Cultural Relativism Analysis
In the book, the Elements of Moral Philosophy, James Rachels explains Cultural Relativism in the second chapter and moral rules in the ninth chapter. In the second chapter “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” the author, James Rachels, explains about Cultural Relativism with examples. In the beginning, he brings out about the difference between the Greeks’ culture and the Callatians’ culture. When someone dies, the Greek people burn the dead body (Rachels 20). On the other hand, when father dies, the Callatians eat the body of dead father (Rachels 20). This shows that different cultures have different moral codes (Rachels 20). What is thought right in the one group might be wrong in the other group. The author provides another example. …show more content…
They also believe there is no objective “truth” in morality (Rachels 24). Right or wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture (Rachels 24). These statements are known as the Cultural Differences Argument (Rachels 24). The fundamental mistake in the Cultural Differences Argument is that it attempts to derive a substantive conclusion about a subject from the mere fact that people disagree about (Rachels 24). According to the author, there are thoughtful people who are reluctant to say things are wrong for at least three reasons. First, there is a nervousness of interfering with people of other social customs (Rachels 33). Second, people think they should be tolerant of other cultures (Rachels 33). Lastly, people may be reluctant to judge because they do not want to express contempt for the society being criticized (Rachels 34). The author states there are two lessons people should learn from Cultural Relativism. First, Cultural Relativism warns people about how dangerous it is to assume all the preferences are based on absolute rational standard (Rachels 34). Second, Cultural Relativism teaches people to be open-minded (Rachels 34). Keeping Cultural Relativism in mind will avoid being arrogance and close-minded (Rachels
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