The concept of Moral relativism has existed for thousands of years, but has it ever completely dominated the mindset of the majority of any societies or nations…? If so, how is the concept typically conveyed or influenced upon others…?
I’m not sure moral relativism, as a serious ethical philosophy, has existed for all that long, actually. I don’t know for sure, but I think it is a peculiarly post-colonial concept.
What about Nazi Germany…?
Not moral relativists - ‘right’ was determined by what the Fuhrer dictated, and the welfare of the Aryan race.
Unlikely to have been moral relativists, again - since what was appropriate behaviour would be dictated by their Pharoahs and by their religious beliefs.
This was a time when the discontented amongst the populace - generally speaking, the spokespeople of the poor and oppressed - took it upon themselves to overthrow what they saw as tyranny. Again, not moral relativism: the aristocracy (and anyone seen to be a supporter of the aristocracy) were, by definition, the enemy and worthy of destruction; the ‘underclasses’ - those who had, for centuries, been subject to oppression by the aristocracy and their cronies - were the only ones worthy of moral consideration in those days.
A hotbed of moral dissonance, I would say. I still don’t think this counts as moral relativism - each camp seems quite discrete, thinking that they are right and their opponents are wrong. There is not much tolerance for opposing views.
These are all just my personal impressions, of course - I’ll need to do more research to back them up. But the problem with moral relativism (that is, if it is adopted as a principle by those with the power to enforce moral norms) is that there will always be those who suffer unjustly because of this approach - at the hands of people who think they are doing what is best for everyone.
What are the long-term tendencies that moral relativism leads to compared to Moral absolutism and is Catholicism the main conveyor of moral absolutist influence in the West…?
To pick a fairly obvious example, there is the belief adopted by the governments of supposedly progressive, multicultural societies (such as what we have here in Australia, and what seems to subsist in the UK) that the religious beliefs and traditional practices of “non-mainstream” cultures are to be tolerated and even encouraged because to do otherwise would be an act of oppression. There is tension between secular and religious authorities, and disagreement about how social and moral expectations are to be enforced.
Aboriginal communities in Australia have been permitted to enact tribal punishments upon offenders, such as the thrusting of a spear through the thigh of a violent offender, or the delivery, by the family of the victim, of a beating upon the offender. I don’t necessarily object to these kinds of eye-for-an-eye punishments (some offenders only respond to punishment in kind, after all) but it is not in keeping with the mainstream law of our country.
Then, of course, there is the pressure from some Muslims living in Western societies (including Australia and the UK) to be allowed to enact Sharia law within their own communities. The prolem here is that members of Muslim communities then have little recourse to protection from what can be considered unjust treatment. There are plenty of cases of ‘honour killings’ where offenders have gone largely (if not completely) unpunished because secular legal authorities have no idea of how to proceed against ancient cultural practices supported by religious beliefs. This is moral relativism at its worst - where the authorities consider the demands of ritual and religion to be more important than the needs of real, flesh-and-blood beings.
In case it’s in any doubt, no, I don’t think the Catholic church is a primary purveyor of moral absolutism in the Western world these days - or if it is, it is one that has lost its clout. If anything, those who believe that human welfare is the chief driver of morality have lost patience with the Catholic church, which not only has failed to keep pace with modern attitudes to sexuality and to contraception, for a start, but has also severely blotted its copybook through the scandal of child-rape by priests and the bureaucratic cover-up perpetrated by the church hierarchy.
