Cultural Relativism: An Overview

Definition: Morality has its source in the social customs and traditions of particular cultures.
Source of Morality: Culture itself; refined by trial and error for survival.
Moral Standard: An action is moral if it follows the traditions and customs of a specific culture.
Moral Truth: No universal moral truth; truth exists only within each individual culture.
Fundamental Moral Value: Cultural conformity.
Moral Community: Limited to members of a particular culture.
Moral Decision-Making: Requires knowing and following cultural traditions and customs.

Ancient Times: Evident in ancient Greek world, and early Hebrew beliefs where Yahweh was seen exclusively as God of Israel, with other peoples having their own gods (as per the First Commandment's interpretation).
Hebrew Departure: Eventually evolved to monotheism, viewing their God-given morality as superior, moving towards a Divine Command perspective.
Modern Form: Developed by Western anthropologists in the 19th and 20th centuries, studying diverse cultural groups.

Laws: As cultures became 'civilized,' oral moral codes became written laws, making 'moral' synonymous with 'legal.'
National Relativism: In the West, it transitioned to each nation's laws defining morality within its borders.
International Relations: Often observed in international relations, e.g., U.S. troops accommodating Saudi Arabian customs.

Culture Definition: Assumes clearly delineated and insulated cultures, but modern societies are multicultural, leading to conflicting moral rules within individuals and nations.
Moral Disagreement: Makes rational moral disagreement impossible; claims all cultures' rules are correct, even if contradictory.
Moral Progress: Renders the concept of moral progress meaningless; reformers would always be 'wrong' for opposing accepted norms, and new morals are merely different, not better.
Misunderstanding of Tolerance: Falsely assumes it values diversity and tolerance, whereas these are trans-cultural values, and a culture could morally value uniformity and intolerance if these are its traditions.

Understand Before Judging: Necessitates carefully understanding other societies' moral values before judgment, avoiding cultural superiority.
Combat Ethnocentrism: Encourages self-reflection on our own moral traditions, recognizing they are products of their time and may benefit from change (e.g., historical view on slavery).
Trans-cultural Values: Highlights that diversity and tolerance are indeed trans-cultural values, forming the basis for the 20th-century concept of Human Rights, as seen in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( $1948$ ) in response to atrocities like the Holocaust.