What the thing is
Moral relativism is not one idea. It is three separable positions: descriptive (observing cross-cultural moral disagreement), meta-ethical (treating moral claims as context-dependent truths), and normative (prescribing tolerance amid disagreement).
The meta-ethical version is stronger than the descriptive one. Its holders believe that terms such as “good,” “bad,” “right” and “wrong” are not subject to universal truth conditions at all, but are relative to the traditions, convictions or practices of an individual or a group. The normative version goes a step further and holds that everyone ought to tolerate the behaviour of others even when large disagreements about morality exist. Each of the three can be held without the others.
Where it came from
It has roots in ancient Greece and India. Westermarck formulated it systematically in Finland.
Versions of the idea stretch across several thousand years. The Jaina principle of Anekantavada, attributed to Mahavira (c. 599–527 BC), holds that truth and reality are perceived differently from different points of view and that no single view is the complete truth. The Greek philosopher Protagoras (c. 481–420 BC) asserted that “man is the measure of all things,” the historian Herodotus (c. 484–420 BC) observed that each society regards its own beliefs and ways as better than all others, and Sextus Empiricus and other Pyrrhonists denied the existence of objective morality.
Modern anthropology supplies a further strand. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) cautioned observers against ethnocentrism, and growing knowledge of how widely belief differs between societies led some social scientists and philosophers to doubt that any objective, absolute standard of value could exist. Edward Westermarck (1862–1939) portrayed all moral ideas as subjective judgments that reflect one’s upbringing. He rejected G.E. Moore’s ethical intuitionism because differences in belief between societies, he said, were evidence against any innate, intuitive power of moral perception. The American anthropologist William Graham Sumner argued in Folkways (1906) that no trans-cultural judgment about the rightness of a culture’s morals could be justified, since no standard higher than local morals exists.
What it gets right
It correctly identifies that moral judgments vary across cultures. It distinguishes observation from prescription. It shows that descriptive disagreement does not force normative tolerance.
The descriptive claim comes first. Descriptive relativism is a widespread position in anthropology and sociology, whose practitioners accept that it is incorrect to assume the same moral frameworks are in play in every historical and cultural circumstance. Descriptive relativists need not advocate tolerating all behaviour, and not all of them are meta-ethical relativists.
What it gets wrong
It wrongly implies meta-ethical relativism must follow from descriptive relativism—when the document confirms only that meta-ethical relativists are descriptive relativists, not that the latter logically entails the former.
The normative step draws the sharpest objections. Most philosophers do not accept that tolerance follows from relativism, partly because of the difficulty of arriving at an “ought” from relativistic premises. A normative relativist may struggle to say that tolerating behaviour is moral without adding that others think intolerance of some behaviour is moral. Russell Blackford argues that people need not be quiet about traditions that cause hardship and suffering. R. M. Hare argued that moral propositions remain subject to human logic, so one cannot hold contradictory ethical judgments, which he took to show the error of relativism in an important sense. Moral universalists add that their own systems often justify tolerance too.
Why it matters now
Because public discourse treats ‘moral disagreement’ as proof of either universal truth or total subjectivity. Moral relativism offers a scaffold to hold both facts and values without conflating them.
Richard Rorty complained that the label “relativist” has become a pejorative. In his account, thinkers so labelled usually just believe that the grounds for choosing between philosophical opinions are less algorithmic than had been thought, not that every idea is as valid as any other.
Is it worth your time
Yes—if you need to untangle moral disagreement without collapsing into dogma or indifference.
