does *not* forbid anyone from making any statements, it just prevents us (relativists) from considering some statements as universal. I can disagree with, vote against, or even prescribe anything I fancy without contradicting a relativist belief set. The only thing I can’t do is expect my disagreement, vote, or prescription to stand on its own without being backed up by a concrete, morality-free argument.

I could, for instance, say “killing babies is wrong”, but the actual meaning I attach to that statement (“God says don’t do it”, “I want our legal system to prevent it”…), as well as the implications of that statement (“I will physically interfere if you try to do it”, “I will report you to the authorities if I know you’ve done it”…) might depend on the context (“God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac”, “this baby will murder 600 people if it lives”…).