Seungbae’s essay on cultural relativism argues that every moral decision one makes is only relevant within the sense of right and wrong depending on their cultural standards. He makes comparisons with cultural ethics as with the laws of motion but does not seem to necessarily relate today’s use of cultural relativism, and it also becomes a sort of backwards continuum in which the relativism that he argues for turns into an absolutist point of view, therefore turning his philosophy into what he is arguing against. He also states that there is a correspondence between Einstein’s laws of relativity with that of an ethical standpoint of relativity. His ideas on what is morally equivalent to right and wrong gives us a standpoint for a relativist view on the nature of reality and the placement of ethics within it. He argues that the ideas of Hitler’s Nazi regime was just as ethical as Mother Teresa’s sermons on peace.
This is where his argument begins to fall apart. He argues that Hitler ‘s Nazi regime was morally correct for his time, but only regards importance of moralistic qualities to the people in power. There are not entire perceptions of correctness when it comes to one singular society or culture. Therefore, it is questionable what it takes to believe in something morally when you cannot just trust the people in power, and specifically because there are different perceptions within that society of what is right and wrong. For example, he argues that this ideology is what right and what is wrong are only relevant to one’s culture. The Jewish people that were being victimized in this country were a part of the culture.
Therefore, he believes that those people were wrong to believe that it was wrong for the Nazi’s to kill their. .selves. This ideology that morals are only relevant to cultural standards of right and wrong and that those are vexing and that they can be changed from one culture to the other is nothing more than Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and our moral obligations to ourselves rather than to our culture as a whole. To keep our culture and our society well and working there must be differing ideologies between the people in our culture or we would not move forward. There would still be slavery and the ruthless killing of people would be okay just as long as you built a culture around these ideas as something There must be struggle to have something come of it and there must be conflict within ideologies for new and better ones to come forth.
When one chooses to only do what is right out of the context of their own culture, things standstill and progression is not made.
