Relativism Essay -- ethics beliefs cultural relativism essays papers

The year was 1943. Hundreds of Jewish people were being marched into the fellate chambers in accordance with Adolf Hitlers orders. In the two years that followed, millions of Jews were killed and exactly a fraction survived the painful ordeals at the Nazi German prison house camps. However, all of the chaos ended as World War II came to a close the Ameri ordure and British soldiers had won and Hitlers Third Reich was no more. A certain ethical position would state that the anti-sematic Nazi German culture was neither right nor wrong in its actions. In fact, it is this image of the hea accordingly relativist that assumes all actions considered right in a culture to be good for that culture alone. Moreover, the relativist rents that these actions cannot be judged according to their ethical correctness because in that respect is no absolute metre by which they could be compared. In the above case, this position would not allow for the American and British soldiers to interfere with the Nazis the relativist would claim that the Allies were wrong in fighting the Germans due to a heathenish disagreement. In truth, it is the relativist position which has bothnegative arranged and practical consequences, and negligible benefits.The first logical consequence of relativism is that the believer essential contradict himself in order to uphold his belief. The view states that all ethics are coition while putting forth the idea that no absolute standard of rightness exists. If this is the case, then what is heathen relativism relative to? From a purely logical point of view, this idea is absurd, for in assuming that something isrelative one must first have some absolute by which it is judged. Let the reviewer consider this example to reinforce the point. A young woman is phoebe bird feet tall, and her older friend is six feet tall. The younger female considers herself all of a sudden because she looks at her friend and sees that she is taller than her. It wo uld be illogical to say that the first woman is short if she were the only female in existence if this were the case then in that respect would not be anyone for her to be relative to in height. However, this logical hallucination is what the relativist assumes by stating that there is no standard of rightness for relativity. Quite simply, the heathen relativist is stating that he is relative to an absolute which ... ...at there cannot be any example progress in a culture per-say. As discussed, the negligible benefits of cultural relativism such as tolerance, lacking of an absolute standard, and an open mind can only be applied to a limited range of instances. As previously shown, extreme relativism in its vulgar and unregenerate form7 leads to stagnation of cultural morals and passive acceptance of ethicalinjustice. Of course, just as in any ethical theory, there are some things to be learn from it. One of these is the idea of not being too critical of new(prenominal) cultur es. Also, the theory shows the importance of not becoming so culturalcentric that one looses the force to learn from other socities. In truth, if more cultures tempered their tolerance with wisdom, then many of the evils that plague us could be effectively eliminated. ---End Notes1. Rachels, James. The gainsay of Cultural Relativism.Reason and Responsibility. Ed. Joel Feinberg. p. 454.2. Rachels, p. 454. 3. Rachels, p. 454.4. Rachels, p. 455.5. Rachels, p. 455.6. Rachels, p. 457.7. Williams, Bernard. Relativism. Reason and Responsibility. Ed.Joel Feinberg. p. 451.