Cultural Relativism: The Right To Reason

Cultural relativism is a concept where all individuals and their cultures are of equal value. Oftentimes, individuals may be forced, due to current economic or financial conditions, to proceed in an environment that it is not favorable to them. The concept though relies on the opportunity that one day these individuals may be able to live in an environment where their morals and beliefs are accepted. The opposite of relativism is consequentialism. Consequentialism bases moral rules on the consequences. For example, if your views are to spread happiness in order to relieve suffering than one accepts the views of consequentialism. From the Webster dictionary, morality is defined as “beliefs about what right behavior is and what wrong behavior is.” Therefore, morals vary from person to person, race to race, and culture to culture. They are commonly known to be motivated by emotions. The Challenge of Cultural Relativism is a …show more content…
The book of Right to Reason tells us that there are two types of ignorance: invincible and vincible ignorance. Invincible ignorance is lack of knowledge that a person has no way to obtain while vincible ignorance is the lack of knowledge that a rational person is capable of acquiring by making an effort ( Gonsalves 1989,1986, 32). In Catholic theology, invincible ignorance, states that “whether of the law or the fact, is always a valid excuse and excludes sin.” In the secular realm, all ignorance is seen as “vincible”(Jhaveri 2014, 11). Therefore, if one consider that what the Eskimos practice were ignorance and unawareness that the immoral and impermissible decision to kill an individual is unethical, then one can say that they were experiencing vincible ignorance. With the knowledge that abortion is regarded as murder, one cannot automatically judge them on the premises that their acts were unethical. Cultural relativism cannot be correct when the cultural is