Philosophy 352
Business Ethics
Widener University
Jim Rutter
Some Brief Notes on Cultural Relativism:
To give you some insight into Relativism as a theory, and her theoretical implications, I’ll start with a brief historical perspective. Herodotus, in his “Histories,” writes down one story concerning the court of King Darius of Persia, one of the largest empires at the time. King Darius was a man devoted to learning, and understanding the world around him, so one day he called before his court representatives from the Callatians, and representatives from Greece. It was well known at the time that the Callatians, when someone would die, would eat the bodies of their dead fathers. In differing fashion, the Greeks would hold a funeral pyre and cremate the bodies of their dead.
Darius called the Callatians before him and asked what it would take for them to burn the bodies of their dead fathers. They, of course, were shocked and horrified, and refused to answer, offering that no amount of money or reward could persuade them to treat the bodies of their fathers in this manner. Then Darius brought the Greek representatives before him and asked them if there was any way in which they could be convinced to eat the bodies of their dead. The Greeks likewise appeared shocked, and refused to treat the dead in such a fashion.
This brief story appears often in the realm of social science, and illustrates a common moral theme: That different cultures have different moral codes (Rachels, p.16). Plenty of other examples abound: in India, it used to be customary (and in some parts still is), to offer to share one’s wife with an overnight guest. In Japan, insider trading is still a common practice, and the bribing of high officials to secure contracts counts as a standard business operating procedure. (In similar fashion to the Callatians and Greeks above, when this practice was discovered as standard operating practice by American companies in Japan, the outrage was so great that President Carter decided to pass the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1976.) In Italy, the practice of filing corporate taxes involves the hiring of a commercialista, who negotiates a company’s yearly revenue with the Italian Tax official, including as his “fee” a bucharista, some of which is a bribe to the tax official to secure favorable “income reportage” for the company he or she represents in this process.
The upshot of all of this turns into a theory proposed by late 19th and early 20th Century social scientists and philosophers that we now know and understand as Cultural Relativism. These thinkers observe the variety of ethical norms between different cultures and conclude from those observations that morality itself is not something absolute, but something that is dependent upon culture, history, economics, and circumstance. Their argument is summed up in what philosophers refer to as the “Cultural Differences Argument.” The argument goes as follows:
Different Cultures have different moral codes;
Therefore, there is no objective truth in morality.
You can see how this pans out more clearly if you use something specific, such as:
The Callatians believe that eating your dead is the morally correct/right thing to;
The Greeks, however, believe that this is immoral;
Therefore, eating your dead is neither objectively right or objectively wrong. It is
merely a matter of cultural opinion, and this type of opinion varies from culture to
culture.
Now, to many people this seems like a very sound argument, and before we examine the validity of the inference (deriving the conclusion from the premise), we’ll take a look at some of the other beliefs held by Cultural Relativists. (The following table appears in Rachels, p.18.)
Beliefs/Claims made by or held by Cultural Relativists:
- Different Societies have different moral codes.
- There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code as better (or worse, mind you) than any other.
- The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.
- There is no “universal truth” in ethics—that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times.
- The moral code of a society determines what is right or wrong within that society—that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least for member of, or within, that society.
- It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance towards the practices of other cultures.
You should note here that no particular relativist must believe all of these at once. None of them are deducible from the others in a strict logical sense although they all cohere relatively well (no pun intended) with each of the other statements. (Basically, any one of them might still hold true even if any of the others are proven false.)
Justification:
When I speak of how a moral theory is justified, I am referring to the argument that attempts to prove the theory true, or prove that the theory or principles of the theory are morally correct. For example, the “cultural differences” argument is one of the ways in which some relativists attempt to show that their belief that “there is no objective morality” is true, and that argument also lends support to any and all of the six beliefs listed above. You should note, at this point, that the main upshot of cultural relativism concerns the possibility of objectivity in our moral beliefs.
All that said, I think I should say a few brief words about “objectivity” as it applies to moral thinking. When philosophers and moralists speak of the objectivity of their beliefs, they mean two things. One, they mean that it is possible for moral beliefs or principles to attain objective status (they actually assume this most of the time, it is implied). Two, by objective, they mean that what they hold as true, or morally right, or morally just is true, right, or just, for all people, at all times, even before there were people. So that, if something is right for me to do (say, protecting innocent life), then it is right for all people at all times, in all cultures, in every society, even before there were people or cultures. Certainly, exceptions apply in some of the cases, especially where Absolute Moral Rules conflict with one another. However, on the main, people who believe in Absolute, or Objective Moral Theories, believe that they are true, and the exceptions, if existing at all, are tremendously rare.
Relativists attempt to justify their position through an appeal to what they call the “Cultural Differences Argument.” The argument runs as follows:
Different Cultures have different moral codes;
Therefore, there can be no objective truth about morality.
I’ll explain this a bit more. Relativists have noticed that any possible code of morals, or any set of moral beliefs is tied to a set of historical, or social, or cultural phenomena. As such, those people who believe that morality can be objective are mistaken, because each culture has come up with its own code over time, and as such, the possibility of the existence of an objective code is zero.
For example, consider the Ten Commandments. If ever there existed a moral code that seemed to have a universal status, it would be those, right? After all, God Himself is the ultimate backing for such a code of morality, being both all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful; certainly, He could have created a code by which everyone at all times could have lived, right? The relativists will tell you “no.” The way the Hebrews believed about God, was there way of believing, the Ten Commandments were there specific, relative moral code, relative to their society, and their times. For instance, it can’t possibly be the case that God expected non-Hebrews to not work on the Sabbath, can it? Certainly those people who didn’t believe in one God wouldn’t be forbidden to create other false images, right? Those two commandments easily illustrate the cultural and contextual nature of the alleged universal laws handed down to humans from God. (Furthermore, who in this culture thinks we should honor our parents and accept their values and judgments as our own? And adultery? Forget about it, right?)
The argument has several flaws, but there’s a test question on that, and I will let you figure it out on your own. Suffice it to say, the argument starts off talking about “what is the case,” and then ends up talking about the possibility of something existing at all. Go look at the test question and I’m sure you’ll see at least one of the more logical errors committed by the “cultural differences argument.”
Some consequences of taking cultural Relativism seriously:
All told, Relativism appeals to many. The argument, while flawed, still strikes a convincing tone. On its surface, relativism provides the sort of “enlightened” or relaxed approach to many practices we realize our culture doesn’t condone (take for instance, at Charles De Gaulle’s funeral, his wife was photographed hand-in-hand with his life-long mistress). Additionally, relativism promotes tolerance towards the views and practices of others, and we’re all constantly told how great it is to be tolerant of others. (Right?)
However, some consequences of relativism become more serious upon examination.
One, we lose the ability to judge other cultures by an independent or objective standard. If no such standard exists in truth, and we cannot convincingly say that any standard achieves objectivity, then we can’t look at other cultures and condemn the more malignant activities that take place there. Relativists cannot hold trials at Nuremberg or The Hague (where Nazi SS troopers and currently, Milosevic are being tried, respectively). In fact, a relativist cannot say to Hitler and the Nazi’s, that what they did “was wrong,” because in order to say that, you would need a standard outside of both the standards of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, etc. in order to make such a condemnation. But, for a relativist, no such standard exists.
Two, if you want to know if a certain practice is right or wrong, you merely need to look around at your culture. This becomes problematic because very few of us think that our culture is 100% perfect in all of its moral or legal practices. This also creates difficulty when you apply it to the cultures we deplore. For instance, in 1863, a relativist living in Georgia, wanting to know whether slavery was right or wrong, would only have to look at what was going on in Georgia, namely, slavery. As such, a relativist living in pre-Civil War South, would have to accept slavery as what was morally right or morally correct. Few of us seem willing to do this, but this is precisely what a relativist would have to accept.
Three, the notion of moral progress disappears. If you lack an independent or objective standard for deciding what is right and wrong, then you similarly lack the ability to say confidently (after all, you could kid yourself) that a change in views or practices was a step forward. What would it mean for a relativist to make such a claim? Without an objective standard, how could a relativist claim that the change in belief or custom was a positive step forward, how could they say that the change made them morally better? The short answer is that they couldn’t. (Email me if you really want to hear the long answer).
Four, and along a similar pattern as number three, we also lose the idea of a moral hero, or a moral villain. Hitler becomes someone we simply disagreed with, or whose practices, because of our own preferences, we simply don’t like. Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, in freeing the slaves, didn’t do any thing that was morally heroic, because a relativist no longer possesses a morally objective standard by which to judge his actions as great or heroic.
You can still decide that relativism is the moral theory of choice for you, but in order to be consistent, you would have to accept those four consequences as your own. Relativism does provide much in terms of descriptive ethics (a kind of sociological approach to ethics, see textbook for more details), and as a moral theory that tells us how we should act, relativism scores for many readers.
Some of the consequences for Business Ethics would be the reversal of standard U.S. law, and allowing corporations to do business with host countries on their own terms, rather than following the limitations proscribed to them by the United States. For example, in 1976 Carter passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which, among other things, made it illegal for anyone working as a representative or agent of a U.S. corporation to engage in the act of bribery of an official of any foreign government. However, in many countries, such bribes are not only routine, but are considered part of the standard practice of their culture and economy. A relativist approach allows us to engage in these practices with both tolerance and a greater freedom in the business world.
Works Cited:
Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. Prentice Hall, New York: 1992.
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