Against Moral Relativism

One thing I have noticed among various schools of thought, both inside and out of the Matriarchy movement, is the concept of moral relativism (also known as ethical relativism or cultural relativism).  That is, the idea that there is no objective truth in morality, period.  And while on the surface it may sound enlightened and progressive, please be advised that it is actually a very dangerous slippery slope towards egoism, amorality and moral nihilism.  And the logical conclusion to such a dubious moral theory turns out to be anything but enlightened and progressive.

In his famous essay, "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism", the late secular progressive philosopher James Rachels does an excellent job thoroughly debunking the specious arguments that underlie moral relativism.  Scratch that, he debones, slices, dices, and juliennes such arguments, and then fully lays waste to their remains.  And most notably of all, he does it all from a secular progressive perspective.

In a nutshell, the conclusion that there is no objective truth in morality at all (itself an absolute statement, ironically) does NOT follow logically from the premise that there are differences in moral codes between various cultures and time periods.  And if one were to attempt to make a valid argument justifying such a specious conclusion, we would also have to essentially tolerate not only various horrific evils because "culture", but also intolerance itself as well.  Nothing at all enlightened or progressive about that.  So much for relativism being a philosophy of tolerance and kindness.

In another chapter of his book, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, having already debunked moral relativism, he also then debunks the closely related idea of moral subjectivism in similar fashion.  This idea basically says that morality (right vs. wrong, good vs. evil) is merely a matter of opinion, again not objective.  And in essentially the same way that relativism fails as a moral theory, so too does subjectivism as well.

This is not to say that moral absolutism (such as the views of Immanuel Kant) is necessarily correct either.  We know that numerous gray areas do exist, of course, and both relativism/subjectivism and absolutism can thus be seen as two sides of the same fundamentally flawed coin.   Thus objectivism (with a lowercase "o", to distinguish it from the egoistic philosophy of Ayn Rand) is essentially the way to go.

So all progressives, leftists, feminists and/or matriarchists reading this, take note.  You really do NOT want to cede the moral high ground to the opposition, lest you fall into quicksand and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.