Do cultures determine what is good, right, correct and acceptable or are there basic human virtues that determine what is wrong, good, moral action and morally good? Or are morals universal and applicable to all cultures? This paper seeks to determine the characteristics of both sides and determine whether there exists a common ground between the two points of view.
Rosenstand, (2012, pg 146) points out that the concept of normal is properly a variant concept of good. Benedicts also asserted that normality is culturally defined i.e. what a society takes as good, right, correct action or morally good or what is considered as a morally appropriate behavior is that which is in agreement with the culture of the society.
Christina Hoff Sommers in the contrary opines that there are basic human aspects that are considered as virtues regardless of time, place, situation or circumstance. For example it is wrong to humiliate an individual, mistreat a child, torment an animal, be egocentric, to steal, lie, and make false promises. It is also accepted to be respectful of others, charitable and generous (Rosenstant, pg 480.) These two approaches create a debate on which side is weightier than the other.
Jesse Prinz(2011) argues that molarity is a culturally conditioned and that our morals are inclined towards our culture. Suppose one lives in a society where the quantity of wealth at birth determines the total possible wealth that one can gain in a lifetime and another is opposed to this, i.e., it is assumed both are wrong and that only one can be correct. In consideration of the morals, both can be correct. This means that a socialist and a religious royalist can both be right as each occupy a different moral view which is determined by each ones culture. Although relativism has been criticized it forms the basic plausible doctrine whose implications help in determining how life is conducted, societies are organized and how to deal with others.
Morals vary from culture to culture and dramatically across time and place. Evidence of cannibalism has been found in many cultures of the world. Blood sports are practiced in Roman Amphitheaters where fans watch as humans engage in mortal combat. Killing for pleasure has also been documented, headhunting, decapitation for recreational have also been reported.
Public torture, executions have also been reported. Some cultures engage in painful body modifications like scarification, foot binding which was practiced in China for over 1000 years and involved deliberate and very excruciating crippling of young girls. Genital infibulations has also been reported to have taken place in some cultures. Attitudes towards marriage also vary in some cultures allowing young girls at teenage are married like in Ethiopia where girls are married at their 15th birthday. It has also been established that some cultures promote attacks to the neighboring villages but not the next hut or neighbor. All these practices are specific and unique to cultures and to them; it is not wrong while the same practices are viewed as immoral in other cultures.
Objectivist hold that moral variation is highly exaggerated in that people agree about values but have diverging factual beliefs that leads to them acting differently. For examples slave owners believed that slaves were intellectually inferior, the Inuits practiced infanticide due to scarcity of resources in the tundra. The question here is should the inferior be enslaved and is the killing of the infants justified by lack of resources? If so, then why can’t all the destitute children, be killed? This is a clear indication of the uniqueness of the cultures and their typical views of what virtues are.
These different circumstances show that people do not necessarily share value but rather help in explanations why values tent to be different. Objectivists further argue that variation exists not necessarily due to relativism. In actual sense, scientific theories vary and it is not assumed that every theory is true. In case there is convergence of morals of different communities, it indicate that one of the community is been dominated by the other. There exist no well-organized standards which can be used in testing, confirming, correcting in the event of occurrence of disagreements of moral actions. It is thus evident that morals differ from society to another as per the cultures. As societies progress, each assumes to hold the absolute moral truth which could be viewed completely different from the outside.
Deontology emphasizes on duty and adherence to existing rule or rules. It involves keeping with natural law, scriptures and intuitions of common sense. The theory does not offer freedom of discourse that leads to inquiry. The conformity to already set up rules is limiting the exploration of other possible alternatives. The progression of a society at any particular point is guided by the inquiry to the existing rules. At a particular age in a given society a moral judgment may be accepted as being appropriate but cease to be when the society progresses
Moral differences occur because morality is not learnt based on reason. Children learn morals at very tender age before they can reason effectively. The children thus internalize consummated imitations from their parents and grow up holding to them as the true values and morals. Since child rearing is different from each culture, and then the morals are different in each culture. Emotions play key roles in determining the morals. Emotions guide reactions and is depicted as anger and disgust, guilt and shame; if the action is performed by self.
However this does not pass to be entirely true since if it were to be, those who lack strong emotions would be disadvantaged. At the same time, emotions can vary in older age leading to curbing of previously held opinion. For an individual to harbor moral emotions, the individual must have the self and the directed emotions. For example eating a cow tongue can only be disgusting to a moral vegetarian.
It is therefore a clear that, moral rules as explained above differ from country to country and region to region. It is imperative that laws of different countries cannot be universally be applied in all other countries. As Nietzsche noted, if god if dead, then all is permitted in the declining religious views and advancing technology. There has been also a continuous desire to embrace the tolerance and appreciate the values of other cultures.
Bentham (1776) holds that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong”. In order to regulate our election among various proposed actions, or to determine the greatest moral excellency, the degree of happiness expected to proceed from an action, the virtue is as the quantity of happiness or is in compound ratio of the quantity of good and the number of enjoyers while the moral evil is as a degree of misery and the number of sufferers and thus an action is best if it procures greatest happiness for the greatest numbers and likewise, if it occasions misery.
The challenges of the ethical normative theory include; it lacks universal moral criteria. There is no absolutism even that of tolerance. The theory holds that moral values are right just because of the existence of a predominant view. If the theory supports differences in cultures due to differential social environment, then it would apply to any other people raised apart from other peoples. In this case it tends to support subjectivism. The mere existence of different cultural and social environment does not necessarily mean that there is no convergence of moral perspectives in the societies. There is no any society that supports unjustified killing of the people, cheating on wife, lying etc. therefore there exist general goodness which is universal to all cultures.
On the contrary there are human aspects that are completely universal in all cultures of the world. Peterson and Seligman (2004, pg 29)define humanity as a set of strengths focused on tending and befriending others. These include love, kindness and social intelligences. Benjamin Franklin stated virtues as following
- Temperance: Eat but not to Dullness and drink but not to Elevation.
- Tranquility: Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable.
- Silence: Speak what may benefit others or yourself, avoid all trifling Conversations.
- Justice: Wrong no one, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are part of your Duty.
- Resolution: Perform what you ought to and without fail.
- Frugality: Make no expense other than doing good to others or yourself; i.e. Waste nothing.
- Industry: Waste no Time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off unnecessary Activities.
- Chastity: Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dullness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another's Peace or Reputation
- Sincerity: do not use hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, when you speak, do so accordingly.
- Moderation: Shun Extremes. Forbear resenting Injuries as much as you think they deserve.
- Order: Let all your Things be in their Places and allocate time to each of your business.
- Cleanliness: Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Clothes or Habitation.
- Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
These virtues are universal in all cultures and are all desires of majority of the people.
Utilitarianism which is one of the theories in normative ethics holds that a proper course of action is that which maximizes utility. It can be defined in simple terms as a theory that maximize happiness and reduce suffering. The most influential contributors of the theory are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In his book Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill stated that, "In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.”
Immanuel Kant held that good will is good without any qualification i.e. good will is good regardless of the results of its action. He held that what makes a person good is his possession of the will that in a certain way makes decisions based on the moral law. Therefore people have inherent desire to do good regardless of whether the cultures allow it or not. Nature places man under two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. These two masters are the ultimate guiding principles of ones’ actions and comprise what is moral or not.
Although moral relativism and moral absolutism are fundamentally different, the two are complimentary of each other. There is no one who can claim to live without following certain norms which are set by the society and the culture from which one belongs. At the same time, the human nature is not taken away from the individual and hence all aspects inherent in the human being are held. A state of balance can be found in between the relativism and the absolutism such that the neutral ground, which may be beneficial to humans, is determined.
Work cited
Peterson, Christopher; Seligman, Martin E.P. Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook
and Classification. Washington, DC: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-530387-2. 2004.
Franklin's 13 Virtues Extract of Franklin's autobiography, compiled by Paul Ford.
Johnson, Robert "Kant's Moral Philosophy"(2008). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 14 December 2013.
Bentham, Jeremy "A Fragment on Government" 1776
Mill, John Stuart Crisp, Roger, ed. Utilitarianism(1998). Oxford University Press. p. 81. ISBN 0-19-875163-X. 1998
Jesse Prinz. The Emotional Construction of Morals. City Univversity: newYork, 2011
Rosenstand. The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics, 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012.
