scholarly journals Moral Relativism and Moral Universalism: a Coherentist Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Damien Anthony Cole
Keyword(s):  
Moral Relativism ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Moral Universalism

<p>In the following work I examine the long-standing dispute between the moral relativist and their opponent, who I call the moral universalist. I examine this dispute from a coherentist perspective. For both moral relativism and moral universalism I identify a key conviction underlying the position and I attempt to deliver a theory that accommodates both of these two convictions in a coherent fashion. This involves distinguishing between distinct types of moral principle and showing how the relativist's conviction is a reaction to one type while the universalist's conviction is a reaction to another type. These types of moral principle are not mutually exclusive, however, and a large part of my project will be to explain how each type of principle is able to be included as part of a coherent whole.</p>

scholarly journals Moral Relativism and Moral Universalism: a Coherentist Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Damien Anthony Cole
Keyword(s):  
Moral Relativism ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Moral Universalism

<p>In the following work I examine the long-standing dispute between the moral relativist and their opponent, who I call the moral universalist. I examine this dispute from a coherentist perspective. For both moral relativism and moral universalism I identify a key conviction underlying the position and I attempt to deliver a theory that accommodates both of these two convictions in a coherent fashion. This involves distinguishing between distinct types of moral principle and showing how the relativist's conviction is a reaction to one type while the universalist's conviction is a reaction to another type. These types of moral principle are not mutually exclusive, however, and a large part of my project will be to explain how each type of principle is able to be included as part of a coherent whole.</p>

What Is a Human Right? Dealing with Disagreement

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Fredman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
Universal Principles

While the notion of fundamental human rights attracts general respect, there is little agreement on how we identify rights or their substantive content and application. This chapter addresses several ways of addressing these foundational disagreements. One is to formulate a moral principle, from which human rights can be derived. The chapter critically assesses possible moral foundational principles, including autonomy, dignity, basic interests, and capability theory. A second approach rejects the possibility of formulating universal principles. The chapter evaluates theories of pluralism and moral relativism in relation to human rights as well as the liberal response to relativism. The chapter then canvasses various ways of resolving such disagreements. The conclusion sets out the approach in this book. Rather than aspiring to achieve absolute answers across time and place, the book draws on the insights of deliberative democracy, aiming to engage in constant reasoned attempts to develop the understanding of human rights.

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.

Die Wirklichkeit des Sittlichen

2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Kersting
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
The Given ◽  
Moral Convictions

Within the Kantian ethics consciousness of the moral principle is a fact of reason which cannot be grounded in any antecedent data, empirical or rational. Hegel however argues that the fact of reason is necessarily embedded in the fact of „Sittlichkeit“, that a pure reason is an empty and chimerical construction, that moral knowledge is unavoidably rootet in the contingent moral convictions of the given cultural and social environment. This essay defends Hegel’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy and – by generalizing Hegel’s hermeneutic approach – sketches the outlines of an explicatory concept of ethics which contradicts the scientistic understanding of moral philosophy characteristic for Kant, the utilitarianism and the supporters of discourse ethics likewise.

Figuring Things Out, Morally Speaking

Philosophy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Leo Zaibert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Principle ◽  
Moral Experience ◽  
Post Challenge

Abstract The appeal of the moral principle according to which we should treat like cases alike is so great that it verges on the axiomatic, or on the platitudinous. Recently, however, the principle has been challenged in deeply interesting ways. These ways are interesting because they do not invite skepticism about morality at large, but about the specific claim that what is good (or bad) for an agent in a given situation must be good (or bad) for any other similarly situated agent. I here assess the post-challenge viability of the principle. In a sense, the principle survives, but this is neither an unqualified victory nor an inspiring result. The examination of these matters contains an important (and under-investigated) lesson about the nature of moral experience.

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.

scholarly journals ‘Choking the national demos’: research partnerships and the material constitution of global health

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-127
Author(s):  
John Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Access To Medicines ◽  
Functional Health ◽  
Essential Medicines ◽  
World Health ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Health Law ◽  
The World

By foregrounding a widened view of the rule of law in transnational legal processes, the works under discussion in this symposium can support innovative critical perspectives on global health law –a field that has gained wide attention due to the spread of COVID-19 around the world (Lander, 2020; Bhatt, 2020). Legal and socio-legal scholars in the decade and a half before the pandemic worked on locating global health law and articulating its underlying principles. Lawrence Gostin's 2014 monograph offers a synoptic view centred on international institutions (e.g. the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, UN Human Rights Council) and problems (e.g. infectious-disease response, tobacco control), along with an elaboration of its normative basis in universal moral principle and international human rights law (Gostin, 2014). Struggles over access to essential medicines and intellectual property in the early 2000s are, for example, represented in terms of the right to health constraining international trade law. Andreas Fischer-Lescano and Guenther Teubner's 2004 reading is oriented more by social theory than by doctrinal or ethical frames (Fischer-Lescano and Teubner, 2004, pp. 1006, 1008). A functional health regime has ‘differentiated out’, they observe, and operates as a discrete communication system across borders, albeit one that is threatened by the preponderant economic system. On this model, the battle for access to medicines amounts to ensuring, via human rights guarantees, that the rationality of the health system is not replaced by that of its economic rival in legal and policy communications (Fischer-Lescano and Teubner, 2004, pp. 1030, 1046).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document