Ergänzende Texte:

1. James Rachels: Widerlegung eines einfachen Argumentes für den Kulturrelativismus

The Cultural Differences Argument

Cultural Relativism is a theory about the nature of morality. At first blush it seems quite plausible. However, like all such theories, it may be evaluated by subjecting it to rational analysis; and when we analyze Cultural Relativism we find that it is not so plausible as it first appears to be.

The first thing we need to notice is that at the heart of Cultural Relativism there is a certain form of argument. The strategy used by cultural relativists is to argue from facts about the differences between cultural outlooks to a conclusion about the status of morality. Thus we are invited to accept this reasoning:

(1) The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas the Callatians believed it was right to eat the dead.

(2)      Therefore, eating the dead is neither objectively right nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from culture to culture.

Or, alternatively:

(1) The Eskimos see nothing wrong with infanticide, whereas Americans believe infanticide is immoral.

(2)      Therefore, infanticide is neither objectively right nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from culture to culture.

Clearly, these arguments are variations of one fundamental idea. They are both special cases of a more general argument, which says:

(1) Different cultures have different moral codes.

(2) Therefore, there is no objective "truth" in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.

We may call this the Cultural Differences Argument. To many people, it is very persuasive. But from a logical point of view, is it a sound argument?

It is not sound. The trouble is that the conclusion does not really follow from the premise - that is, even if the premise is true, the conclusion still might be false. The premise concerns what people believe: in some societies, people believe one thing; in other societies, people believe differently. The conclusion, however, concerns what really is the case. The trouble is that this sort of conclusion does not follow logically from this sort of premise.

Consider again the example of the Greeks and Callatians. The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead; the Callatians believed it was right. Does it follow, from the mere fact that they disagreed, that there is no objective truth in the matter? No, it does not follow; for it could be that the practice was objectively right (or wrong) and that one or the other of them was simply mistaken.

To make the point clearer, consider a very different matter. In some societies, people believe the earth is flat. In other societies, such as our own, people believe the earth is (roughly) spherical. Does it follow, from the mere fact that they disagree, that there is no "objective truth" in geography? Of course not; we would never draw such a conclusion because we realize that, in their beliefs about the world, the members of some societies might simply be wrong. There is no reason to think that if the world is round everyone must know it. Similarly, there is no reason to think that if there is moral truth everyone must know it. The fundamental mistake in the Cultural Differences Argument is that it attempts to derive a substantive conclusion about a subject (morality) from the mere fact that people disagree about it.

It is important to understand the nature of the point that is being made here. We are not saying (not yet, anyway) that the conclusion of the argument is false. Insofar as anything being said here is concerned, it is still an open question whether the conclusion is true. We are making a purely logical point and saying that the conclusion does not follow from the premise. This is important, because in order to determine whether the conclusion is true, we need arguments in its support. Cultural Relativism proposes this argument, but unfortunately the argument turns out to be fallacious. So it proves nothing. (James Rachels (1993): The Elements of Moral Philosophy, New York, 2. Aufl., S. 18-20)

2. E. J. Bond: Widerlegung eines einfachen Argumentes für den Kulturrelativismus

Simple Cultural Relativism

There is a simple form of cultural relativism which derives from the ethnologists of the earlier part of the twentieth century, William Graham Sumner, Ruth Benedict, Edward Westermarck, and Margaret Mead. Their argument is as simple as this:

Premise: Accepted norms of conduct vary from culture to culture

Conclusion: Therefore, morality varies from culture to culture

From simply observing the difference in the kinds of behavior that are approved of or disapproved of in different cultures, they derived the conclusion that morality was entirely relative to culture. Questions of good and bad, right and wrong, could be settled only by reference to cultural or community standards or they could not be settled at all. There was nothing else objective to appeal to. Furthermore, this was announced as if it were a new discovery, although cultural relativism was a commonplace among the educated in Plato's time, and was famously taught by the sophist Protagoras.

Unfortunately, however, the argument as it stands is no good. We cannot derive the conclusion from the premise. What makes the argument seem sound is that it contains a suppressed or unstated premise, namely that morality consists in following accepted norms of conduct. Now when, in an argument, a premise is left out (unstated, suppressed), as not being necessary for the argument to be convincing, that is nearly always because the unstated premise is thought to be so obvious that there is no need to state it. This is certainly what has happened here. The full argument, including the suppressed or unstated premise, is the following:

Premise 1: Accepted norms of conduct vary from culture to culture

[Premise 2 (unstated): Morality (being moral or good) consists in following accepted norms of conduct]

Conclusion: Morality varies from culture to culture

The argument is obviously valid. "Valid" is a technical term in logic which means, when applied to an argument, that the conclusion follows logically from the premises. What this means is that you cannot affirm or assert the premises and then go on to deny the conclusion without contradicting yourself, and that means that if the premises are true the conclusion must be true. For to affirm or assert something is to say that it is true, and so, when the conclusion follows logically from the premises, we must, if we take the premises to be true, accept the truth of the conclusion as well. Why? Because if we don't, we will have contradicted ourselves. What this means for us, here and now, is that if premise 1 and premise 2 are true, then necessarily the conclusion is true, and the case for cultural relativism in ethics has been proven.

Now let's examine this argument for cultural relativism step by step. First of all, no one in her right mind would challenge the truth of premise 1. Accepted norms of conduct certainly do vary from culture to culture and, for that matter, from subculture to subculture within a complex culture such as our own. But, because the argument is valid, if we go on to accept premise 2 we are forced to accept the conclusion. The only way to escape is to challenge premise 2, in the hope that we can show it to be false, and that is exactly what I now propose to do. There are two different ways of looking at this second premise: we can interpret it as definitional, as saying that "being moral" ("morality") simply means "following accepted norms of conduct," or we can read it as a substantive moral claim saying, in effect, that if you want to be morally good you must conform to the norms of conduct of the culture you inhabit, and if you fail to conform to these norms then you are morally bad.

These two interpretations of the second premise are quite different. Let us consider the first possibility, namely that it is true by definition. If "morality" or "being moral" or "being good" simply meant "conforming to accepted practices" or "doing the done thing" (following accepted norms of conduct), then no one could challenge any of the norms of her or his culture or subculture without contradicting herself or himself. For on this reading of premise 2, it is established by definition that something is good if it conforms to the accepted norms, and bad if it does not. I would therefore be contradicting myself if I said: "I know this is an accepted norm of conduct, but I believe it to be wrong." But it is perfectly obvious that such remarks are not self-contradictory. And whatever we think of the would-be moral reformer, there is nothing wrong with his or her understanding of the meanings of words! Somebody getting ready to heave a stone at the adulteress might have thought that Jesus (Rabbi Yeshua) was a bit weird when he said (assuming the Bible story to be true): "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." After all it was (according to the story) a norm of conduct and an accepted social practice and (again according to the story) the rabbi obviously knew that - but no one would have thought he was contradicting himself, even though he was saying, in effect, that the practice was wrong and should be done away with. It cannot be true by definition that to be morally good is to do the done thing and never to do anything that is not done.

Now let's consider the second way of interpreting premise 2, that is as a substantive moral claim, namely that the way to be moral or good is to conform to accepted social practices. Notice it is no longer being claimed that this is true by definition; rather, it is taken as telling us how we must behave if we are to be moral or good. The moral reformer is no longer contradicting herself or himself; now he or she is simply mistaken if she claims that there is something morally wrong with some accepted social practice, or that there is a practice that should be introduced because it would be morally good, or morally better than some present practice. However, this is nothing but pure moral conservatism, and no argument for it has been offered. In fact, we have been given no reason at all to believe it. Apparently, we are supposed to accept it as being obviously true or, as philosophers say, self-evident! The rabbi wasn't contradicting himself he simply didn't see that to be morally good is to do the done thing and to avoid doing what is not done. But moral conservatism (extreme conformism) is plainly not self-evidently true. The accepted practice or, to use the ethnologists' word, the mores of a culture can be criticized from within, and on moral grounds. It is obviously not self-contradictory to say, from within a culture in which slavery is an accepted institution or practice: "Slavery should be abolished because it is morally wrong; human beings should not be bought and sold or be merely used for their owners' purposes; human dignity forbids such exploitation." It is equally plain that it is not self-evidently false simply because it is made from within a slave culture. We must, therefore, be able to appeal to something other than accepted practices in making our moral judgments.

But the argument is even worse than this. For if premise 2 is taken not to be true by definition, but as telling us what we all must do if we want to be morally good (namely, follow the accepted social practices of the culture in which we happen to be located), then it has to be a moral principle that is not relative to culture. It is clearly transcultural, i. e. it cuts across all cultures, applying in all times and places, and is not relative to any particular one. What it says, in effect, is "Always do the done thing, whatever that may be, in the place you happen to be" or "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," and this can only be a universal or "absolute" principle of morality, applying to all persons at all places and times. But what was the argument trying to disprove? Precisely the possibility of there being any such universal principles! Thus the argument undermines itself by taking as a premise something that contradicts the conclusion! We cannot use a universal moral principle as part of an argument for cultural relativism in ethics since, if cultural relativism is true, there are no universal moral principles!

Of course, none of this proves that cultural relativism (the conclusion of the argument) is false. It only shows that this particular argument for it is no good, and so if we are going to try to show that cultural relativism is true, we will have to produce a better argument than this. And if there is no better argument, or if no better case can be made, then we have no reason for accepting it. (E. J. Bond (1996): Ethics and Human Well-being. An Introduction to Moral Philosophy, Oxford, S. 22-25)

3. John Leslie Mackie: Argument gegen die Objektivität der Moral

Das Argument aus der Relativität

Das Argument aus der Relativität nimmt seinen Ausgang von der allgemein bekannten Tatsache der Verschiedenheit moralischer Regelsysteme sowohl von Gesellschaft zu Gesellschaft als auch von einer Epoche zur anderen, schließlich noch von der Tatsache unterschiedlicher moralischer Überzeugungen der verschiedenen Gruppen und Klassen innerhalb ein und derselben Gesellschaft. Diese Verschiedenheit als solche ist ein bloßes Datum der deskriptiven Ethik, eine anthropologische Tatsache, die weder ethische Auffassungen erster noch solche zweiter Ordnung in sich einschließt.[2] Dennoch ist sie geeignet, einen Subjektivismus zweiter Ordnung indirekt argumentativ abzusichern: Die Tatsache grundlegender Unterschiede hinsichtlich sittlicher Überzeugungen erster Ordnung macht es schwierig, solche Überzeugungen als Einsichten in objektive Wahrheiten zu deuten. Dennoch spricht das bloße Bestehen solcher Meinungsverschiedenheiten als solches noch nicht gegen die Objektivität sittlicher Werte. Denn auch Meinungsverschiedenheiten in historischen, biologischen oder kosmologischen Fragen beweisen nicht, daß es für diese Wissenschaften keine objektiven Sachverhalte gibt, um die sich dann der Meinungsstreit dreht. Eine Meinungsverschiedenheit in naturwissenschaftlichen Fragen ergibt sich gewöhnlich aus spekulativen Schlußfolgerungen oder Erklärungsversuchen, die sich auf (noch) unzulänglich erforschte Daten stützen; Meinungsverschiedenheiten in moralischen Fragen aber lassen sich kaum in dieser Weise erklären. Denn unterschiedliche moralische Überzeugungen scheinen sich aus unterschiedlichen Formen der Lebensgestaltung zu ergeben. Die ursächliche Verknüpfung scheint gewöhnlich folgender Art zu sein: Man ist von der sittlichen Angemessenheit der Monogamie überzeugt, weil man in Übereinstimmung mit den gesellschaftlichen Gepflogenheiten die Monogamie lebt; man lebt nicht die Monogamie, weil man von ihrer Angemessenheit überzeugt ist. Natürlich kann es sich bei den akzeptierten sittlichen Regeln auch um Idealisierungen der herrschenden Lebensformen handeln, aus denen sie entstanden sind: Die von den Menschen tatsächlich gelebte Monogamie mag weniger vollkommen und streng sein als die, von der sie aufgrund ihrer monogamen Lebensweise überzeugt sind. Das heißt allerdings nicht, daß moralische Überzeugungen rein konventionellen Charakters wären. Natürlich gibt es und hat es immer moralische Ketzer und Reformer gegeben, d. h. Menschen, die sich aus moralischen Gründen, und zwar aus solchen, die auch wir oft billigen, gegen bestehende moralische Regeln und Lebensweisen in ihrer Gesellschaft gewandt haben. Doch läßt sich diese Tatsache meist als eine ihrer Ansicht nach konsequente, obwohl neue und unkonventionelle Anwendung von Regeln verstehen, die sie bereits als Ergebnis einer bestehenden Lebensform für sich selbst übernommen haben. Kurz, das Argument aus der Relativität gewinnt eine gewisse Plausibilität einfach aus der Tatsache, daß sich die unbestreitbaren Unterschiede in den moralischen Regelsystemen leichter mit Hilfe der Hypothese, in ihnen spiegelten sich die unterschiedlichen moralischen Lebensweisen, erklären lassen als mit Hilfe der Hypothese, in ihnen drückten sich die verschiedenen, meist unzulänglichen oder mißlungenen Versuche, objektive Werte zu erfassen, aus.

Bekanntlich wird gegen dieses Argument gewöhnlich eingewandt, daß objektive Geltung nicht primär für sehr spezifische moralische Regeln oder Regelsysteme beansprucht wird, sondern für sehr allgemeine und grundlegende Prinzipien, die wenigstens implizit in allen Gesellschaften anerkannt würden - für solche Prinzipien etwa, die die Grundlage für das, was Sidgwick die verschiedenen Methoden der Ethik genannt hat, bilden: das Prinzip der Universalisierbarkeit, die Regel, man solle immer den spezifischen Regeln jeweils jener gesellschaftlichen Lebensform folgen, nach der man selbst lebt, von der man sich Vorteile verspricht und auf die man sich verläßt, oder irgendein utilitaristisches Prinzip, nach dem man seine Handlungsweise danach ausrichten soll, was das allgemeine Wohl fördert oder zu fördern verspricht. Es läßt sich leicht zeigen daß solche allgemeinen Prinzipien unter unterschiedlichen konkreten Umständen, unter Voraussetzung unterschiedlicher gesellschaftlicher Systeme und bei Setzung unterschiedlicher Prioritäten zu voneinander abweichenden spezifischen moralischen Regeln führen; daher ist die Überlegung, daß die auf diese Weise sich ergebenden spezifischen Regeln von Gesellschaft zu Gesellschaft, von Gruppe zu Gruppe Wandlungen unterworfen sind, wie sie sich an den tatsächlichen Veränderungen moralischer Regelsysteme beobachten lassen, keineswegs abwegig.

Dennoch spricht dieser Einwand nur zum Teil gegen das Argument aus der Relativität. Der ethische Objektivist, der so verfährt, muß einräumen, daß eine objektive sittliche Qualität unmittelbar nur jenen Prinzipien als deskriptiv klar umrissenen Sachverhalten zukommt: Zwar können auch andere moralische Urteile objektiv gültig oder wahr sein, jedoch nur abgeleitet und bedingt - wenn die Umstände andere wären, würde auch anderes gelten. Außerdem sind trotz der Hervorhebung der Universalisierbarkeit, utilitaristischer Prinzipien usw. in der neueren Ethik solche Prinzipien weit davon entfernt, das Ganze von dem zu beschreiben, was üblicherweise tatsächlich als für die Moral grundlegend angesehen wird. Weithin geht es auch um das, was Hare ›Ideale‹ oder weniger freundlich als ›Fanatismus‹ bezeichnet; d. h., wir Menschen beurteilen vielfach das eine als gut und richtig und das andere als schlecht und falsch, nicht - oder wenigstens nicht nur - weil es sich dabei um Schlußfolgerungen aus allgemeinen und weithin anerkannten Prinzipien handelt, sondern weil irgend etwas daran in uns unmittelbar eine bestimmte Reaktion hervorruft, obwohl bei anderen eine völlig entgegengesetzte Reaktion hervorgerufen würde. Die Instanz, der wir unsere grundlegenden moralischen Überzeugungen tatsächlich verdanken, läßt sich wohl viel eher mit ›moralischem Gefühl‹ oder ›moralischer Eingebung‹ beschreiben als mit ›sittlicher Vernunft‹. Bei Berücksichtigung all dieser Ausgangsdaten unseres sittlichen Bewußtseins bleibt das Argument aus der Relativität unerschüttert. (John Leslie Mackie (1977): Ethik. Die Erfindung des moralisch Richtigen und Falschen, durchgesehene und verbesserte Ausgabe, Stuttgart 1983, S. 40-43. Original: Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth 1977, S. 36-38)