Among many on the right, the belief that their opponents on the left are \u201cmoral relativists\u201d dies hard.\u00a0 But die it must, for not only is this not true, it is about as far from the truth as it can get.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMoral relativism\u201d is an ambiguous concept; this is the first thing of which to take note.\u00a0 The second is that in spite of the ease and frequency with which it springs from people\u2019s lips, very few people are comfortable identifying themselves as proponents of any doctrine so called.<\/p>\n
The standard textbook treatment of \u201cmoral relativism\u201d identifies three distinct theories with it: ethical subjectivism, conventionalism, and historical relativism.<\/p>\n
Ethical subjectivism is the doctrine that the validity of moral judgments is determined by or relative to the individual or subject. <\/em>So, although the respective positions of two people over, say, the moral standing of abortion, are mutually incompatible\u2014one person claims that it is immoral while the other denies this\u2014neither can be said to be more or less correct than the other, for both points of view are equally legitimate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conventionalism is the position that the validity of moral determinations is relative to, not the individual subject, but the conventions of the culture<\/em> from within the framework of which they are made.\u00a0 If, then, two contemporary cultures like, say, the West and Islam, advance mutually incompatible views on, for example, the proper treatment of women, it is inappropriate to conclude from this one view is any better or worse than the other in any categorical sense, for both views are fine and good relative to their own standards. <\/em><\/p>\n Historical relativism, though similar to conventionalism, isn\u2019t quite the same thing as it.\u00a0 The historical relativist insists that the validity of moral judgments is relative to time.\u00a0 <\/em>What this implies is that even though Americans in the 21st<\/sup> century need not be persuaded that slavery is morally contemptible while our ancestors\u2014including some Americans\u2014thought otherwise, neither generation is more or less enlightened than the other on this (or any other) issue, for every generation judges and should be judged by its own standards.<\/p>\n Their differences aside, common to these versions of relativism is a rejection of the proposition that there are moral truths that transcend considerations of place and time, truths whose jurisdiction extends over all <\/em>people.<\/p>\n It is my settled judgment that in spite of the clumsiness with which some <\/em>leftists speak, the leftist is decidedly, emphatically, not <\/em>a moral relativist.\u00a0<\/p>\n If the notion that there are any <\/em>human beings who have somehow or other succeeded in freeing themselves entirely from all moral concerns is inconceivable, how much more so must we find the conventional right-wing wisdom that expects us to accept that countless millions of our moralistic brethren on the left don\u2019t \u201ccare for\u201d or \u201cbelieve in\u201d morality.\u00a0 As one conservative writer once said, morality is like the air we breathe.\u00a0 Everyone\u2014including the most narcissistic among us\u2014makes moral judgments.\u00a0<\/p>\n From the time of his emergence as an identifiable character, the leftist has been distinguished by his obsession with ameliorating or even eliminating material inequalities.\u00a0 As many thinkers on the right, from Ludwig von Mises to Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman to Thomas Sowell, have long observed, this obsession finds expression in a moral vision notable for its robustness.\u00a0 As the title of Sowell\u2019s exposition of standard leftist morality\u2014The Quest for Cosmic Justice<\/em>\u2014makes abundantly clear, the leftist holds as robust, comprehensive, grandiose, and, well, ambitious a morality as any that we will find.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The French Revolutionaries were, quite literally, the original leftists, and it was in response to the Revolution that conservatism as a distinctive intellectual tradition emerged via Edmund Burke.\u00a0 Yet far from accusing his opponents of denying the objectivity of morality or anything of the kind, Burke rather chided them for their moral absolutism<\/em>!\u00a0 \u201cThe Rights,\u201d not of Englishmen or Frenchmen, but of Man <\/em>belonged to a metaphysics that Burke eschewed for both its abstractness and its unconditional<\/em> character.<\/p>\n Of these radicals, Burke writes:<\/p>\n \u201cWhilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a Constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience\u2026They\u2026have wrought under ground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of Parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n The French Revolutionaries have \u201c\u2018the rights of man.\u2019 Against these there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding: these admit no temperament and no compromise: anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As an antidote to this trans-historical morality Burke advanced a morality centered in the local and the particular\u2014i.e. in tradition.\u00a0 <\/em>And in so doing, he set a precedent that conservatives\u2014and most rightists<\/em>\u2014have followed ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet there are even more obvious considerations that put the lie to the idea that leftists are moral relativists.\u00a0 While he may attempt to dismiss his opponent\u2019s<\/em> morality by accounting for it in exclusively psychological, cultural, or historical terms, the leftist most certainly does not regard his <\/em>morality along these lines.\u00a0 Anyone with any doubts on this score only need ask themselves: Would a leftist suggest that his preference for equality is no better or worse than another\u2019s preference for in<\/em>equality?\u00a0 Is it fathomable that the leftist would ever say something like: \u201cHey, racism may be immoral for us<\/em> but that doesn\u2019t mean that it has to be immoral for others<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n These questions are rhetorical.\u00a0 \u201cRacism,\u201d \u201csexism,\u201d \u201chomophobia,\u201d and, in short, every other evil that constitutes the galaxy of Politically Correct sins the leftist treats as categorically<\/em> immoral.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, one may object, that the leftist isn\u2019t consistent in applying his moral standards, that, say, he tolerates black-on-white \u201cracism\u201d while forbidding white-on-black \u201cracism\u201d proves that my assessment fails and he is, after all, the relativist that his rivals say he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n Interestingly, the reasoning of this criticism is exactly the same reasoning upon which the case for moral relativism relies!\u00a0 The conclusion that moral judgments are always relative is typically rooted in the observation that people and whole cultures apply, or at least appear to apply, different moral standards to morally comparable situations. Similarly, the conclusion that the leftist is a relativist is here inferred from the premise that he applies, or at least appears to apply, different moral standards to morally comparable situations.\u00a0 However, neither of these two arguments works.\u00a0<\/p>\n For one, if the leftist is a moral relativist for acting inconsistently, then we are all relativists, for there is no one among us who is immune to the charge of inconsistency.\u00a0 The leftist may be inadvertently inconsistent, hypocritical, unwise, or cowardly.\u00a0 Yet from the selectivity with which he extends his principles we are not justified in concluding that he is a relativist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Secondly, even when he is aware of this charge, the leftist is ready to meet it.\u00a0 Sticking with the forgoing example, he has been laboring inexhaustibly for decades trying to convince us\u2014and himself, doubtless\u2014that in spite of surface appearances, the hostility that blacks have shown against whites, like the preferential treatment policies\u2014\u201caffirmative action\u201d\u2014that discriminate in favor of blacks and against whites, are not instances of \u201cracism.\u201d\u00a0 Blacks, by virtue of their unique history of \u201coppression\u201d in America, the leftist tells, are justifiably<\/em> hostile toward whites and are owed <\/em>\u201cspecial consideration.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n No, the leftist is no moral relativist.\u00a0 Quite the contrary: he is a moral absolutist.\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Among many on the right, the belief that their opponents on the left are \u201cmoral relativists\u201d dies hard.\u00a0 But die it must, for not only is this not true, it is about as far from the truth as it can get.\u00a0 \u201cMoral relativism\u201d is an ambiguous concept; this is the first thing of which to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n