Moral relativism and subjectivism

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-54
Author(s):  
Anna Smajdor ◽  
Jonathan Herring ◽  
Robert Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Moral Relativism ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Moral Absolutes

This chapter explores the claim that ethics is subjective or relative. In other words that there are no moral absolutes and that moral claims always vary depending on the dominant norms at the time. The chapter explains the difficulties with claims of this kind. It also considers how ethics can appreciate diversity within society and be tolerant, while holding on to moral absolutes.

Buffalo Crusaders: The Sacred Struggle for America’s Last Wild and Pure Herd

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Brucella Abortus ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Field Campaign ◽  
Activist Group ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Post Hoc

This chapter examines the bitter, long-lasting, and sometimes violent dispute over the Yellowstone bison herd—America's only remaining genetically pure and free-roaming herd, which once numbered more than 30 million but was exterminated down to a mere 23 single animals. This intractable issue hinges on current scientific disagreements about the biology and ecology of the disease brucellosis (Brucella abortus). But in recent years, a more radical, grassroots, and direct action activist group called the Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) has found success by shifting the focus of the debate away from science, toward the deeper religious dimensions of the issue. The chapter shows how the infusion of the conflict with moral and spiritual feeling has brought to the fore deeper questions that ultimately needed to be answered, thus making this a public religious conflict as much as a scientific one, sidestepping rabbit holes of intractability. It observes the ways in which BFC activists engaged in a phenomenon called moral and religious “muting.” This has theoretical implications for understanding how certain elements of culture (e.g., individualism and moral relativism) can organize and pattern others—especially in post hoc explanations of religiously motivated activism.

Problematic Political Consumerism

2018 ◽  
pp. 698-720
Author(s):  
Michele Micheletti ◽  
Didem Oral
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Type Model ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
Research Challenges ◽  
Moral Claims

Typically, political consumerism is portrayed in straightforward, unproblematic ways. This chapter discusses how and why political consumerism—and particularly boycotts—can be confusing and problematic. Theoretically it focuses on moral dilemmas within political consumerism and the key role of overriding moral claims in the motivations for and actions of political consumer causes. An ideal type model, constructed for analyzing unproblematic and problematic political consumerism, is applied to cases of more unproblematic political consumerism (e.g., the Nestlé, Nike, and South African boycotts) and more problematic political consumerism (e.g., the Disney boycott and the movement against Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestine territories). The chapter also addresses why other forms of political consumerism (buycotts and discursive actions) seem less vulnerable to moral dilemmas as well as the research challenges in studying more problematic cases of political consumerism.

scholarly journals The Beholder’s Eyes: Audience Reactions to Organizational Self-claims of Authenticity

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 237802311879303 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Lehman ◽  
Balázs Kovács ◽  
Glenn R. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Category Type ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Made In

Organizations normally benefit from being perceived as authentic. Yet an ongoing puzzle persists about self-claims of authenticity: although the weight of findings suggests that individuals will devalue organizations touting themselves as authentic, some findings suggest that such self-claims may be rewarded. The authors suggest that this puzzle can be answered, at least partly, by considering two fundamental but different meanings of authenticity. The authors posit that individuals will react negatively when claims concern being true to a category (“type authenticity”), whereas they will react positively when claims concern being true to the organization’s values (“moral authenticity”). A major part of this reasoning involves the emotional reactions evoked by moral claims. In study 1, authenticity claims made in the texts of 1,393 restaurant menus and corresponding ratings of 449,919 online reviews from 2009 to 2016 were analyzed. Study 2 involved an experiment to examine reactions to the two kinds of claims separately. The findings generally support the argument and apparently help explain audience reactions to organizational self-claims about authenticity.

scholarly journals A DEFENSE OF HUMEAN PROPERTY THEORY

Legal Theory ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Ira K. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Humean Theory

ABSTRACT Two rival approaches to property rights dominate contemporary political philosophy: Lockean natural rights and egalitarian theories of distributive justice. This article defends a third approach, which can be traced to the work of David Hume. Unlike Lockean rights, Humean property rights are not grounded in pre-institutional moral entitlements. In contrast to the egalitarian approach, which begins with highly abstract principles of distributive justice, Humean theory starts with simple property conventions and shows how more complex institutions can be justified against a background of settled property rights. Property rights allow people to coordinate their use of scarce resources. For property rules to serve this function effectively, certain questions must be considered settled. Treating existing property entitlements as having prima facie validity facilitates cooperation between people who disagree about distributive justice. Lockean and egalitarian theories endorse moral claims that threaten to unsettle property conventions and undermine social cooperation.

scholarly journals The Discarded Image and the Debunked Tao: Objective Value in C.S. Lewis’ Medieval Model and His Critique of Modernity †

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 597
Author(s):  
Yuxiao Su
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Parallel Study ◽  
The Status ◽  
Implicit Belief ◽  
Objective Value ◽  
Medieval Model ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Spiritual Resource

This paper considers C.S. Lewis’ “doctrine of objective value” in two of his major works, The Abolition of Man and The Discarded Image. Lewis uses the Chinese name Tao, albeit with an incomplete understanding of its origins, for the objective worldview. The paper argues that Tao, as an explicit theme of The Abolition of Man, is also a determining undercurrent in The Discarded Image. In the former work, Tao is what Lewis wants to defend and restore against twentieth-century secular ideologies, which Lewis condemns as infected with “the poison of subjectivism”. In the latter work, where Lewis presents one of the best accounts of the European medieval model of the Universe, objective value (the Tao in Lewis’ argument) underlies both how the model has been shaped, and how Lewis, as a medievalist, accounts for and draws upon it as an intellectual and spiritual resource. The purpose of this parallel study is to show that Lewis’ explication of the Tao in The Abolition of Man, which is a “built-in”, implicit belief in The Discarded Image, provides a critique of tendencies towards the subjectivism prevalent in Lewis’ lifetime. These tendencies can be traced into the moral relativism, pluralism and reductionism of the twenty-first century, giving Lewis’ work the status of twentieth-century prophecy.

Individualisation as a social-cultural process and morality

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 11-33
Author(s):  
Janusz Mariański
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Cultural Process ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Moral Choices ◽  
Individual Human

In this article, the issue of structural individualisation, which is one of the results of social modernisation, is adopted as the subject-matter. In the processes of individualisation, it is, first and foremost, the importance of an individual human being and matters relevant to their life, including the obligation to make constant choices in all the aspects of life, that is placed emphasis upon. In the aspect of values, the process of individualisation means transfer from values seen as responsibilities (related to duties) to values connected with self-fulfilment (self-development). The consequence of individualisation is the significant changes in the realm of morality: departing from traditional moral values and standards, permissivism and moral relativism, the destruction of normativity, and the secularisation of morality. On the other hand, it creates the opportunity to determine one's own moral choices and shapean autonomous moral personality.

scholarly journals Pluralism Out Of The Sources Of Judaism: Religious Pluralism Without Relativism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael Jospe
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Jewish Scholar ◽  
Epistemological Relativism ◽  
Ways Of Life

Jewish theology is compatible with religious pluralism, based on the paradigm of the Jewish obligation to live in accordance with the commandments of the Torah while accepting the legitimacy of other ways of life in accordance with the paradigm of the universal “seven commandments of the children of Noah.” Jospe here answers two challenges to this thesis, one, voiced by Christian theologians, that pluralism equals relativism, and a second, voiced by the Jewish scholar, Menachem Kellner, that there are no sources for pluralism in Jewish tradition and that pluralism itself makes no sense. In presenting his arguments, Jospe invokes a wide range of ancient, medieval and modern thinkers, probing the theological possibilities for pluralism within Jewish tradition and its boundaries with relativism. In doing so, he argues that one should differentiate between moral relativism, a non-negotiable category, and epistemological relativism, where there is room for compromise.

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