Different forms of nihilism and moral relativism are quite popular in the world. The belief that moral rules are either subjective or don’t exist can be difficult to argue against and is a good way to excuse bad behavior in ourselves and those close to us. There was a time when I believed in a type of relativism, and it was comforting to be able to say “oh, they thought they were doing the right thing, I might disagree, but it’s no big deal.” But when I found myself defending the villain from the Saw movies, something felt wrong about that. I would now say that if you make a moral claim, it must be universal to all people and times. Here is my attempt to defend that position.
My relativism
So the type of relativism that I used to hold true went something like this:
“There is no universal morality, people should just do what they believe is right.”
When I look at this now, it seems obvious that it is a self-contradicting statement. I say that there is no universal morality, but then goes on to propose a universal rule on people. Furthermore, at the time I believed very strongly that people always did what they believed was right(and still do to some degree, people always have some kind of moral justification for their actions). So I was actually claiming that:
“People should do exactly what they always do.”
Which would mean that the world is perfect, and could not be improved in any way, not something I would have ever claimed if I was asked. So that is how my relativism was contradictory, now I’ll discuss a couple other versions.
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism seems to me like the most obviously wrong version of relativism. It claims something like:
“What is moral for you is determined by the culture you grew up in.”
Many cultural beliefs about morality are contradictory. For one example of this, some Christians think the free market and property rights are moral, but also believe the Bible is right when it says “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” These moral teachings cannot be held to at the same time, but are often both taught to the same children. So can these children never be moral?
Another even better example is progressives, who’s culture says that culture should change. The people who fought to end discrimination would have been acting in accordance with one part of the culture(culture should change), and at the same time acting against another part of the culture(racism). So according to cultural relativism, these people were acting morally and immorally at the same time. Obviously, this is a contradiction.
Also, anybody who has ever worked to change their culture; Jesus, Socrates, the founding fathers, Martin Luther, etc… Were all immoral, because they were not following their culture’s teachings. This is not really a contradiction, but I doubt many relativists would actually agree that those people were immoral.
Nihilism
Nihilism is the belief that:
“Moral rules don’t exist in the world. People simply act according to their preferences”
I would pretty much agree with them. Moral rules aren’t written into the fabric of the universe or anything, and people do act according to their preferences. They are basically saying that there is no way to get an “ought” from an “is.” Which seems right to me.
But does that mean that there is nothing that anybody ought to do? Well, it seems to me that if you want to be a great guitar player, I can say that you “ought” to practice guitar. And if you want to be safe, you “ought” to wear a seat belt. These aren’t rules inscribed on every particle, just conditional statements. Every “ought” must be followed by an “if you want.” Every “rule” that said what people “ought” to do would have to take this form.
You ought to do X if you want Y.
Where X is the action you should take and Y is the desired result. You can’t simply tell me that I ought to do some X for no reason, Some Y that I desire must be made more likely by X in order for me to take it as a rule to follow in my life.
What Happens without the Y?
If someone tells me that I should do some thing, X, and doesn’t follow up with the Y, it seems to me that there are two possibilities.
- The first possibility is that there is no Y, and that they are simply expressing a preference of theirs. This is not something that I would consider a moral statement. And I doubt they would call it such either.
- But the other possibility is that the Y is so universally desired that there was no reason to explicitly spell it out. Since people are so different, The only way to logically make this assumption is if everyone you’ve met had this desire.
The “shoulds” considered as moral are never followed up with a Y, and they are not meant to be examples of the first case. This means that any time someone makes a moral claim, they are saying “You should do X because you want Y,” it’s just that the Y is a value that is universally held. But If everyone wants Y, and doing X will bring Y, then everyone should do X.
Ok, so there is my line of reasoning. This is a very important topic, and I don’t want to be wrong on this one, so if you see any errors at all in this post, please let me know either in the comments or by email. Thanks!