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According to ethical egoism, morality is no more than your own code of behavior, designed to advance your own goals. Perhaps morality should be understood not on the personal level but on the social level. Here are some representative slogans of this idea, the idea of moral relativism.

 When in Rome, do as the Romans do.13

 What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.14

 “Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason that the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in” 15 (Michel de Montaigne, 1580).

Moral relativism, as presented here, is ethical egoism writ large. With ethical egoism, morality is relativized to individuals; but with moral (sometimes called cultural) relativism, moral truth is relativized at a broader scale to cultures or societies themselves. To some extent, debates over moral relativism are just analogues to the pros and cons of egoism.

To start with, notice that there is a difference between descriptive relativism and moral relativism, as follows:

 Descriptive relativism: beliefs about morality and the values people possess vary across cultures divided by times and places.

 Moralrelativism: the truth of moral claims and which values people should adopt vary across cultures divided by times and places. What is morally permissible in one culture may be morally wrong in another culture.

Moral relativism is attractive in lots of ways. For one, it serves to counterbalance the provincialism of assuming that the moral principles and codes that you’ve grown up with must be the best ones for everyone in the world. You probably know people who have never gone more than 20 miles away from the same small town in which they were born, and think that their little corner of the world has everything one could want–the best barbecue, as solid citizens as you’ll meet anywhere, fine schools, good-looking children, devout churchgoers, sincere patriots, and first-rate scholars. But if you’ve traveled a bit, or moved in from another part of the world, you are probably aghast at such insularity and ignorance. People all over the world have found different forms of the good life, with views about purity, authority, respect and piety that may be wholly alien to one’s own. A young woman from Saudi Arabia may consider American college students in miniskirts to be no better than immodest whores who conveniently label themselves with tramp stamps, and American coeds may think that Saudi women are living under the false consciousness of repressive patriarchy, yet both groups manage to raise their children and find ways to lead satisfying lives.

Worse than provincialism is imperialism. When practitioners of a religion decide that they have discovered the one true way that everyone ought to live, the results tend to be the Spanish Inquisition and people flying airplanes into skyscrapers. When countries decide that their form of political economy alone will lead to human flourishing, then we get wars to force others to accept democracy, or become communists, or subjects of the Crown, or whatever it will take to remake foreigners into people Just Like Us. Moral relativism is offered as a corrective to such arrogant and aggressive moral absolutism, one that respects cultural diversity and allows for more than one decent way to live.

The preceding reflections give rise to a popular argument for moral relativism, which goes as follows. Moral beliefs vary all over the world, from place to place and from time to time. The values crafted by a tribe or a nation fit their specific circumstances and may be completely at odds with the moral codes of other societies–codes that they developed given their own idiosyncratic situation. The harsh morality of Sparta¹⁶, beset by warring enemies in a dry and rocky terrain, is hardly suited for the laid-back free-love natives of the tropical Trobriand Islands¹⁷. Insisting that every culture must have the same morality is like telling a chef that every dish he prepares must have the same spicing. The results will range from excellent, to palatable, to execrable. Moralities grow organically, and what works in one culture is inappropriate for another. Not only do moral beliefs and values vary across societies, but they should. In other words, the fact of descriptive relativism provides an excellent reason to adopt moral relativism.

The argument just provided assumes that descriptive relativism is true, assumes that if it is true then moral relativism is true, and then infers from those premises that moral relativism is true. Let’s examine the very first claim: is descriptive moral relativism really true? There can be little doubt that moral practices, customs and beliefs vary considerably from one society to the next. For Muslims, it is immoral to drink alcohol, yet for most Christians it is a sacramental imperative to drink alcohol. Western European societies consider the death penalty immoral, whereas China does not. In the United States, polygamous marriages are considered unethical, but in Islamic countries and the indigenous cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, they are expected. The ancient Spartans considered it their moral duty to leave weak or defective infants alone to die from the elements, and perhaps no modern society condones such a practice.

On the face of it, then, it seems that moral beliefs are quite variable from one society to another. However, it would be hasty to conclude that descriptive relativism is unequivocally right. The anthropologist Donald E. Brown has identified 373 traits as human universals¹⁸–characteristics present in every human society that has so far been identified and studied (Brown, 1991, ch. 6). Some of these traits are facts about language use, patterns of inferential reasoning, symbolic gesturing, and the structure of social groups. However, the majority of human universals involve moral or proto-moral judgment and behavior. For example, human societies universally judge that it is good to help others, that incest and indiscriminate killing are wrong, and that one has familial duties of piety towards one’s parents and obligations of care towards one’s children.

Some philosophers have argued that universally adopted moral norms are very general and open-ended, therefore allowing for local interpretation and variation. Just as every society has some language but they don’t all have the same language, every society forbids incest as immoral but they don’t all pick out the same family members as off-limits. One society might condone kissing cousins (cousins don’t count for the incest taboo) and a second society condemns them. It doesn’t matter for our purposes here. As a purely descriptive matter, descriptive relativism turns out to be partly true and partly false. There are moral beliefs present in some societies/cultures, but not in all, and other moral attitudes that do seem to be in all societies. But the fact that there are at least some moral universals stops any simple inference from descriptive relativism to moral relativism.

A second reason to reject the argument that descriptive relativism leads to moral relativism is as follows. Descriptive relativism, if true, is something that anthropologists ought to discover. Moral relativism, on the other hand, is not a matter for anthropology. Consider an analogy. Anthropologists and historians have provided convincing evidence that human societies throughout history have had a great variety of scientific and medical beliefs. For instance, commonplace beliefs in some societies have been that Earth is the center of the universe, that the motion of the sun is due to the gods’ pulling a fiery chariot, that insanity is caused by demonic possession, that base metals can be turned into gold through chemical manipulation, and sickness is caused by an imbalance in the four bodily humors.

As a matter of mere description, there is no problem noting that these empirical claims were widely believed in assorted societies throughout history. Nevertheless, modern science and scientific medicine have now shown that all of those beliefs are false. Thus we may say that descriptive scientific relativism is true, even though Earth is not the center of the universe, the sun doesn’t really move across the sky, demons aren’t behind insanity, alchemy is a failure, and humorism has been completely discredited. That’s just to say that people have had many false scientific beliefs. Perhaps people have had lots of false moral beliefs as well. Knowing what people in fact believe very rarely tells us what they ought to believe. Therefore the second premise of the relativist’s argument, that if descriptive relativism is true then moral relativism is true, is also false.

A chief complaint against moral relativism is the Criticism Objection: if moral relativism is true, then meaningful criticism of either other societies, or even of one’s own, is impossible. Here’s why. Under moral relativism, the moral truth itself varies from one society or culture to the next. An act might be morally wrong in one society but morally permissible or even obligatory in another–not simply believed to be permissible or obligatory, but in fact permissible or obligatory. It would therefore make no sense whatsoever for people in the first society to criticize the members of the second society for their moral views since those views are, by hypothesis, true (in that society). To criticize them is to criticize the truth, which is surely misguided. Here is an illustration.

Female genital mutilation is a common practice in 30 different countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 200 million women and girls are living with the consequences of having their genitalia ritually mutilated¹⁹. The procedure–typically involving prepubescent girls–can include removal of the clitoral hood, partial or total removal of the clitoris, removal of the labia minora, and the stitching together of the labia majora with thorns, allowing only a small opening for urine and menstrual blood to pass through. Their legs are tied together for weeks afterwards to allow the scar tissue to form. Village elders carry out these operations typically without sterilization or anesthesia. Medical consequences include loss of sexual pleasure, infertility, reproductive and urinary tract infections, and various risks concerning childbirth. Girls have also died from shock, blood loss, and infection as the result of female genital mutilation.

According to WHO, there is no medical benefit to these surgeries. So why are they performed? The answer is because of social mores. Social groups that practice female genital mutilation often do so because of their ethical views about proper sexual behavior, coupled with the idea that only by crippling women’s libidos can they resist the temptations of illicit sex. There are also aesthetic beliefs regarding modesty and femininity, and the proper way that women should look. Finally, practitioners often believe that there are religious reasons for female genital mutilation, although no major religion condones it.

If we accept ethical relativism, then mutilating the genitals of young girls without their consent is morally acceptable–at least in places like Somalia and Egypt who do it to over 95% of their females. Again, not only do Somalians and Egyptians believe that it is morally acceptable, but it really is morally acceptable. Of course, it is immoral to maim children in other places, like the United States. Under ethical relativism, here are two true propositions:

Pro-FGM:

There is nothing wrong with female genital mutilation (in central Africa).

Anti-FGM:

Female genital mutilation is immoral (in the United States).

While it is consistent to hold both Pro-FGM and Anti-FGM, the objection to moral relativism is that one should not hold them both, because it is entirely reasonable to criticize female genital mutilation as cruel and wicked butchery. This is not ethnocentrism; in fact it takes the beliefs and practices of foreign cultures more seriously than does moral relativism. Moral relativism presumes that different cultures are so estranged that they cannot sensibly have a dialogue together about morality; instead each must go their own way. Yet allowing the possibility of criticism means that people from differing cultural traditions can reason together, discussing and critiquing each others’ views, to discover the moral truth. Somalians are just as entitled to criticize Americans for failing to practice female genital mutilation. Accepting moral relativism precludes substantive ethical dialogue among differing cultures, but rejecting moral relativism allows potentially fruitful debate. In this way all cultures are treated as equal partners in the practice of reason. In other words, despite cultural relativism’s pretensions to promoting tolerance and equality, in fact it does the opposite. True respect for the views of others comes from taking those views seriously through critical engagement.

Not only does the Criticism Objection apply to the criticism of foreign cultures, but also to one’s own culture. For example, in 1830 slavery was widely accepted in the United States as morally permissible. There had been an abolitionist movement in North America since colonial times, but in 1830 it was still a minority voice. If we accept moral relativism, then both of these propositions are true:

Pro-slavery:

There is nothing wrong with US slavery (in 1830).

Anti-slavery:

There is something wrong with US slavery (now).

Given the truth of Pro-slavery, it must have been the case that in 1830 the abolitionists were just all mistaken. They were wrong for wanting to abolish slavery, and misguided in condemning slave-owners. Why? Because owning slaves was entirely morally permissible. If you think that in 1830 the abolitionists were on the side of the right and the good, despite being a minority, then Pro-slavery is false. Since moral relativism implies that Pro-slavery is true, just as it implies that Anti-slavery is true, moral relativism must also be false. Moral relativism prevents the coherent criticism of the failings of one’s own society every bit as much as it disallows the coherent criticism of the practices of other cultures. If you think that we ought to review the popular morality of our culture, and aim for its improvement, then you have a reason to doubt that moral relativism is correct.