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Articles

Are You A Garbled Relativist?

Ray Prebble argues that moral relativism is both incoherent and immoral.

Are you a relativist? A relativist is someone who says things like “There are many truths, many ways of seeing things.” Compare this with the non-relativist, or absolutist, who says, “This is how things are, and there are no two ways about it.” What’s your reaction to these opposing viewpoints? If the relativist sounds decent, non-judgemental, and understanding – someone you feel a connection with – whereas the absolutist sounds biased, unforgiving, and unthinking – someone you would avoid – then you are just the audience I’m aiming at.

Of course one can unproblematically be a relativist about taste in art, or in gardening, or anything involving only purely subjective evaluations. But the philosophically interesting kind of relativism is cultural relativism, also known as (or is at least a substantial subdivision of) moral relativism.

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