Moral Absolutism and Moral Relativism

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.

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

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel10110597 ◽

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.

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The way things go: moral relativism and suspension of judgment

Philosophical Studies ◽

10.1007/s11098-021-01650-z ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Eduardo Pérez-Navarro

Keyword(s):

Moral Relativism ◽

Suspension Of Judgment ◽

The Way

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Individualisation as a social-cultural process and morality

Pedagogika. Studia i Rozprawy ◽

10.16926/p.2020.29.01 ◽

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.

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

Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations ◽

10.6017/scjr.v2i2.1425 ◽

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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