By Titus Tan

Cultural relativism is a value theory in philosophy that all values (that is, what is good and bad) are only determined by what the majority of the cultures, to which one belongs, think. Therefore, this theory necessitates the absolute denial of any universal value (that is, values applicable to all humans regardless of which cultures they belong to). 

I acknowledge that the majority opinions on what is acceptable vary greatly from culture to culture. For example, homosexuality is considered as one of the quitessential means to the good life in ancient Greece, whereas it remains criminalised in some countries to this day (Benedict 2). However, I question whether these differences are indeed value differences, so much as that they have to deny the existence of any universal value. If universal values by all means did not exist, the almost universal condemnation of faschism would not exist (Gensler 45). 

To reject this absolute denial of any universal value, I argue for a modified version of cultural relativism that universal values are represented in different forms in different cultures. It is these representational forms rather than values themselves that are relative to cultures. Any value that challenges these universal values (faschism for example) should itself also be challenged as bad values.

To give an example for cultural relativism, some people in Canada are perfectly accustomed to saying “thank you” to bus drivers upon exiting buses. As a Chinese international student, I found this rather intriguing, because people in China will rarely say “thank you”, if the benefactors help us out of their duties. I imagine a cultural relativist would say to this case there is no universal principle to compel one to say “thank you” or not to, and that both actions are appropriate in their respective cultures.

However, if one examines this case according to my argument, there will be a different picture. By dint of a thorough understanding of Chinese culture, these two seemingly distinctive responses serve in fact a universal value despite being represented differently in their respective cultures, that is respect. In China, people will sometimes feel disrespected, if people say “thank you” to their performance of duties, because they feel that those who say “thank you” actually imply that their performance of duties is aimed for some less honorable ends other than duties themselves. Thus seen, although these two cultures represent the universal value respect in different representational forms, they are not to be mistaken as being values themselves.

I think that the reason why some western people adopted cultural relativism is due in large part to their shared guilt of historical cultural imposition (except the minorities such as white supremacists): In history, western cultures had fostered the first civilisation and industrialisation, thus they were convinced that their cultures are superior to other cultures, which further justified their cultural imposition onto other “uncivilised” cultures in the name of “doing good” for them. 

To exemplify, western psychiatry has a long history of pathologising people with trance and catalepsy. However, anthropologist Ruth Benedict revealed that these “abnormal” people by western standards are revered by people from some other cultures, in which these “abnormal” people actually perform pivotal social characters such as shamans (2). 

In the present day, the west has by and large realised this historical wrongdoings and is in the process of reconciling with people from other cultures. In this process, cultural relativism constantly works as a caveat attempting to stop replaying such historical wrongdoings: If all western people share some degree of cultural relativism, they are more likely to curb from telling people from other cultures what is right or wrong.

This may seem persuasive, especially to those who have the implacable guilt at the back of their minds. However, to accept cultural relativism in wholesale is tantamount to jump from one extreme to another: it is either that western values are by default right, therefore totally justified to subvert other cultures’ values or that values are invariably relative to cultures, therefore western people are never entitled to judge for people from a different culture, even if they belong to an almost universally-condemned culture such as faschism. 

My modified version of cultural relativism, on the other hand, is aimed at reconciling this conflict: it holds true belief that universal values are identifiable across the majority of cultures, enabling its adopters to condemn faschism alike, while respecting the different representational forms in different cultures. Therefore, it also urges people from different cultures to seek commonalities in those universal values and restore differences in their representational forms.

In Benedict’s examples, shamans are key political characters in their cultures. Unlike in western politics, shamans’ powers are conferred neither by royal status nor by the popular vote, but by (one possibility) the shared belief among all members of the culture that people with trance and catalepsy are gifted to receive messages from their divinities. However, regardless of which political forms people from different cultures choose to adopt, these variants all serve a universal value in politics, that is social stability and well-functioning.

Harry Gensler (in the voice of Ima Relativist) summerises that if someone morally criticises another person from a different culture, his/her criticism must be based on certain underlying criteria that determine what is good or bad. According to cultural relativism, these criteria in turn are based on the values of the majority of people in one’s culture. Therefore, moral criticism against people from different cultures must always be equivalent to value imposition (45). 

In order for this argument to work, it must be accepted that value imposition is universally bad and tolerance is universally good (Ima Relativist argues for this) (Gensler 45), which directly contradicts cultural relativism itself. Indeed, any value judgement in support of cultural relativism must resort to some universal values. This reveals that even cultural relativists themselves make advantage of universal values to prove the validity of their theory. However, my modified version of cultural relativism could undergo this nightmare of cultural relativism: cultural relativism itself is a kind of representational form of universal values.

Cultural relativism, or the theory that values are the same as majority opinions in a given culture, together with its absolute denial of universal values, cannot be justified because cultural relativism disables the possibility of condemning some de facto already-universally-condemned cultures such as faschism. Besides, all arguments attempting to prove the goodness of cultural relativism have to benefit from some universal values, which by definition run contrary to cultural relativism itself. Meanwhile, my modified version of cultural relativism that acknowledges the existence of universal values and their different representational forms in different cultures not only passes the counter-arguments above, but also promote intercultural understanding by its implication of seeking commonalities while restoring differences.

Work Cited

Benedict, Ruth. “Anthropology and the Abnormal”. 1934, pp. 1-4. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abc3/24dfdd6839b7d47ebc707ebda5e1cd99f79a.pdf

Gensler, Harry. “Cultural Relativism” (Inside Part One: The Status of Morality). Ethical Theory : An Anthology, Edited by Russ Shafer-Landau, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., pp. 44-47