LESSON 6

LAW AS A SOURCE OF AUTHORITY

RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF AUTHORITY
CULTURE AS A SOURCE OF AUTHORITY

Our exposure to different societies and their cultures makes us aware that there
are ways of thinking and valuing that are different from our own, that there is in fact a
wide diversity of how different people believe it is proper to act.

Examples:
There are aesthetic differences (Japanese art vs Indian art),
religious difference (Buddhism vs Christianity),
Etiquette differences (conflicting behaviours regarding dining practices)

In these bases, it may become easy to conclude that this is the case in ethics as well.
There are also various examples that seem to bear these out:

Example 1: Nudity can be more taboo in one culture than in another.

Example 2:Relations between men and women can show a wide variety across
different cultures,

A) ranging from greater liberality and equality on one hand, to

greater inequality and a relation of dominance versus
submission on the other.

From reality of diversity of culture, there are different ways of valuations, meaning
there is no single universal standard, thus what is ethically acceptable or unacceptable
is relative to, or that is to say, dependent on one’s culture, this is called as cultural
relativism.

Remember to Define Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is 1) appealing for it conforms to our experience, which is the

reality of the differences in how cultures make their ethical
valuations.

2) By taking one’s own culture as the standard, we are provided

a basis for our valuations / judgment on what is right or wrong
action.

3) This teaches us to be tolerant of others from different

cultures, as we realize that we are in no position to judge
whether the ethical thought or practice of another culture is
acceptable or unacceptable. In turn, our own culture’s moral
 code is neither superior to nor inferior to any other, but they
would provide us the standards that are appropriate and
applicable to us.

Summary: Ethics is not simply obedience to law, not simply being faithful to
one’s religious affiliations, and be true to one’s cultural background.

BUT

Ethics exist beyond law, religion, and culture.

Let us listen to James Rachels as he present what there may be difficulties between
ethics and cultural relativism, three points:

First, the argument of cultural relativism is premised on the reality of difference.

A) Because different cultures have different moral code, we
cannot say that one moral code is the right one. Does it mean
that there is no right or wrong?

B) It is also a case or common experience to have disagreement

and have the conflict clarified later by someone, an elder or
someone respected by both parties, to help solve the conflict,
does it not show that sometimes what is right or wrong is easily
accessible to one’s judgment or it is not immediately evident,
but it does not necessarily mean that there is no correct
resolution.

Second, under cultural relativism, we realize that we are in no position to render any
kind of Judgment on the practices of another culture. This seems to be a generous and
an open-minded way of respecting others.

But what if the practice seems to call for comment?

A) What if a particular African tribe thought it is advantageous

and therefore right for them to wipe out a neighboring people
through a terrible practice of genocide?

B) What if some Middle Eastern country was highly repressive

toward women reaching to the point of violence?

C) What about the traditional practice of head-hunting that is

still maintained by certain societies in the Cordilleras?

Are we in no position to judge any of this as wrong? Would we be satisfied with

concluding that we cannot judge another culture?
But this is the implications of cultural relativism.

Third, under cultural relativism, we realize that we are in no position to render

judgment on the practices of even our own culture. If our culture was the basis for
determining right and wrong, we would be unable to say that something within our
cultural practice was problematic, precisely because we take our culture to be the
standard for making such judgments. If we came from a particular society wherein
there is a tradition of arranged marriage, we would simply have to accept that this is
how we do things. But what if we are not satisfied by this conclusion? We may be
proud and glad about identifying certain traits, values, and practices of our culture, but
we may not necessarily laud or wish to conform to all of them. It is possible that we
may not be satisfied with the thought of not being able to call our own culture into
question.

Fourth, perhaps the most evident contemporary difficulty with cultural relativismis
that we can maintain it only by following the presumption of culture as a single,
clearly-defined substance or as something fixed and already determined. Now, it is
always possible to find examples of a certain culture having a unique practice or way
of life and to distinguish it from other cultures’ practices, but it is also becoming
increasingly difficult to determine what exactly defines one’s culture.

Is my culture “Filipino”? What if I identify more with a smaller subset within this
group, if, for Example, I am Igorot? Is this then my culture? Why not go further and
define my culture as being Kankana-ey rather than Ibaloi? Is this then my culture? The
point here precisely is the question: What am I supposed to tkae as “my culture”?

We can think of many other examples that reflect the same problem. Let us say that
my father is from Pampanga and my mother is from Leyte, and I was brought up in
MetroManila: What is my culture?

How about you? What is your case? What is your culture?

It is becoming difficult to determine what exactly defines one’s culture. How different
is the Filipino culture from Ibaloi culture to T’boli and to the settlers of Mindanao, to
the Sangir-B’laan? What happens in a family of mixed marriages – father is Ilocano,
mother is Mamanwa and you are born and grow up in Manila? What is your culture?

In an increasingly globalized world, the notion of a static and well-defined culture

gives way to a greater flexibility and integration. One result of this is to call into
question an idea like cultural relativism, which only makes sense if one could imagine
a clear-cut notion of what can be defined as my culture.

We can conclude this criticism of cultural relativism by pointing out how it is a

problem in our study of ethics because it tends to deprive us of our use of critical
thought. On the positive side, cultural relativism promotes a sense of humility, that is,
urging us not to imagine that our own culture is superior to another. Such humility,
however, should go hand in hand with a capacity for a rational, critical discernment
that is truly appreciative of human values. Unfortunately, what happens in cultural
relativism is that it basically renders us incapable of discerning about the values we
may wish to maintain as we are forced to simply accept whatever our culture gives us.
It keeps us from exploring whether there are values that are shared between cultures; it
keeps us from comparing and judging - either positively or negatively - the valuations
that are made by different cultures. As previously mentioned, this pressumes that we
can determine culture in the first place, which becomes increasingly questionable in a
transcultural world.

Answer these questions:

What are the defects or problematic side of cultural relativism
with regards to ethics?

What is the positive side of cultural relativism?

We are not setting law, religion and culture aside as if they are irrelevant, no,
instead, we are urged to think more carefully about how one’s understanding of her
belonging to a certain religion and culture could be more fruitful and meaningful for
her ethical discernment.

Define discernment.

Notes from other sources:

A. Rational Critical thinking can help in solving the limitation of cultural

relativism. Look for values shared by cultures. Values determine by culture is
becoming questionable in a transcultural world.

Give two examples of shared values by your culture

and one other culture that you know

CRITICISM

CULTURE AND ETHICS

Commonly, many people hold this idea that one’s culture dictates what is right
or wrong for an individual. The saying “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” by St
Ambrose applies to them in deciding on ethical issues. This quote implies that one’s
culture is inescapable, that is, one has to look into the standards of her society to
resolve all her ethical problems with finality. How she relates herself with her
relations, her own society, with other societies, and with the natural world are all
predetermined by her membership in the society and culture.

Filipinos’ generalizations about themselves usually end up empty since it is

difficult to determine if other cultures do not have the same trait. Filipinos believe that
they are hospitable, does it mean other cultures are not? They are but they show it
differently. Thus, to simply say that there is a “Filipino way” of doing things,
including a “Filipino way” of thinking about what the right thing to do and why,
remains a matter for discussion. Is there really a Filipino morality that may be distinct
from a Chinese morality? we hear claims from time to time that “Americans are
individualistic; Filipinos are communal,” a supposed difference that grounds, for some
people, radically different sets of moral values. But one may ask: Is there really any
radical difference between one’s culture’s ethical reasoning and another’s? Or do all
cultures share in at least some fundamental values and that the differences are not on
the level of value but on the level of its manifestation in the context of different socio-
historical-cultural dimensions? One culture because of its particular history, may
construct hospitality in a particular way and manifest it in its own customs and
traditions. Yet, both cultures honor hospitality.

James Rachels, American philosopher, gave a clear argument against the

validity of cultural relativism in the world of ethics. Rachels defines cultural relativism
as the position that claims that there is no such thing as objective truth in ethics or
morality. The argument of cultural relativism is that since different cultures have
different moral / ethical codes, then there is no correct moral / ethical code that all
cultures must follow. The implications is that each culture has its own standard of right
or wrong, its validity confined within the culture in question. However, Rachels
questions the logic of this argument: first, that cultural relativism confuses a statement
of fact (that different cultures have different moral codes), which is merely descriptive
with a normative statement (that there cannot be objective truth in morality). Rachels
provides a counter-argument by analogy: Just because some believed that the Earth
was flat, while some believe it is spherical, it does not mean that there is no objective
truth to the actual shape of the Earth.

Beyong his criticism of the logic of cultural relativism, Rachels also employs a
reduction ad absurdum argument. It is an argument which first assume that the claim
in question is correct, in order to show that absurdity that will ensue if the claim is
accepted as such. He uses this argument to show what he thinks is the weakness of the
position. He posits three absurd consequences of accepting the claim of cultural
relativism.

First, if cultural relativism was correct, then one cannot criticize the
practices or beliefs of another culture anymore as long as that culture thinks
that what it is doing is correct. But if that is the case, then the Jews, for
example, cannot criticize the Nazis’ plan to exterminate all Jews in World
 War II, since obviously, the Nazis believed that they were doing the right
thing.

Secondly, if cultural relativism was correct, then one cannot even

criticize the practices or beliefs of one’s own culture. If that is the case, the
black South African citizens under the system of apartheid, a policy of racial
segregation that privileges the dominant race in a society, could not criticize
that official state position.

Thirdly, if cultural relativism was correct, then one cannot even accept
the moral / ethical progress can happen. If that is the case, then the fact that
many societies now recognize women’s rights and children’s rights doe not
necessarily represent a better situation than before when societies refused to
recognize that women and children even had rights.

Rachels concludes his argument by saying that he understands the

attractiveness of the idea of cultural relativism for many people, that is, it recognizes
the differences between cultures. However, he argues that recognizing and respecting
the differences between cultures do not necessarily mean that there is no such thing as
objective truth in morality. He argues instead that though different cultures have
different ways of doing things, cultures may hold certain values in common. Rachels
posits that if one scrutinizes the beliefs and practices of different cultures, however far
apart they are from each other, no culture, whether in the present world or in the past,
would promote murder instead of prohibiting it. Rachels argues that a hypothetical
culture that promotes murder would immediately cease to exist because the members
would start murdering each other. Rachels ends his article on cultural relativism by
noting that someone can recognize and respect cultural differences and still maintain
the right to criticize beliefs and practices that she thinks are wrong, if she performs
proper rational deliberation.

But the thoughts or points of James Rachels should not be taken as a point of
reconciliation of all differences in the name of some abstract universal value system.
The cultural differences between one society and another in terms sof norms, practices,
and beliefs are not trivial matters that one can disregard. They are actually part of
“who one is” and cannot be set aside. One should instead think of a common human
condition, a set of existential situations that human beings share and that are fleshed
out through a group’s unique set of historical experience and manifested in a group’s
particular cultural constructions.

Thus, the challenge of ethics is not the removal of one’s culture because that is
what makes one unique. Instead, one must dig deeper into her own culture in order to
discover how her own people have most meaningfully explored possibly universal
human questions or problems within the particularity of her own people’s native
ground. Thus, hospitality, for example, may be a species-wide question. But how we
Filipinos observe and express hospitality is an insight we Filipinos must explore
because it may be in our own practices that we see how best we had responded to this
human question. It may be best because we responded specifically to the particularity
of our own environmental and historical situation. One can then benefit by paying
attention to her own unique cultural heritage, because doing so may give her a glimpse
into the profound ways her people have grappled with the question of “what ought I to
do?”

Ethics, therefore, should neither be reduced to one’s own cultural standards,

nor should it simplistically dismiss one’s unique cultural beliefs and practices. The
latter can possibly enlighten her toward what is truly ethical. What is important is that
one does not wander into ethical situations blindly, with the naive assumptions that
ethical issues will be resolved automatically by her beliefs and traditions. Instead, she
should challenge herself to continuously work toward a fuller maturity in ethical
decision-making. Moral development then is a prerequisite if the individual is to
encounter ethical situations with a clear mind and with values properly placed with
respect to each other. We shall discuss moral development further but let us now focus
on the relationship between one’s religion and the challenge of ethical decision-
making.

Can you express in your owns the arguments of

James Rachels against cultural relativism in the realm of
ethics.

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