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On Cultural Relativism


            "Cultural relativism is the doctrine that what makes an action right is that it is approved by one's cultural. Cultural relativism does not imply that individuals are infallible, but does imply that cultures are morally infallible. Thus cultures make the moral law, so cultures can do no wrong" (Doing Philosophy, 309). To completely understand cultural relativism it is important to understand the term culture or depends on how you actually view culture. The falseness of cultural relativism can be shown in many different counter examples, but only one well known will be discussed to get the point across that cultural relativism is false. If cultural relativism was customary it is possible that most of us would be dead or never had existed in the first place.
             Every culture in the world is different, we were all raised to believe certain things, some things that many others do not even think about or even know exist and this is were the problem lies in cultural relativism. There are different moral codes for us to follow, who are we to say what is morally right and morally wrong for someone else? Therefore we would have to assume that "because many different cultures have different moral beliefs, the condition that morality is relative to culture seems unavoidable" (Doing Philosophy, 309). So once again this goes back to the point that we cannot tell a culture that their practices are wrong or immoral if everyone in that cultural approves of it.
             Cultural relativism presumes that a moral action within a given society is correct as long as the society believes in the act. This belief is faulted given that, as history has often shown us, certain societies have been forced, or manipulated into, accepting and carrying out certain acts on behalf of the authorities within the society.


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