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C H A P T E R ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± 2 IS IT ALL RELATIVE? Noting that what one society deems morally wrong, another deems right, ethical relativists conclude that morals are like manners or style of dress. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, quoting the poet Pindar, long ago announced the rela- tivist principle when he said, “Custom is king.” Ethical relativism became popular in the nineteenth century when European social scientists traveled the world and discovered a bewildering variety of moral norms and practices. Anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and sociologists like Wil- liam Graham Sumner embraced ethical relativism and gave it the cachet of science. Ethical relativism is a tempting doctrine because it appeals to our desire to be tolerant of other societies. However, it has not found much favor among profes- sional philosophers, who point out that while tolerance is a virtue, indifference to suffering is a vice. Several of the philosophers and moralists included in this chapter—Loretta M. Kopelman, Louis Pojman, R. M. MacIver, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—believe that while much morality is indeed a matter of local custom, some objectively valid moral principles apply to everyone. For them, tolerance ends when a practice or custom violates a universal human right. Lawrence Lengbeyer tries to work out a compromise between relativism and absolutism. Recently a number of anthropologists have joined philosophers and theologians in rejecting relativism. They challenge the idea that social scientists must always be neutral bystanders. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban struggles with the problem of whether to condemn or to refrain from condemning the societies she studies. In the end she finds herself unable to retain the neutral “scientific” stance. Thomas Nagel argues that the Golden Rule in its negative form—not to do unto others what you would not have them do unto you—provides an objective nonrelativistic basis for morality. Finally, when a relativist like Benedict or Sumner points to the diversity of vil- lages, and thus of norms, those who believe in universal moral standards can point to the newly emerging “global village.” Universal ethical principles are already fully 76 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. codified for the “global village” in such documents as the United Nations Declara- tion of Human Rights, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Children, and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Women. These declarations firmly assert that all people, regardless of cultural background, regardless of gender or social status, should enjoy certain basic moral rights. While it is certainly true that the United Nations declarations are not universally enforced, their very exis- tence suggests there may be far more moral consensus in the world t.

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C H A P T E R ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ±
± ± ± ± 2 IS IT ALL RELATIVE? Noting that what one society deems morally wrong, another deems right, ethical relativists conclude that morals are like manners or style of dress. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, quoting the poet Pindar, long ago announced the rela- tivist principle when he said, “Custom is king.” Ethical relativism became popular in the nineteenth century when European social scientists traveled the world and discovered a bewildering variety of moral norms and practices. Anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and sociologists like Wil- liam Graham Sumner embraced ethical relativism and gave it the cachet of science. Ethical relativism is a tempting doctrine because it appeals to our desire to be tolerant of other societies. However, it has not found much favor among profes- sional philosophers, who point out that while tolerance is a virtue, indifference to suffering is a vice. Several of the philosophers and moralists included in this chapter—Loretta M. Kopelman, Louis Pojman, R. M. MacIver, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—believe that while much morality is indeed a matter of local custom,
some objectively valid moral principles apply to everyone. For them, tolerance ends when a practice or custom violates a universal human right. Lawrence Lengbeyer tries to work out a compromise between relativism and absolutism. Recently a number of anthropologists have joined philosophers and theologians in rejecting relativism. They challenge the idea that social scientists must always be neutral bystanders. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban struggles with the problem of whether to condemn or to refrain from condemning the societies she studies. In the end she finds herself unable to retain the neutral “scientific” stance. Thomas Nagel argues that the Golden Rule in its negative form—not to do unto others what you would not have them do unto you—provides an objective nonrelativistic basis for morality. Finally, when a relativist like Benedict or Sumner points to the diversity of vil- lages, and thus of norms, those who believe in universal moral standards can point to the newly emerging “global village.” Universal ethical principles are already fully 76 © C en
ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n
al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. codified for the “global village” in such documents as the United Nations Declara- tion of Human Rights, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Children, and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Women. These declarations
firmly assert that all people, regardless of cultural background, regardless of gender or social status, should enjoy certain basic moral rights. While it is certainly true that the United Nations declarations are not universally enforced, their very exis- tence suggests there may be far more moral consensus in the world than the relati- vists allow. IS IT ALL RELATIVE? 77 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es
er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut
ho riz at io n. Morality As Custom Herodotus Herodotus (c. 485–425 B.C.) was the first Western historian. Much of what we know about the ancient world in and around Greece derives from him. Following is one of the fragments of text by Herodotus available to us today. Although brief, it clearly shows that Herodotus may well be the first thinker in Western intellectual history to espouse a version of what today we call ethical relativism. If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and
the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evi- dence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one’s country. One might recall, in particular, an anecdote of Darius. When he was king of Persia, he summoned the Greeks who happened to be present at his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in the pres- ence of the Greeks, and through an interpreter, so that they could understand what was said, he asked some Indians, of the tribe called Callatiae, who do in fact eat their parents’ dead bodies, what they would take to burn them. They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing. One can see by this what custom can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he called it “king of all.” STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Herodotus says that people prefer the customs of their own country over those of all other countries. That may have been true in his day. Is it true in ours? 2. Herodotus’s example of what the ancient Greeks and Indians did with the bodies of their dead parents clearly shows that cultures have different
customs. But does that make the case for ethical relativism? Though the two societies did it in very different ways, both seem to be engaged in honoring their deceased parents. MORALITY AS CUSTOM From Herodotus’s The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, revised by A. R. Burn (Penguin Classics 1954, revised edition 1972), copyright © the Estate of Aubrey de Sélincourt, 1954, copyright © A. R. Burn, 1972. 78 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r
es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a
ut ho riz at io n. A Defense of Moral Relativism Ruth Benedict Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) was one of America’s foremost anthropolo- gists. Her Patterns of Culture (1935) is considered a classic of comparative anthropology. Morality, says Ruth Benedict, is a convenient term for socially approved customs (that is, mores). What one society approves may be disgraceful and unacceptable to another. Moral rules, like rules of etiquette or styles of dress, vary from society to society. Morality is culturally relative. Values are shaped by culture. As Benedict points out, trances are highly regarded in India, so in India many people have trances. Some ancient societies praised homosexual love, so there homosexuality was a norm. Where
material possessions are highly valued, people amass property. “Most indi- viduals are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born.” Modern social anthropology has become more and more a study of the varieties and common elements of cultural environment and the consequences of these in human behavior. For such a study of diverse social orders primitive peoples fortu- nately provide a laboratory not yet entirely vitiated by the spread of a standardized worldwide civilization. Dyaks and Hopis, Fijians and Yakuts are significant for psy- chological and sociological study because only among these simpler peoples has there been sufficient isolation to give opportunity for the development of localized social forms. In the higher cultures the standardization of custom and belief over a couple of continents has given a false sense of the inevitability of the particular forms that have gained currency, and we need to turn to a wider survey in order to check the conclusions we hastily base upon this near- universality of familiar cus- toms. Most of the simpler cultures did not gain the wide currency of the one which, out of our experience, we identify with human nature, but this was for various his- torical reasons, and certainly not for any that gives us as its carriers a monopoly of social good or of social sanity. Modern civilization, from this point of view,
becomes not a necessary pinnacle of human achievement but one entry in a long series of possible adjustments. These adjustments, whether they are in mannerisms like the ways of showing anger, or joy, or grief in any society, or in major human drives like those of sex, prove to be far more variable than experience in any one culture would suggest. In certain fields, such as that of religion or of formal marriage arrangements, these A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM From “Anthropology and the Abnormal” by Ruth Benedict, in The Journal of General Psychology 10 (1934): 59–82. Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 Eighteenth St., N.W., Washington, DC, 20036-1802. Copyright © 1934. RUTH BENEDICT: A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM 79 © C en ga ge L ea rn in
g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w ith
ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. wide limits of variability are well known and can be fairly described. In others it is not yet possible to give a generalized account, but that does not absolve us of the task of indicating the significance of the work that has been done and of the pro- blems that have arisen. One of these problems relates to the customary modern normal- abnormal cate- gories and our conclusions regarding them. In how far are such categories culturally determined, or in how far can we with assurance regard them as absolute? In how far can we regard inability to function socially as diagnostic of
abnormality, or in how far is it necessary to regard this as a function of the culture? As a matter of fact, one of the most striking facts that emerge from a study of widely varying cultures is the ease with which our abnormals function in other cul- tures. It does not matter what kind of “abnormality” we choose for illustration, those which indicate extreme instability, or those which are more in the nature of character traits like sadism or delusions of grandeur or of persecution, there are well-described cultures in which these abnormals function at ease and with honor, and apparently without danger or difficulty to the society. The most notorious of these is trance and catalepsy. Even a very mild mystic is aberrant in our culture. But most peoples have regarded even extreme psychic man- ifestations not only as normal and desirable, but even as characteristic of highly val- ued and gifted individuals. This was true even in our own cultural background in that period when Catholicism made the ecstatic experience the mark of sainthood. It is hard for us, born and brought up in a culture that makes no use of the experi- ence, to realize how important a role it may play and how many individuals are capable of it, once it has been given an honorable place in any society.… Cataleptic and trance phenomena are, of course, only one
illustration of the fact that those whom we regard as abnormals may function adequately in other cul- tures. Many of our culturally discarded traits are selected for elaboration in differ- ent societies. Homosexuality is an excellent example, for in this case our attention is not constantly diverted, as in the consideration of trance, to the interruption of rou- tine activity which it implies. Homosexuality poses the problem very simply. A ten- dency toward this trait in our culture exposes an individual to all the conflicts to which all aberrants are always exposed, and we tend to identify the consequences of this conflict with homosexuality. But these consequences are obviously local and cultural. Homosexuals in many societies are not incompetent, but they may be such if the culture asks adjustments of them that would strain any man’s vitality. Wherever homosexuality has been given an honorable place in any society, those to whom it is congenial have filled adequately the honorable roles society assigns to them. Plato’s Republic is, of course, the most convincing statement of such a read- ing of homosexuality. It is presented as one of the major means to the good life, and it was generally so regarded in Greece at that time. The cultural attitude toward homosexuals has not always been on such a high ethical plane, but it has been very varied. Among many American Indian tribes there exists the institution of the berdache, as the French called
them. These men- women were men who at puberty or thereafter took the dress and the occupations of women. Sometimes they married other men and lived with them. Sometimes they were men with no inversion, persons of weak sexual endowment who chose this rôle to avoid the jeers of the women. The berdaches were never regarded as of 80 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es
er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut
ho riz at io n. first-rate super-natural power, as similar men-women were in Siberia, but rather as leaders in women’s occupations, good healers in certain diseases, or, among certain tribes, as the genial organizers of social affairs. In any case, they were socially placed. They were not left exposed to the conflicts that visit the deviant who is excluded from participation in the recognized patterns of his society. The most spectacular illustrations of the extent to which normality may be cul- turally defined are those cultures where an abnormality of our culture is the corner- stone of their social structure. It is not possible to do justice to these possibilities in a short discussion. A recent study of an island of northwest Melanesia by Fortune describes a society built upon traits which we regard as beyond the border of para- noia. In this tribe the exogamic groups look upon each other as prime manipulators of black magic, so that one marries always into an enemy group which remains for life one’s deadly and unappeasable foes. They look upon a good
garden crop as a confession of theft, for everyone is engaged in making magic to induce into his gar- den the productiveness of his neighbors’; therefore no secrecy in the island is so rig- idly insisted upon as the secrecy of a man’s harvesting of his yams. Their polite phrase at the acceptance of a gift is, “And if you now poison me, how shall I repay you this present?” Their preoccupation with poisoning is constant; no woman ever leaves her cooking pot for a moment untended. Even the great affinal economic exchanges that are characteristic of this Melanesian culture area are quite altered in Dobu since they are incompatible with this fear and distrust that pervades the culture. They go farther and people the whole world outside their own quarters with such malignant spirits that all-night feasts and ceremonials simply do not occur here. They have even rigorous religiously enforced customs that forbid the sharing of seed even in one family group. Anyone else’s food is deadly poison to you, so that communality of stores is out of the question. For some months before harvest the whole society is on the verge of starvation, but if one falls to the temp- tation and eats up one’s seed yams, one is an outcast and a beachcomber for life. There is no coming back. It involves, as a matter of course, divorce and the break- ing of all social ties. Now in this society where no one may work with another and no
one may share with another, Fortune describes the individual who was regarded by all his fellows as crazy. He was not one of those who periodically ran amok and, beside himself and frothing at the mouth, fell with a knife upon anyone he could reach. Such behavior they did not regard as putting anyone outside the pale. They did not even put the individuals who were known to be liable to these attacks under any kind of control. They merely fled when they saw the attack coming on and kept out of the way. “He would be all right tomorrow.” But there was one man of sunny, kindly disposition who liked work and liked to be helpful. The compul- sion was too strong for him to repress it in favor of the opposite tendencies of his culture. Men and women never spoke of him without laughing; he was silly and simple and definitely crazy. Nevertheless, to the ethnologist used to a culture that has, in Christianity, made his type the model of all virtue, he seemed a pleasant fellow.… … Among the Kwakiutl it did not matter whether a relative had died in bed of disease, or by the hand of an enemy, in either case death was an affront to be wiped out by the death of another person. The fact that one had been caused to mourn RUTH BENEDICT: A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM 81
© C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib
ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. was proof that one had been put upon. A chief’s sister and her daughter had gone
up to Victoria, and either because they drank bad whiskey or because their boat capsized they never came back. The chief called together his warriors. “Now I ask you, tribes, who shall wail? Shall I do it or shall another?” The spokesman answered, of course, “Not you, Chief. Let some other of the tribes.” Immediately they set up the war pole to announce their intention of wiping out the injury, and gathered a war party. They set out, and found seven men and two children asleep and killed them. “Then they felt good when they arrived at Sebaa in the evening.” The point which is of interest to us is that in our society those who on that occasion would feel good when they arrived at Sebaa that evening would be the definitely abnormal. There would be some, even in our society, but it is not a rec- ognized and approved mood under the circumstances. On the Northwest Coast those are favored and fortunate to whom that mood under those circumstances is congenial, and those to whom it is repugnant are unlucky. This latter minority can register in their own culture only by doing violence to their congenial responses and acquiring others that are difficult for them. The person, for instance, who, like a Plains Indian whose wife has been taken from him, is too proud to fight, can deal with the Northwest Coast civilization only by ignoring its strongest bents. If he can- not achieve it, he is the deviant in that culture, their instance of
abnormality. This head-hunting that takes place on the Northwest Coast after a death is no matter of blood revenge or of organized vengeance. There is no effort to tie up the subsequent killing with any responsibility on the part of the victim for the death of the person who is being mourned. A chief whose son has died goes visiting wher- ever his fancy dictates, and he says to his host, “My prince has died today, and you go with him.” Then he kills him. In this, according to their interpretation, he acts nobly because he has not been downed. He has thrust back in return. The whole procedure is meaningless without the fundamental paranoid reading of bereave- ment. Death, like all the other untoward accidents of existence, confounds man’s pride and can only be handled in the category of insults. Behavior honored upon the Northwest Coast is one which is recognized as abnormal in our civilization, and yet it is sufficiently close to the attitudes of our own culture to be intelligible to us and to have a definite vocabulary with which we may discuss it. The megalomaniac paranoid trend is a definite danger in our society. It is encouraged by some of our major preoccupations, and it confronts us with a choice of two possible attitudes. One is to brand it as abnormal and repre- hensible, and is the attitude we have chosen in our civilization. The other is to make
it an essential attribute of ideal man, and this is the solution in the culture of the Northwest Coast. These illustrations, which it has been possible to indicate only in the briefest manner, force upon us the fact that normality is culturally defined. An adult shaped to the drives and standards of either of these cultures, if he were transported into our civilization, would fall into our categories of abnormality. He would be faced with the psychic dilemmas of the socially unavailable. In his own culture, however, he is the pillar of society, the end result of socially inculcated mores, and the prob- lem of personal instability in his case simply does not arise. No one civilization can possibly utilize in its mores the whole potential range of human behavior. Just as there are great numbers of possible phonetic articulations, 82 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn
in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w
ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. and the possibility of language depends on a selection and standardization of a few of these in order that speech communication may be possible at all, so the possibil- ity of organized behavior of every sort, from the fashions of local dress and houses to the dicta of a people’s ethics and religion, depends upon a similar selection among the possible behavior traits. In the field of recognized economic obligations or sex tabus this selection is as non-rational and subconscious a process as it is in the field of phonetics. It is a process which goes on in the group
for long periods of time and is historically conditioned by innumerable accidents of isolation or of con- tact of peoples. In any comprehensive study of psychology, the selection that differ- ent cultures have made in the course of history within the great circumference of potential behavior is of great significance. Every society, beginning with some slight inclination in one direction or another, carries its preference farther and farther, integrating itself more and more completely upon its chosen basis, and discarding those types of behavior that are uncongenial. Most of those organizations of personality that seem to us most uncontrovertibly abnormal have been used by different civilizations in the very foundations of their institutional life. Conversely the most valued traits of normal individuals have been looked on in differently organized cultures as aberrant. Nor- mality, in short, within a very wide range, is culturally defined. It is primarily a term for the socially elaborated segment of human behavior in any culture; and abnormality, a term for the segment that that particular civilization does not use. The very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long tradi- tional habits of our own society. It is a point that has been made more often in relation to ethics than in relation to psychiatry. We do not any longer make the mistake of
deriving the morality of our locality and decade directly from the inevitable constitution of human nature. We do not elevate it to the dignity of a first principle. We recognize that morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Man- kind has always preferred to say, “It is morally good,” rather than “It is habitual,” and the fact of this preference is matter enough for a critical science of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous. The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good. It is that which society has approved. A normal action is one which falls well within the limits of expected behavior for a particular society. Its variability among different peoples is essentially a function of the variability of the behavior patterns that dif- ferent societies have created for themselves, and can never be wholly divorced from a consideration of culturally institutionalized types of behavior. Each culture is a more or less elaborate working-out of the potentialities of the segment it has chosen. In so far as a civilization is well integrated and consistent within itself, it will tend to carry farther and farther, according to its nature, its ini- tial impulse toward a particular type of action, and from the point of view of any other culture those elaborations will include more and more extreme and aberrant traits.
Each of these traits, in proportion as it reinforces the chosen behavior patterns of that culture, is for that culture normal. Those individuals to whom it is congenial either congenitally, or as the result of childhood sets, are accorded prestige in that culture, and are not visited with the social contempt or disapproval which their RUTH BENEDICT: A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM 83 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es
er ve d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut
ho riz at io n. traits would call down upon them in a society that was differently organized. On the other hand, those individuals whose characteristics are not congenial to the selected type of human behavior in that community are the deviants, no matter how valued their personality traits may be in a contrasted civilization. The Dobuan who is not easily susceptible to fear of treachery, who enjoys work and likes to be helpful, is their neurotic and regarded as silly. On the Northwest Coast the person who finds it difficult to read life in terms of an insult contest will be the person upon whom fall all the difficulties of the culturally unprovided for. The person who does not find it easy to humiliate a neighbor, nor to see humilia- tion in his own experience, who is genial and loving, may, of course, find some unstandardized way of achieving satisfactions in his society, but not in the major patterned responses that his culture requires of him. If he is born to play an impor- tant rôle in a family with many hereditary privileges, he can
succeed only by doing violence to his whole personality. If he does not succeed, he has betrayed his cul- ture; that is, he is abnormal. I have spoken of individuals as having sets toward certain types of behavior, and of these sets as running sometimes counter to the types of behavior which are institutionalized in the culture to which they belong. From all that we know of con- trasting cultures it seems clear that differences of temperament occur in every soci- ety. The matter has never been made the subject of investigation, but from the available material it would appear that these temperament types are very likely of universal recurrence. That is, there is an ascertainable range of human behavior that is found wherever a sufficiently large series of individuals is observed. But the pro- portion in which behavior types stand to one another in different societies is not universal. The vast majority of the individuals in any group are shaped to the fash- ion of that culture. In other words, most individuals are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born. In a society that values trance, as in India, they will have supernormal experience. In a society that institutionalizes homosexuality, they will be homosexual. In a society that sets the gathering of pos- sessions as the chief human objective, they will amass property. The deviants, what- ever the type of behavior the culture has institutionalized, will
remain few in number, and there seems no more difficulty in moulding that vast malleable major- ity to the “normality” of what we consider an aberrant trait, such as delusions of reference, than to the normality of such accepted behavior patterns as acquisitive- ness. The small proportion of the number of the deviants in any culture is not a function of the sure instinct with which that society has built itself upon the funda- mental sanities, but of the universal fact that, happily, the majority of mankind quite readily take any shape that is presented to them.… STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Do you think that the fact of cultural diversity is itself an argument for ethical relativ- ism? Explain. 2. If Benedict’s defense of ethical relativism is correct, then the correct way to resolve a personal dilemma might be to take a survey or poll to see what the majority in your society think is right. If the majority favor capital punishment and oppose abortion, for example, then capital punishment is right and abortion is wrong. Can you defend Benedict against this odd consequence? Explain. 84 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C
en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io
n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. 3. Do you think that certain types of behavior (for example, executing children or beating animals to death) are wrong wherever they occur, despite attitudes prevailing in the societies that practice them? If you believe that such acts are
universally wrong, what makes them wrong? 4. How might Benedict account for notions of moral enlightenment and moral progress? A Defense of Cultural Relativism William Graham Sumner William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) was a sociologist, an economist, and a proponent of Darwinism. His books include What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883) and Folkways (1906). William Graham Sumner claims that his ethical relativism is derived from having observed other societies. According to Sumner, the “folkways”— that is, the customs, mores, and traditions of each society—are so ingrained in its members that they naturally come to think of them as objectively “right” and “good.” We may build elaborate philosophical and legal doctrines around these concepts, but it is the folkways that deter- mine their true meaning. There is a right way to catch game, to win a wife, to make one’s self appear, to cure disease, to honor ghosts, to treat comrades or strangers, to behave when a child is born, on the warpath, in council, and so on in all cases which can arise. The ways
are defined on the negative side, that is, by taboos. The “right” way is the way which the ancestors used and which has been handed down. The tradition is its own warrant. It is not held subject to verification by experience. The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to them to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves the authority of the ances- tral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis. The notion of right and ought is the same in regard to all the folkways.… The morality of a group at a time is the sum of the taboos and prescriptions in the folkways by which right conduct is defined. Therefore morals can never be intu- itive. They are historical, institutional, and empirical. World philosophy, life policy, right, rights, and morality are all products of the folkways. They are reflections on, and generalizations from, the experience of pleasure and pain which is won in efforts to carry on the struggle for existence under actual life conditions. A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM From Folkways by William Graham Sumner. WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM 85
© C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib
ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. The generalizations are very crude and vague in their germinal forms. They are all
embodied in folklore, and all our philosophy and science have been developed out of them. Mores Are a Directive Force Of course the view which has been stated is antagonistic to the view that philoso- phy and ethics furnish creative and determining forces in society and history. That view comes down to us from the Greek philosophy and it has now prevailed so long that all current discussion conforms to it. Philosophy and ethics are pursued as independent disciplines, and the results are brought to the science of society and to statesmanship and legislation as authoritative dicta. We also have Völkerpsycho- logie, Sozialpolitik, and other intermediate forms which show the struggle of meta- physics to retain control of the science of society. The “historic sense,” the Zeitgeist, and other terms of similar import are partial recognitions of the mores and their importance in the science of society. We shall see below that philosophy and ethics are products of the folkways. They are taken out of the mores, but are never original and creative; they are secondary and derived. They often interfere in the second stage of the sequence—act, thought, act. Then they produce harm, but some ground is furnished for the claim that they are creative or at least regulative. In fact, the real process in great bodies of men is not one of deduction from any
great principle of philosophy or ethics. It is one of minute efforts to live well under existing conditions, which efforts are repeated indefinitely by great numbers, getting strength from habit and from the fellowship of united action. The resultant folkways become coercive. All are forced to conform, and the folkways dominate the societal life. Then they seem true and right, and arise into mores as the norm of welfare. Thence are produced faiths, ideas, doctrines, religions, and philosophies, according to the stage of civilization and the fashions of reflection and generalization. What Is Goodness or Badness of the Mores? It is most important to notice that, for the people of a time and place, their own mores are always good, or rather that for them there can be no question of the goodness or badness of their mores. The reason is because the standards of good and right are in the mores. If the life conditions change, the traditional folkways may produce pain and loss, or fail to produce the same good as formerly. Then the loss of comfort and ease brings doubt into the judgment of welfare (causing doubt of the pleasure of the gods, or of war power, or of health), and thus dis- turbs the unconscious philosophy of the mores. Then a later time will pass judg- ment on the mores. Another society may also pass judgment on the mores. In our
literary and historical study of the mores we want to get from them their educa- tional value, which consists in the stimulus or warning as to what is, in its effects, societally good or bad. This may lead us to reject or neglect a phenomenon like infanticide, slavery, or witchcraft, as an old “abuse” and “evil,” or to pass by the crusades as a folly which cannot recur. Such a course would be a great error. Everything in the mores of a time and place must be regarded as justified with 86 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht
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a ut ho riz at io n. regard to that time and place. “Good” mores are those which are well adapted to the situation. “Bad” mores are those which are not so adapted. The mores are not so stereotyped and changeless as might appear, because they are forever moving towards more complete adaptation to conditions and interests, and also towards more complete adjustment to each other. People in mass have never made or kept up a custom in order to hurt their own interests. They have made innumerable errors as to what their interests were and how to satisfy them, but they have always aimed to serve their interests as well as they could. This gives the stand- point for the student of the mores. All things in them come before him on the same plane. They all bring instruction and warning. They all have the same rela- tion to power and welfare. The mistakes in them are component parts of them. We do not study them in order to approve some of them and
condemn others. They are all equally worthy of attention from the fact that they existed and were used. The chief object of study in them is their adjustment to interests, their rela- tion to welfare, and their coordination in a harmonious system of life policy. For the men of the time there are no “bad” mores. What is traditional and current is the standard of what ought to be. The masses never raise any question about such things. If a few raise doubts and questions, this proves that the folkways have already begun to lose firmness and the regulative element in the mores has begun to lose authority. This indicates that the folkways are on their way to a new adjustment. The extreme of folly, wickedness, and absurdity in the mores is witch persecutions, but the best men in the seventeenth century had no doubt that witches existed, and that they ought to be burned. The religion, statecraft, juris- prudence, philosophy, and social system of that age all contributed to maintain that belief. It was rather a culmination than a contradiction of the current faiths and convictions, just as the dogma that all men are equal and that one ought to have as much political power in the state as another was the culmination of the political dogmatism and social philosophy of the nineteenth century. Hence our judgments of the good or evil consequences of folkways are to be kept separate from our study of the historical phenomena of them, and of their
strength and the reasons for it. The judgments have their place in plans and doctrines for the future, not in a retrospect. The Mores Have the Authority of Facts The mores come down to us from the past. Each individual is born into them as he is born into the atmosphere, and he does not reflect on them, or criticize them any more than a baby analyzes the atmosphere before he begins to breathe it. Each one is subjected to the influence of the mores, and formed by them, before he is capable of reasoning about them. It may be objected that nowadays, at least, we criticize all traditions, and accept none just because they are handed down to us. If we take up cases of things which are still entirely or almost entirely in the mores, we shall see that this is not so. There are sects of free- lovers amongst us who want to discuss pair marriage. They are not simply people of evil life. They invite us to discuss rationally our inherited customs and ideas as to marriage, which, they say, are by no means so excellent and elevated as we believe. They WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM 87 © C
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n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. have never won any serious attention. Some others want to argue in favor of polygamy on grounds of expediency. They fail to obtain a hearing. Others want to discuss property. In spite of some literary activity on their
part, no discussion of property, bequest, and inheritance has ever been opened. Property and mar- riage are in the mores. Nothing can ever change them but the unconscious and imperceptible movement of the mores. Religion was originally a matter of the mores. It became a societal institution and a function of the state. It has now to a great extent been put back into the mores. Since laws with penalties to enforce religious creeds or practices have gone out of use any one may think and act as he pleases about religion. Therefore, it is not now “good form” to attack religion. Infidel publications are now tabooed by the mores, and are more effectually repressed than ever before. They produce no controversy. Democracy is in our American mores. It is a product of our physical and economic conditions. It is impossible to discuss or criticize it. It is glorified for popularity, and is a subject of dithyrambic rhetoric. No one treats it with complete candor and sincerity. No one dares to analyze it as he would aristocracy or autocracy. He would get no hearing and would only incur abuse. The thing to be noticed in all these cases is that the masses oppose a deaf ear to every argument against the mores. It is only insofar as things have been transferred from the mores into laws and positive institutions that there is discussion about them or rationalizing upon them. The mores contain the norm by which, if we should discuss the
mores, we should have to judge the mores. We learn the mores as unconsciously as we learn to walk and eat and breathe. The masses never learn how we walk, and eat, and breathe, and they never know any reason why the mores are what they are. The justification of them is that when we wake to consciousness of life we find them facts which already hold us in the bonds of tradition, custom, and habit. The mores contain embodied in them notions, doctrines, and maxims, but they are facts. They are in the present tense. They have nothing to do with what ought to be, will be, may be, or once was, if it is not now. Mores and Morals; Social Code For everyone the mores give the notion of what ought to be. This includes the notion of what ought to be done, for all should cooperate to bring to pass, in the order of life, what ought to be. All notions of propriety, decency, chastity, polite- ness, order, duty, right, rights, discipline, respect, reverence, cooperation, and fel- lowship, especially all things in regard to which good and ill depend entirely on the point at which the line is drawn, are in the mores. The mores can make things seem right and good to one group or one age which to another seem antagonistic to every instinct of human nature. The thirteenth century bred in every heart such a sentiment in regard to heretics that inquisitors had no more
misgivings in their pro- ceedings than men would have now if they should attempt to exterminate rattle- snakes. The sixteenth century gave to all such notions about witches that witch persecutors thought they were waging war on enemies of God and man. Of course the inquisitors and witch persecutors constantly developed the notions of heretics and witches. They exaggerated the notions and then gave them back again to the 88 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r
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ut ho riz at io n. mores, in their expanded form, to inflame the hearts of men with terror and hate and to become, in the next stage, so much more fantastic and ferocious motives. Such is the reaction between the mores and the acts of the living generation. The world philosophy of the age is never anything but the reflection on the mental hori- zon, which is formed out of the mores, of the ruling ideas which are in the mores themselves. It is from a failure to recognize the to and fro in this reaction that the current notion arises that mores are produced by doctrines. The “morals” of an age are never anything but the consonance between what is done and what the mores of the age require. The whole revolves on itself, in the relation of the specific to the general, within the horizon formed by the mores. Every attempt to win an outside standpoint from which to reduce the whole to an absolute philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is a delusion. New elements are brought in
only by new conquests of nature through science and art. The new conquests change the conditions of life and the interests of the members of the society. Then the mores change by adaptation to new conditions and interests. The philosophy and ethics then follow to account for and justify the changes in the mores; often, also, to claim that they have caused the changes. They never do anything but draw new lines of bearing between the parts of the mores and the horizon of thought within which they are enclosed, and which is a deduction from the mores. The horizon is widened by more knowledge, but for one age it is just as much a generalization from the mores as for another. It is always unreal. It is only a prod- uct of thought. The ethical philosophers select points on this horizon from which to take their bearings, and they think that they have won some authority for their sys- tems when they travel back again from the generalization to the specific custom out of which it was deduced. The cases of the inquisitors and witch persecutors who toiled arduously and continually for their chosen ends, for little or no reward, show us the relation between mores on the one side and philosophy, ethics, and religion on the other. STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Sumner says, “For the people of a time and place, their own mores are always good,
or rather … for them there can be no question of the goodness or badness of their mores.” Explain his position. Has Sumner overlooked the possibility that a people could wonder whether their own mores are correct? Or does Sumner deny this is possible? 2. Sumner says that we often pass judgment on mores of the past or on mores of other people in the present. For example, we now think that infanticide and slavery were wrong. Why does Sumner believe that such moralizing is inappropriate? 3. Sumner believes that mores change when scientific discoveries or technological inven- tions change the conditions of life. Why is it only practical inventions that change mores, and not moral insights? 4. What is the Zeitgeist? How is the concept relevant to Sumner’s theory? 5. Sumner denies that mores are ever produced by doctrines. Does this mean that the moral doctrines of philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, or Mill have no influence on what counts as moral? Explain. WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM 89 © C
en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io
n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. Cultural Relativism and Universal Rights Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (b. 1945) is a professor of anthropology
at Rhode Island College, where she is director of the general education program. She has written a number of works on Islamic culture and practice, including Modern Egypt and Its Heritage (1990), Islamic Society in Practice (1994), and Race and Racism: An Introduction (2006). Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban is an anthropologist who objects to the widespread acceptance of ethical relativism by her peers. She points out that in 1947, when the idea of an international declaration of universal human rights was first being discussed, anthropologists, who were mainly ethical relati- vists, declined to participate. Fluehr-Lobban says that this laissez-faire pos- ture must change: “the time has come” for anthropologists to take a stand on key human-rights issues. This will entail morally judging and condemn- ing some of the societies they study. In particular, Fluehr- Lobban con- demns the mores that in many cultures contribute to the exploitation and degradation of women. Fluehr-Lobban advocates active measures to get social change: “We cannot just be bystanders.” Cultural relativism, long a key concept in anthropology, asserts that since each cul- ture has its own values and practices, anthropologists should not make value judg- ments about cultural differences. As a result, anthropological
pedagogy has stressed that the study of customs and norms should be value-free, and that the appropriate role of the anthropologist is that of observer and recorder. Today, however, this view is being challenged by critics inside and outside the discipline, especially those who want anthropologists to take a stand on key human-rights issues. I agree that the time has come for anthropologists to become more actively engaged in safeguarding the rights of people whose lives and cultures they study. Historically, anthropology as a discipline has declined to participate in the dia- logue that produced international conventions regarding human rights. For exam- ple, in 1947, when the executive board of the American Anthropological Association withdrew from discussions that led to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” it did so in the belief that no such declaration would be applicable to all human beings. But the world and anthropology have changed. Because their research involves extended interaction with people at the grassroots, anthropolo- gists are in a unique position to lend knowledge and expertise to the international debate regarding human rights. CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSAL RIGHTS Used by permission of the author.
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Doing so does not represent a complete break with the traditions of our field. After all, in the past, anthropologists did not hesitate to speak out against such rep- rehensible practices as Nazi genocide and South African apartheid. And they have testified in U.S. courts against government rules that impinge on the religious tradi- tions or sacred lands of Native Americans, decrying government policies that treat groups of people unjustly. However, other practices that violate individual rights or oppress particular groups have not been denounced. Anthropologists generally have not spoken out, for example, against the practice in many cultures of female circumcision, which critics call a mutilation of women. They have been unwilling to pass judgment on such forms of culturally based homicide as the killing of infants or the aged. Some have withheld judgment on acts of communal violence, such as clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India or Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, perhaps because the animosities between those groups are of long standing. Moreover, as a practical matter, organized anthropology’s refusal to participate in drafting the 1947 human-rights declaration has meant that anthropologists have not had much of a role in drafting later human-rights statements, such as the United
Nations’ “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women,” approved in 1979. In many international forums discussing women’s rights, participants have specifically rejected using cultural relativism as a barrier to improving women’s lives. The issue of violence against women throws the perils of cultural relativism into stark relief. Following the lead of human-rights advocates, a growing number of anthropologists and others are coming to recognize that violence against women should be acknowledged as a violation of a basic human right to be free from harm. They believe that such violence cannot be excused or justified on cultural grounds. Let me refer to my own experience. For nearly 25 years, I have conducted research in the Sudan, one of the African countries where the practice of female cir- cumcision is widespread, affecting the vast majority of females in the northern Sudan. Chronic infections are a common result, and sexual intercourse and child- birth are rendered difficult and painful. However, cultural ideology in the Sudan holds that an uncircumcised woman is not respectable, and few families would risk their daughter’s chances of marrying by not having her circumcised. British colonial officials outlawed the practice in 1946, but this served only to make it sur-
reptitious and thus more dangerous. Women found it harder to get treatment for mistakes or for side effects of the illegal surgery. For a long time I felt trapped between, on one side, my anthropologist’s under- standing of the custom and of the sensitivities about it among the people with whom I was working, and, on the other, the largely feminist campaign in the West to eradicate what critics see as a “barbaric” custom. To ally myself with Western feminists and condemn female circumcision seemed to me to be a betrayal of the value system and culture of the Sudan, which I had come to understand. But as I was asked over the years to comment on female circumcision because of my expertise in the Sudan, I came to realize how deeply I felt that the practice was harmful and wrong. CAROLYN FLUEHR-LOBBAN: CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSAL RIGHTS 91 © C en ga ge L ea rn
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ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. In 1993, female circumcision was one of the practices deemed harmful by delegates at the international Human Rights Conference in Vienna. During their dis- cussions, they came to view circumcision as a violation of the rights of children as well as of the women who suffer its consequences throughout life. Those discussions made me realize that there was a moral agenda larger than myself, larger than West- ern culture or the culture of the northern Sudan or my discipline. I decided to join colleagues from other disciplines and cultures in speaking out
against the practice. Some cultures are beginning to change, although cause and effect are difficult to determine. Women’s associations in the Ivory Coast are calling for an end to female circumcision. In Egypt, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights has reported the first publicly acknowledged marriage of an uncircumcised woman. In the United States, a Nigerian woman recently was granted asylum on the ground that her returning to her country would result in the forcible circumcision of her daughter, which was deemed a violation of the girl’s human rights. To be sure, it is not easy to achieve consensus concerning the point at which cultural practices cross the line and become violations of human rights. But it is important that scholars and human-rights activists discuss the issue. Some examples of when the line is crossed may be clearer than others. The action of a Japanese wife who feels honor-bound to commit suicide because of the shame of her husband’s infidelity can be explained and perhaps justified by the traditional code of honor in Japanese society. However, when she decides to take the lives of her children as well, she is committing murder, which may be easier to condemn than suicide. What about “honor” killings of sisters and daughters accused of sexual miscon-
duct in some Middle Eastern and Mediterranean societies? Some anthropologists have explained this practice in culturally relativist terms, saying that severe disrup- tions of the moral order occur when sexual impropriety is alleged or takes place. To restore the social equilibrium and avoid feuds, the local culture requires the shed- ding of blood to wash away the shame of sexual dishonor. The practice of honor killings, which victimizes mainly women, has been defended in some local courts as less serious than premeditated murder, because it stems from longstanding cul- tural traditions. While some judges have agreed, anthropologists should see a differ- ent picture: a pattern of cultural discrimination against women. As the issue of domestic violence shows, we need to explore the ways that we balance individual and cultural rights. The “right” of a man to discipline, slap, hit, or beat his wife (and often, by extension, his children) is widely recognized across many cultures in which male dominance is an accepted fact of life. Indeed, the issue of domestic violence has only recently been added to the international human-rights agenda, with the addition of women’s rights to the list of basic human rights at the Vienna conference. The fact that domestic violence is being openly discussed and challenged in some societies (the United States is among the leaders) helps to encourage dialogue
in societies in which domestic violence has been a taboo subject. This dialogue is relatively new, and no clear principles have emerged. But anthropologists could inform and enrich the discussion, using their knowledge of family and community life in different cultures. 92 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve
d. N o di st rib ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz
at io n. Cases of genocide may allow the clearest insight into where the line between local culture and universal morality lies. Many anthropologists have urged the Brazilian and Venezuelan governments to stop gold miners from slaughtering the Yanomami people, who are battling the encroachment of miners on their rain for- ests. Other practices that harm individuals or categories of people (such as the elderly, women, and enslaved or formerly enslaved people) may not represent geno- cide per se, and thus may present somewhat harder questions about the morality of traditional practices. We need to focus on the harm done, however, and not on the scale of the abuse. We need to be sensitive to cultural differences but not allow them to override widely recognized human rights. The exchange of ideas across cultures is already fostering a growing acceptance of the universal nature of some human rights, regardless of cultural differences. The right of individuals to be free from harm or the threat of harm, and the right of cultural minorities to exist freely within states, are just two examples of rights that
are beginning to be universally recognized—although not universally applied. Fortunately, organized anthropology is beginning to change its attitude toward cultural relativism and human rights. The theme of the 1994 convention of the American Anthropological Association was human rights. At the sessions organized around the topic, many anthropologists said they no longer were absolutely com- mitted to cultural relativism. The association has responded to the changing attitude among its members by forming a Commission for Human Rights, charged with developing a specifically anthropological perspective on those rights, and with chal- lenging violations and promoting education about them. Nevertheless, many anthropologists continue to express strong support for cul- tural relativism. One of the most contentious issues arises from the fundamental question: What authority do we Westerners have to impose our own concept of universal rights on the rest of humanity? It is true that Western ideas of human rights have so far dominated international discourse. On the other hand, the cul- tural relativists’ argument is often used by repressive governments to deflect interna- tional criticism of their abuse of their citizens. At the very least, anthropologists need to condemn such misuse of cultural relativism, even if it means that they may be denied permission to do research in the country in question.
Personally, I would go further: I believe that we should not let the concept of relativism stop us from using national and international forums to examine ways to protect the lives and dignity of people in every culture. Because of our involve- ment in local societies, anthropologists could provide early warnings of abuses—for example, by reporting data to international human-rights organizations, and by joining the dialogue at international conferences. When there is a choice between defending human rights and defending cultural relativism, anthropologists should choose to protect and promote human rights. We cannot just be bystanders. STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What prompted Fluehr-Lobban to pass moral judgment on the societies she was studying? How does she justify this to herself as an anthropologist who is sensitive to the feelings of the people she is judging? 2. Now that she is no longer merely standing by as an observer, what role does Fluehr-Lobban see herself playing? CAROLYN FLUEHR-LOBBAN: CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSAL RIGHTS 93 © C
en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st rib ut io
n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. 3. How, in the opinion of Fluehr-Lobban, is “cultural relativism” being misused by some anthropologists? 4. Give an example of what Fluehr-Lobban considers to be an
abusive practice in a soci- ety, and state what human right it violates. How might an outsider go about getting the abusive practice changed? Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation and Ethical Relativism Loretta M. Kopelman Loretta Kopelman (b. 1938) is professor emeritus at East Carolina Univer- sity. She specializes in bioethics and has written more than 140 articles and edited several books on the topic. Some relativists claim that “an action is right if it is approved in a person’s culture and wrong if it is disapproved.” By this reasoning, no culture has the moral authority to criticize the practices of other cultures; each society determines for itself what is right and wrong. Kopelman opposes this the- ory and points out that it can be used to justify horrific practices like apartheid, genocide, and war—and female genital mutilation (FGM). She rejects the relativist view on the grounds that moral judgments, like medi- cal or scientific findings, can be evaluated for consistency and empirical accuracy. Those who defend FGM, for example, often justify it by claiming it is a religious imperative and is essential to women’s health. In fact, it is
not required by the Koran, and it is manifestly bad for women’s health. Most cultures, says Kopelman, share similar basic moral values and goals, such as the alleviation of suffering and the promotion of personal well- being. They are also responsive to logic and rules of evidence. These com- mon goals give her hope that we can engage in meaningful intercultural discussions about right and wrong. In northern Africa and southern Arabia many girls undergo ritual surgery involving removal of parts of their external genitalia; the surgery is often accompanied by cer- emonies intended to honor and welcome the girls into their communities. About 80 million living women have had this surgery, and an additional 4 or 5 million girls undergo it each year. Usually performed between infancy and puberty, these Loretta M. Kopelman, “Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation and Ethical Relativism,” Second Opinion 20, no. 2 (October 1994): 55–71. Reprinted by permission of the Park Ridge Center. 94 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga
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lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. ancient practices are supposed to promote chastity, religion, group identity, cleanli- ness, health, family values, and marriage goals. This tradition is prevalent and deeply embedded in many countries, including Ethiopia, the Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Central African Republic, Chad, Gambia, Liberia, Mali,
Senegal, Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Mauritania, Nigeria, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, and Egypt. Modified versions of the surgeries are also performed in Southern Yemen and Musqat-Oman. Tragically, the usual ways of performing these surgeries deny women sexual orgasms, cause significant morbidity or mortality among women and children, and strain the overburdened health care systems in these developing countries. Some refer to these practices as female cir- cumcision, but those wishing to stop them increasingly use the description female genital mutilation. Impassioned cultural clashes erupt when people from societies practicing female circumcision/genital mutilation settle in other parts of the world and bring these rites with them. It is practiced, for example, by Muslim groups in the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Europe, and North America. Parents may use tradi- tional practitioners or seek medical facilities to reduce the morbidity or mortality of this genital surgery. Some doctors and nurses perform the procedures for large fees or because they are concerned about the unhygienic techniques that traditional practitioners may use. In the United Kingdom, where about 2,000 girls undergo the surgery annually, it is classified as child abuse. Other countries have also classi- fied it as child abuse, including Canada and France….
Many international agencies like UNICEF, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the World Health Organization (WHO) openly condemn and try to stop the practices of female genital mutilation. Such national groups as the American Medical Association … have also denounced these rituals. Women’s groups from around the world protest these practices and the lack of notice they receive…. Most women in cultures practicing female circumcision/genital mutilation, when interviewed by investigators from their culture, state that they do not believe that such practices deprive them of anything important. They do not think that women can have orgasms or that sex can be directly pleasing to women but assume that their pleasure comes only from knowing they contribute to their husbands’ enjoyment. Some critics argue that women who hold such beliefs cannot be under- stood to be making an informed choice; they thus condemn this custom as a form of oppression…. International discussion, criticisms, and condemnation of female circumcision/ genital mutilation help activists who struggle to change these rites that are thor- oughly entrenched in their own cultures. Not surprisingly, people who want to con- tinue these practices resent such criticisms, seeing them as assaults upon their deeply
embedded and popular cultural traditions. Underlying intercultural disputes is often a basic moral controversy: Does praise or criticism from outside a culture or society have any moral authority within it? That is, do the moral judgments from one culture have any relevance to judg- ments about what is right or wrong within another culture? According to some ver- sions of ethical relativism, to say that something is right means that it is approved of in the speaker’s culture; to say that something is wrong means that it is LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 95 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll
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re ss a ut ho riz at io n. disapproved. If this is correct, there is no rational basis for establishing across cultures that one set of culturally established moral values is right and the other wrong. The right action is one that is approved by the person’s society or culture, and the wrong action is one that is disapproved by the person’s society or culture; there are moral truths, but they are determined by the norms of the society. On this view, then, the cultural approval of female circumcision/genital mutilation means that the practice is right; disapproval means that it is wrong. In contrast to such versions of ethical relativism, other traditions hold that to say something is morally right means that the claim can be defended with reasons in a certain way. Saying that something is approved (such as slavery) does not settle
whether it is right, because something can be wrong even when it is approved by most people in a culture. Moral judgments do not describe what is approved but prescribe what ought to be approved; if worthy of being called moral or ethical judgments, they must be defensible with reasons that are consistent and empirically defensible. As we shall find, advocates of the practice of female circumcision/genital mutilation do not say, “We approve of these rituals, and that is the end of the matter.” Rather, they try to defend the practice as useful in promoting many impor- tant goals. In fact, however, the practice is inconsistent with important goals and values of the cultures in which it is practiced. We find that we can evaluate some of the reasons given for performing these rituals and that despite our cultural differ- ences about what to value and how to act, we share many methods of discovery, evaluation, and explanation. These enable us sometimes correctly to judge other cultures, and they us. Moral judgments can be evaluated at least in terms of their consistency and their relation to stable evidence, like medical or scientific findings. By this means certain moral claims can be challenged, even where we have different cultural values, and the practice of female circumcision/genital mutilation shown to be wrong. Thus, both intercultural and intracultural discussions, criticisms, and condemnation of female genital mutilation as well as support for activists seeking
to stop the practice can have moral authority, or so I argue. After considering some of the health hazards of female circumcision/genital mutilation, I review the version of ethical relativism that denies moral authority to cross-cultural moral judgments. By examining the cultural reasons used to justify female circumcision/genital mutilation, I want to show that many aspects of this discussion are open to cross-cultural evaluation and understanding and hence that this version of ethical relativism fails. After discussing some anticipated objections, I conclude that these relativists have a heavy burden of proof to show why we cannot make intercultural judgments that have moral force concerning female geni- tal mutilation, just as we do concerning such things as oppression, intolerance, exploitation, waste, aggression, and torture or imprisonment of dissidents. Types of Surgery and Their Health Consequences Female circumcision/genital mutilation takes three forms. Type 1 circumcision involves pricking or removing the clitoral hood, or prepuce. This is the least muti- lating type and should not preclude sexual orgasms in later life, unlike other forms. When this surgery is performed on infants and small children, however, it may be difficult to avoid removal of additional tissue, because infants’ genitalia are small,
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and the tools commonly used are pins, scissors, razors, and knives. In the southern Arabian countries of Southern Yemen and Musqat-Oman, Type 1 circumcision is commonly practiced. In African countries, however, Type 1 circumcision is often not regarded as a genuine circumcision. Only about 3 percent of the women in one east African survey had this type of circumcision, and none in another where all the women surveyed had been circumcised. Type 2, or intermediary, circumcision involves removal of the clitoris and most or all of the labia minora. In Type 3 circumcision, or infibulation, the cli- toris, labia minora, and parts of the labia majora are removed. The gaping wound to the vulva is stitched tightly closed, leaving a tiny opening so that the woman can pass urine and menstrual flow. (Type 3 is also known as Pharaonic circumcision, suggesting that it has been done since the time of the pharaohs.) In some African countries most young girls between infancy and 10 years of age have Type 3 circumcision. Traditional practitioners often use sharpened or hot stones, razors, or knives, frequently without anesthesia or antibiotics. In many communities thorns are used to stitch the wound closed, and a twig is inserted to keep an opening. The girl’s legs may be bound for a month or more while the scar heals….
Almost all girls experience immediate pain following the surgery. El Dareer found other immediate consequences, including bleeding, infection, and shock correlating with the type of circumcision. The published studies by investigators from the regions where these rituals are practiced uniformly find that women expressed similar complaints and had similar complications from female circumci- sion/genital mutilation: at the site of the surgery, scarring can make penetration difficult and intercourse painful; cysts may form, requiring surgical repairs; a vari- ety of menstrual problems arise if the opening left is too small to allow adequate drainage; fistulas or tears in the bowel or urinary tract are common, causing incontinence, which in turn leads to social as well as medical problems; maternal-fetal complications and prolonged and obstructed labor are also well- established consequences. El Dareer writes, “The result almost invariably causes immediate and long-term medical complications, especially at childbirth. Consum- mation of marriage is always a difficult experience for both partners, and marital problems often result. Psychological disturbances in girls due to circumcision are not uncommon.” The operation can also be fatal because of shock, tetanus, and septicemia…. Ethical Relativism
Female circumcision/genital mutilation serves as a test case for some versions of eth- ical relativism because the practice has widespread approval within the cultures where it is practiced and widespread disapproval outside those cultures. Relativism, however, means different things to different “academic cultures.” Indeed one of the most striking things about the term relativism is that it is used in so many different ways, spanning the banal to the highly controversial. In the Encyclopedia of Philos- ophy, Richard D. Brandt writes, “Contemporary philosophers generally apply the term [ethical relativism] to some position they disagree with or consider absurd, sel- dom to their own views; social scientists, however, often classify themselves as LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 97 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g.
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t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. relativists.” Philosophers and those in religious studies often distinguish two ways to understand relativism: one is controversial, and the other is not. The noncontro- versial, descriptive version, often called descriptive relativism, is the view that peo- ple from different cultures do act differently and have distinct norms. Social scientists often work as descriptive relativists: they try to understand cultural differ- ences and look for any underlying similarities. Those studying or criticizing female circumcision/genital mutilation, of course, recognize that we do act differently and have different values. But descriptions about how or in what way we are different
do not entail statements about how we ought to act. The controversial position, called ethical relativism, is that an action is right if it is approved in a person’s culture and wrong if it is disapproved. Another version of this controversial view is that to say something is right means it has cultural approval; to say something is wrong means it has cultural disapproval. According to this view, which some call cultural relativism, there is no way to evaluate moral claims across cultures; positions taken by international groups like the World Health Organization merely express a cluster of particular societal opinions and have no moral standing in other cultures. On this view it is incoherent to claim that something is wrong in a culture yet approved, or right yet disapproved; people can express moral judgments about things done in their own or other cultures, but they are expressing only their cultural point of view, not one that has moral author- ity in another culture…. I would begin by observing that we seem to share methods of discovery, evaluation, negotiation, and explanation that can be used to help assess moral judg- ments. For example, we agree how to evaluate methods and research in science, engineering, and medicine, and on how to translate, debate, deliberate, criticize, negotiate, and use technology. To do these things, however, we must first have
agreed to some extent on how to distinguish good and bad methods and research in science, engineering, and medicine, and what constitutes a good or bad transla- tion, debate, deliberation, criticism, negotiation, or use of technology. These shared methods can be used to help evaluate moral judgments from one culture to another in a way that sometimes has moral authority. An example of a belief that could be evaluated by stable medical evidence is the assertion by people in some regions that the infant’s “death could result if, during delivery, the baby’s head touches the clitoris.” In addition, some moral claims can be evaluated in terms of their coher- ence. It seems incompatible to promote maternal-fetal health as a good and also to advocate avoidable practices known to cause serious perinatal and neonatal infections. We need not rank values similarly with people in another culture, or our own, to have coherent discussions about their consistency, consequences, or factual pre- suppositions. That is, even if some moral or ethical (I use these terms interchange- ably) judgments express unique cultural norms, they may still be morally evaluated by another culture on the basis of their logical consistency and their coherence with stable and cross-culturally accepted empirical information. In addition, we seem to share some moral values, goals, and judgments such as those about the evils of
unnecessary suffering and lost opportunities, the need for food and shelter, the duty to help children, and the goods of promoting public health and personal well-being. Let us consider therefore, the reasons given by men and women 98 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve
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at io n. who practice female circumcision/genital mutilation in their communities. The information presented herein is based upon studies done by investigators who come from these cultures, some of whom had this ritual surgery as children (El Dareer is one such investigator). We can examine whether these reasons allow peo- ple from other cultures any way of entering the debate based upon such considera- tions as consistency or stable medical findings. Reasons Given for Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation According to four independent series of studies conducted by investigators from countries where female circumcision is widely practiced, the primary reasons given for performing this ritual surgery are that it (1) meets a religious requirement, (2) preserves group identity, (3) helps to maintain cleanliness and health, (4) preserves virginity and family honor and prevents immorality, and (5) furthers marriage goals including greater sexual pleasure for men. El Dareer conducted her studies in the Sudan, Dr. Olayinka Koso-Thomas in and around Sierra Leone, and Raquiya Haji Dualeh Abdalla and
Daphne Williams Ntiri in Somalia. They argue that the reasons for continuing this practice in their respective countries float on a sea of false beliefs, beliefs that thrive because of a lack of education and open discussion about reproduction and sexuality. Insofar as intercultural methods for evaluating factual and logical statements exist, people from other cultures should at least be able to understand these inconsistencies or mistaken factual beliefs and use them as a basis for making some judgments having intercultural moral authority. First, according to these studies the main reason given for performing female circumcision/genital mutilation is that it is regarded as a religious requirement. Most of the people practicing this ritual are Muslims, but it is not a practice required by the Koran. El Dareer writes: “Circumcision of women is not explicitly enjoined in the Koran, but there are two implicit sayings of the Prophet Mohammed: ‘Circumcision is an ordinance in men and an embellishment in women’ and, reportedly Mohammed said to Om Attiya, a woman who circumcised girls in El Medina, ‘Do not go deep. It is more illuminating to the face and more enjoyable to the husband.’ Another version says, ‘Reduce but do not destroy. This is enjoyable to the woman and preferable to the man.’ But there is nothing in the Koran to suggest that the Prophet commanded that women be
circumcised. He advised that it was important to both sexes that very little should be taken.” Female circumcision/genital mutilation, moreover, is not practiced in the spiritual center of Islam, Saudi Arabia. Another reason for questioning this as a Muslim practice is that clitoridectomy and infibulation predate Islam, going back to the time of the pharaohs…. Second, many argue that the practice helps to preserve group identity. When Christian colonialists in Kenya introduced laws opposing the practice of female cir- cumcision in the 1930s, African leader Kenyatta expressed a view still popular today: “This operation is still regarded as the very essence of an institution which has enormous educational, social, moral and religious implications, quite apart from the operation itself. For the present, it is impossible for a member of the [Kikuyu] tribe to imagine an initiation without clitoridectomy the abolition of LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 99 © C en ga ge
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w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. IRUA [the ritual operation] will destroy the tribal symbol which identifies the age group and prevent the Kikuyu from perpetuating that spirit of collectivism and national solidarity which they have been able to maintain from time immemorial.” In addition, the practice is of social and economic importance to older women who are paid for performing the rituals….
Drs. Koso-Thomas, El Dareer, and Abdalla agree that people in these countries support female circumcision as a good practice, but only because they do not understand that it is a leading cause of sickness or even death for girls, mothers, and infants, and a major cause of infertility, infection, and maternal-fetal and mari- tal complications. They conclude that these facts are not confronted because these societies do not speak openly of such matters. Abdalla writes, “There is no longer any reason, given the present state of progress in science, to tolerate confusion and ignorance about reproduction and women’s sexuality.” Female circumcision/genital mutilation is intended to honor women as male circumcision honors men, and members of cultures where the surgery is practiced are shocked by the analogy of clitoridectomy to removal of the penis…. Third, the belief that the practice advances health and hygiene is incompatible with stable data from surveys done in these cultures, where female circumcision/ genital mutilation has been linked to mortality or morbidity such as shock, infertil- ity, infections, incontinence, maternal-fetal complications, and protracted labor…. Fourth, investigators found that circumcision is thought necessary in these cultures to preserve virginity and family honor and to prevent immorality. Type 3
circumcision is used to keep women from having sexual intercourse before marriage and conceiving illegitimate children. In addition, many believe that Types 2 and 3 circumcision must be done because uncircumcised women have excessive and uncontrollable sexual drives. El Dareer, however, believes that this view is not con- sistently held—that women in the Sudan are respected and that Sudanese men would be shocked to apply this sometimes-held cultural view to members of their own families. This reason also seems incompatible with the general view, which investigators found was held by both men and women in these cultures, that sex cannot be pleasant for women. In addition, female circumcision/genital mutilation offers no foolproof way to promote chastity and can even lead to promiscuity because it does not diminish desire or libido even where it makes orgasms impossi- ble. Some women continually seek experiences with new sexual partners because they are left unsatisfied in their sexual encounters. Moreover, some pretend to be virgins by getting stitched up tightly again…. Fifth, interviewers found that people practicing female circumcision/genital mutilation believe that it furthers marriage goals, including greater sexual pleasure for men. To survive economically, women in these cultures must marry, and they will not be acceptable marriage partners unless they have undergone this ritual
surgery. It is a curse, for example, to say that someone is the child of an uncir- cumcised woman. The widely held belief that infibulation enhances women’s beauty and men’s sexual pleasure makes it difficult for women who wish to marry to resist this practice. Some men from these cultures, however, report that they enjoy sex more with uncircumcised women. Furthermore, female circumcision/ genital mutilation is inconsistent with the established goals of some of these cultures because it is a leading cause of disability and contributes to the high mortality rate 100 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig
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ss a ut ho riz at io n. among mothers, fetuses, and children. Far from promoting the goals of marriage, it causes difficulty in consummating marriage, infertility, prolonged and obstructed labor, and morbidity and mortality. Criticisms of Ethical Relativism Examination of the debate concerning female circumcision suggests several conclu- sions about the extent to which people from outside a culture can understand or contribute to moral debates within it in a way that has moral force. First, the fact that a culture’s moral and religious views are often intertwined with beliefs that are open to rational and empirical evaluation can be a basis of cross-cultural examina- tion and intercultural moral criticism. Beliefs that the practice enhances fertility and promotes health, that women cannot have orgasms, and that
allowing the baby’s head to touch the clitoris during delivery causes death to the baby are incompatible with stable medical data. Thus an opening is allowed for genuine cross-cultural dis- cussion or criticism of the practice. Some claims about female circumcision/genital mutilation, however, are not as easily open to cross-cultural understanding. For example, cultures practicing the Type 3 surgery, infibulation, believe that it makes women more beautiful. For those who are not from these cultures, this belief is difficult to understand, especially when surveys show that many women in these cultures, when inter- viewed, attribute to infibulation their keloid scars, urine retention, pelvic infec- tions, puerperal sepsis, and obstetrical problems. Koso-Thomas writes: “None of the reasons put forward in favor of circumcision have any real scientific or logical basis. It is surprising that aesthetics and the maintenance of cleanliness are advanced as grounds for female circumcision. The scars could hardly be thought of as contributing to beauty. The hardened scar and stump usually seen where the clitoris should be, or in the case of the infibulated vulva, taut skin with an ugly long scar down the middle, present a horrifying picture.” Thus not everyone in these cultures believes that these rituals enhance beauty; some find such claims dif- ficult to understand.
Second, the debate over female circumcision/genital mutilation illustrates another difficulty for defenders of this version of ethical relativism concerning the problem of differentiating cultures. People who brought the practice of female cir- cumcision/genital mutilation with them when they moved to another nation still claim to be a distinct cultural group. Some who moved to Britain, for example, resent the interference in their culture represented by laws that condemn the prac- tice as child abuse. If ethical relativists are to appeal to cultural approval in making the final determination of what is good or bad, right or wrong, they must tell us how to distinguish one culture from another. How exactly do we count or separate cultures? A society is not a nation-state, because some social groups have distinctive identities within nations. If we do not define societies as nations, however, how do we distinguish among cultural groups, for example, well enough to say that an action is child abuse in one culture but not in another? Subcultures in nations typically overlap and have many variations. Even if we could count cultural groups well enough to say exactly how to distinguish one culture from another, how and when would this be relevant? How big or old or LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 101
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ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. vital must a culture, subculture, group, or cult be in order to be
recognized as a society whose moral distinctions are self-contained and self- justifying? A related problem is that there can be passionate disagreement, ambivalence, or rapid changes within a culture or group over what is approved or disapproved. According to ethical relativism, where there is significant disagreement within a cul- ture there is no way to determine what is right or wrong. But what disagreement is significant? Third, despite some clear disagreement such as that over the rightness of female circumcision/genital mutilation, people from different parts of the world share com- mon goals like the desirability of promoting people’s health, happiness, opportu- nities, and cooperation, and the wisdom of stopping war, pollution, oppression, torture, and exploitation. These common goals make us a world community, and using shared methods of reasoning and evaluation, we can discuss how they are understood or how well they are implemented in different parts of our world com- munity. We can use these shared goals to assess whether female circumcision/genital mutilation is more like respect or oppression, more like enhancement or diminish- ment of opportunities, or more like pleasure or torture. Another way to express this is to say that we should recognize universal human rights or be respectful of each
other as persons capable of reasoned discourse. Fourth, this version of ethical relativism, if consistently held, leads to the abhor- rent conclusion that we cannot make intercultural judgments with moral force about societies that start wars, practice torture, or exploit and oppress other groups; as long as these activities are approved in the society that does them, they are allegedly right. Yet the world community believed that it was making a cross- cultural judgment with moral force when it criticized the Communist Chinese gov- ernment for crushing a pro-democracy student protest rally, the South Africans for upholding apartheid, the Soviets for using psychiatry to suppress dissent, and the Bosnian Serbs for carrying out the siege of Sarajevo. And the judgment was expressed without anyone’s ascertaining whether the respective actions had wide-spread approval in those countries. In each case, repre- sentatives from the criticized society usually said something like, “You don’t understand why this is morally justified in our culture even if it would not be in your society.” If ethical relativism were convincing, these responses ought to be as well. Relativists who want to defend sound social cross-cultural and moral judg- ments about the value of freedom and human rights in other cultures seem to have
two choices. On the one hand, if they agree that some cross- cultural norms have moral authority, they should also agree that some intercultural judgments about female circumcision/genital mutilation may have moral authority. Some relativists take this route …, thereby abandoning the version of ethical relativism being criti- cized herein. On the other hand, if they defend this version of ethical relativism yet make cross-cultural moral judgments about the importance of values like tolerance, group benefit, and the survival of cultures, they will have to admit to an inconsis- tency in their arguments. For example, anthropologist Scheper- Hughes… advocates tolerance of other cultural value systems; she fails to see that she is saying that tol- erance between cultures is right and that this is a cross-cultural moral judgment using a moral norm (tolerance). Similarly, relativists who say it is wrong to 102 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn
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ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. eliminate rituals that give meaning to other cultures are also inconsistent in making a judgment that presumes to have genuine cross-cultural moral authority. The burden of proof, then, is upon defenders of this version of ethical relativ- ism to show why we cannot do something we think we sometimes do very well, namely, engage in intercultural moral discussion, cooperation, or criticism and give support to people whose welfare or rights are in jeopardy in other cultures. In
addition, defenders of ethical relativism need to explain how we can justify the actions of international professional societies that take moral stands in adopting policy. For example, international groups may take moral stands that advocate fighting pandemics, stopping wars, halting oppression, promoting health education, or eliminating poverty, and they seem to have moral authority in some cases. Some might respond that our professional groups are themselves cultures of a sort. But this response raises the already discussed problem of how to individuate a culture or society. Objections Some standard rejoinders are made to criticism of relativism, but they leave untouched the arguments against the particular version of ethical relativism dis- cussed herein. First, some defenders argue that cross-cultural moral judgments per- petuate the evils of absolutism, cultural dogmatism, or cultural imperialism. People rarely admit to such transgressions, often enlisting medicine, religion, science, or the “pure light of reason” to arrive at an allegedly impartial, disinterested, and justified conclusion that they should “enlighten” and “educate” the “natives,” “savages,” or “infidels.” Anthropologist Scheper-Hughes writes, “I don’t ‘like’ the idea of clitori- dectomy any better than any other woman I know. But I like even less the western
‘voices of reason’ [imposing their views].” Scheper-Hughes and others suggest that, in arguing that we can make moral judgments across cultures, we are thereby claiming a particular culture knows best and has the right to impose its allegedly superior knowledge on other cultures. Claiming that we can sometimes judge another culture in a way that has moral force, however, does not entail that one culture is always right, that absolutism is legitimate, or that we can impose our beliefs on others. Relativists sometimes respond that even if this is not a strict logical consequence, it is a practical result. Sherwin writes, “Many social scientists have endorsed versions of relativism pre- cisely out of their sense that the alternative promotes cultural dominance. They may be making a philosophical error in drawing that conclusion, but I do not think that they are making an empirical one.”… The version of ethical relativism we have been considering, however, does not avoid cultural imperialism. To say that an act is right, on this view, means that it has cultural approval, including acts of war, oppression, enslavement, aggression, exploitation, racism, or torture. On this view, the disapproval of other cultures is irrelevant in determining whether these acts are right or wrong; accordingly, the disapproval of people in other cultures, even victims of war,
oppression, enslavement, aggression, exploitation, racism, or torture, does not count in deciding what is right or wrong except in their own culture. This view thus leads to abhorrent conclusions. It entails not only the affirmation that LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 103 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve
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at io n. female circumcision/genital mutilation is right in cultures where it is approved but the affirmation that anything with wide social approval is right, including slavery, war, discrimination, oppression, racism, and torture. If defenders of the version of ethical relativism criticized herein are consistent, they will dismiss any objections by people in other cultures as merely an expression of their own cul- tural preferences, having no moral standing whatsoever in the society that is engaging in the acts in question. Defenders of ethical relativism must explain why we should adopt a view lead- ing to such abhorrent conclusions. They may respond that cultures sometimes over- lap and hence that the victims’ protests within or between cultures ought to count. But this response raises two further difficulties for defenders of ethical relativism. First, it is inconsistent if it means that the views of people in other cultures have moral standing and oppressors ought to consider the views of victims. Such judg- ments are inconsistent with this version of ethical relativism because they are
cross-cultural judgments with moral authority. The second difficulty with this defense, also discussed above, is that it raises the problem of how we differentiate a culture or society. Second, some defenders of ethical relativism argue that we cannot know enough about another culture to make any cross-cultural moral judgments. We can- not really understand another society well enough to criticize it, they claim, because our feelings, concepts, or ways of reasoning are too different; our so-called ordinary moral views about what is permissible are determined by our upbringing and envir- onments to such a degree that they cannot be transferred to other cultures. There are two ways to understand this objection. The first is that nothing counts as understanding another culture except being raised in it. If that is what is meant, then the objection is valid in a trivial way. But it does not address the important issue of whether we can comprehend well enough to make relevant moral distinc- tions or engage in critical ethical discussions about the universal human right to be free of oppression. The second, and nontrivial, way to understand this objection is that we cannot understand another society well enough to justify claiming to know what is right or wrong in that society or even to raise moral questions about what enhances or
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C H A P T E R±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±.docx

  • 1. C H A P T E R ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ±
  • 2. ± ± ± ± 2 IS IT ALL RELATIVE? Noting that what one society deems morally wrong, another deems right, ethical relativists conclude that morals are like manners or style of dress. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, quoting the poet Pindar, long ago announced the rela- tivist principle when he said, “Custom is king.” Ethical relativism became popular in the nineteenth century when European social scientists traveled the world and discovered a bewildering variety of moral norms and practices. Anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and sociologists like Wil- liam Graham Sumner embraced ethical relativism and gave it the cachet of science. Ethical relativism is a tempting doctrine because it appeals to our desire to be tolerant of other societies. However, it has not found much favor among profes- sional philosophers, who point out that while tolerance is a virtue, indifference to suffering is a vice. Several of the philosophers and moralists included in this chapter—Loretta M. Kopelman, Louis Pojman, R. M. MacIver, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—believe that while much morality is indeed a matter of local custom,
  • 3. some objectively valid moral principles apply to everyone. For them, tolerance ends when a practice or custom violates a universal human right. Lawrence Lengbeyer tries to work out a compromise between relativism and absolutism. Recently a number of anthropologists have joined philosophers and theologians in rejecting relativism. They challenge the idea that social scientists must always be neutral bystanders. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban struggles with the problem of whether to condemn or to refrain from condemning the societies she studies. In the end she finds herself unable to retain the neutral “scientific” stance. Thomas Nagel argues that the Golden Rule in its negative form—not to do unto others what you would not have them do unto you—provides an objective nonrelativistic basis for morality. Finally, when a relativist like Benedict or Sumner points to the diversity of vil- lages, and thus of norms, those who believe in universal moral standards can point to the newly emerging “global village.” Universal ethical principles are already fully 76 © C en
  • 5. al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. codified for the “global village” in such documents as the United Nations Declara- tion of Human Rights, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Children, and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Women. These declarations
  • 6. firmly assert that all people, regardless of cultural background, regardless of gender or social status, should enjoy certain basic moral rights. While it is certainly true that the United Nations declarations are not universally enforced, their very exis- tence suggests there may be far more moral consensus in the world than the relati- vists allow. IS IT ALL RELATIVE? 77 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es
  • 8. ho riz at io n. Morality As Custom Herodotus Herodotus (c. 485–425 B.C.) was the first Western historian. Much of what we know about the ancient world in and around Greece derives from him. Following is one of the fragments of text by Herodotus available to us today. Although brief, it clearly shows that Herodotus may well be the first thinker in Western intellectual history to espouse a version of what today we call ethical relativism. If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and
  • 9. the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evi- dence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one’s country. One might recall, in particular, an anecdote of Darius. When he was king of Persia, he summoned the Greeks who happened to be present at his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in the pres- ence of the Greeks, and through an interpreter, so that they could understand what was said, he asked some Indians, of the tribe called Callatiae, who do in fact eat their parents’ dead bodies, what they would take to burn them. They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing. One can see by this what custom can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he called it “king of all.” STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Herodotus says that people prefer the customs of their own country over those of all other countries. That may have been true in his day. Is it true in ours? 2. Herodotus’s example of what the ancient Greeks and Indians did with the bodies of their dead parents clearly shows that cultures have different
  • 10. customs. But does that make the case for ethical relativism? Though the two societies did it in very different ways, both seem to be engaged in honoring their deceased parents. MORALITY AS CUSTOM From Herodotus’s The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, revised by A. R. Burn (Penguin Classics 1954, revised edition 1972), copyright © the Estate of Aubrey de Sélincourt, 1954, copyright © A. R. Burn, 1972. 78 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r
  • 12. ut ho riz at io n. A Defense of Moral Relativism Ruth Benedict Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) was one of America’s foremost anthropolo- gists. Her Patterns of Culture (1935) is considered a classic of comparative anthropology. Morality, says Ruth Benedict, is a convenient term for socially approved customs (that is, mores). What one society approves may be disgraceful and unacceptable to another. Moral rules, like rules of etiquette or styles of dress, vary from society to society. Morality is culturally relative. Values are shaped by culture. As Benedict points out, trances are highly regarded in India, so in India many people have trances. Some ancient societies praised homosexual love, so there homosexuality was a norm. Where
  • 13. material possessions are highly valued, people amass property. “Most indi- viduals are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born.” Modern social anthropology has become more and more a study of the varieties and common elements of cultural environment and the consequences of these in human behavior. For such a study of diverse social orders primitive peoples fortu- nately provide a laboratory not yet entirely vitiated by the spread of a standardized worldwide civilization. Dyaks and Hopis, Fijians and Yakuts are significant for psy- chological and sociological study because only among these simpler peoples has there been sufficient isolation to give opportunity for the development of localized social forms. In the higher cultures the standardization of custom and belief over a couple of continents has given a false sense of the inevitability of the particular forms that have gained currency, and we need to turn to a wider survey in order to check the conclusions we hastily base upon this near- universality of familiar cus- toms. Most of the simpler cultures did not gain the wide currency of the one which, out of our experience, we identify with human nature, but this was for various his- torical reasons, and certainly not for any that gives us as its carriers a monopoly of social good or of social sanity. Modern civilization, from this point of view,
  • 14. becomes not a necessary pinnacle of human achievement but one entry in a long series of possible adjustments. These adjustments, whether they are in mannerisms like the ways of showing anger, or joy, or grief in any society, or in major human drives like those of sex, prove to be far more variable than experience in any one culture would suggest. In certain fields, such as that of religion or of formal marriage arrangements, these A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM From “Anthropology and the Abnormal” by Ruth Benedict, in The Journal of General Psychology 10 (1934): 59–82. Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 Eighteenth St., N.W., Washington, DC, 20036-1802. Copyright © 1934. RUTH BENEDICT: A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM 79 © C en ga ge L ea rn in
  • 16. ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. wide limits of variability are well known and can be fairly described. In others it is not yet possible to give a generalized account, but that does not absolve us of the task of indicating the significance of the work that has been done and of the pro- blems that have arisen. One of these problems relates to the customary modern normal- abnormal cate- gories and our conclusions regarding them. In how far are such categories culturally determined, or in how far can we with assurance regard them as absolute? In how far can we regard inability to function socially as diagnostic of
  • 17. abnormality, or in how far is it necessary to regard this as a function of the culture? As a matter of fact, one of the most striking facts that emerge from a study of widely varying cultures is the ease with which our abnormals function in other cul- tures. It does not matter what kind of “abnormality” we choose for illustration, those which indicate extreme instability, or those which are more in the nature of character traits like sadism or delusions of grandeur or of persecution, there are well-described cultures in which these abnormals function at ease and with honor, and apparently without danger or difficulty to the society. The most notorious of these is trance and catalepsy. Even a very mild mystic is aberrant in our culture. But most peoples have regarded even extreme psychic man- ifestations not only as normal and desirable, but even as characteristic of highly val- ued and gifted individuals. This was true even in our own cultural background in that period when Catholicism made the ecstatic experience the mark of sainthood. It is hard for us, born and brought up in a culture that makes no use of the experi- ence, to realize how important a role it may play and how many individuals are capable of it, once it has been given an honorable place in any society.… Cataleptic and trance phenomena are, of course, only one
  • 18. illustration of the fact that those whom we regard as abnormals may function adequately in other cul- tures. Many of our culturally discarded traits are selected for elaboration in differ- ent societies. Homosexuality is an excellent example, for in this case our attention is not constantly diverted, as in the consideration of trance, to the interruption of rou- tine activity which it implies. Homosexuality poses the problem very simply. A ten- dency toward this trait in our culture exposes an individual to all the conflicts to which all aberrants are always exposed, and we tend to identify the consequences of this conflict with homosexuality. But these consequences are obviously local and cultural. Homosexuals in many societies are not incompetent, but they may be such if the culture asks adjustments of them that would strain any man’s vitality. Wherever homosexuality has been given an honorable place in any society, those to whom it is congenial have filled adequately the honorable roles society assigns to them. Plato’s Republic is, of course, the most convincing statement of such a read- ing of homosexuality. It is presented as one of the major means to the good life, and it was generally so regarded in Greece at that time. The cultural attitude toward homosexuals has not always been on such a high ethical plane, but it has been very varied. Among many American Indian tribes there exists the institution of the berdache, as the French called
  • 19. them. These men- women were men who at puberty or thereafter took the dress and the occupations of women. Sometimes they married other men and lived with them. Sometimes they were men with no inversion, persons of weak sexual endowment who chose this rôle to avoid the jeers of the women. The berdaches were never regarded as of 80 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es
  • 21. ho riz at io n. first-rate super-natural power, as similar men-women were in Siberia, but rather as leaders in women’s occupations, good healers in certain diseases, or, among certain tribes, as the genial organizers of social affairs. In any case, they were socially placed. They were not left exposed to the conflicts that visit the deviant who is excluded from participation in the recognized patterns of his society. The most spectacular illustrations of the extent to which normality may be cul- turally defined are those cultures where an abnormality of our culture is the corner- stone of their social structure. It is not possible to do justice to these possibilities in a short discussion. A recent study of an island of northwest Melanesia by Fortune describes a society built upon traits which we regard as beyond the border of para- noia. In this tribe the exogamic groups look upon each other as prime manipulators of black magic, so that one marries always into an enemy group which remains for life one’s deadly and unappeasable foes. They look upon a good
  • 22. garden crop as a confession of theft, for everyone is engaged in making magic to induce into his gar- den the productiveness of his neighbors’; therefore no secrecy in the island is so rig- idly insisted upon as the secrecy of a man’s harvesting of his yams. Their polite phrase at the acceptance of a gift is, “And if you now poison me, how shall I repay you this present?” Their preoccupation with poisoning is constant; no woman ever leaves her cooking pot for a moment untended. Even the great affinal economic exchanges that are characteristic of this Melanesian culture area are quite altered in Dobu since they are incompatible with this fear and distrust that pervades the culture. They go farther and people the whole world outside their own quarters with such malignant spirits that all-night feasts and ceremonials simply do not occur here. They have even rigorous religiously enforced customs that forbid the sharing of seed even in one family group. Anyone else’s food is deadly poison to you, so that communality of stores is out of the question. For some months before harvest the whole society is on the verge of starvation, but if one falls to the temp- tation and eats up one’s seed yams, one is an outcast and a beachcomber for life. There is no coming back. It involves, as a matter of course, divorce and the break- ing of all social ties. Now in this society where no one may work with another and no
  • 23. one may share with another, Fortune describes the individual who was regarded by all his fellows as crazy. He was not one of those who periodically ran amok and, beside himself and frothing at the mouth, fell with a knife upon anyone he could reach. Such behavior they did not regard as putting anyone outside the pale. They did not even put the individuals who were known to be liable to these attacks under any kind of control. They merely fled when they saw the attack coming on and kept out of the way. “He would be all right tomorrow.” But there was one man of sunny, kindly disposition who liked work and liked to be helpful. The compul- sion was too strong for him to repress it in favor of the opposite tendencies of his culture. Men and women never spoke of him without laughing; he was silly and simple and definitely crazy. Nevertheless, to the ethnologist used to a culture that has, in Christianity, made his type the model of all virtue, he seemed a pleasant fellow.… … Among the Kwakiutl it did not matter whether a relative had died in bed of disease, or by the hand of an enemy, in either case death was an affront to be wiped out by the death of another person. The fact that one had been caused to mourn RUTH BENEDICT: A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM 81
  • 25. ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. was proof that one had been put upon. A chief’s sister and her daughter had gone
  • 26. up to Victoria, and either because they drank bad whiskey or because their boat capsized they never came back. The chief called together his warriors. “Now I ask you, tribes, who shall wail? Shall I do it or shall another?” The spokesman answered, of course, “Not you, Chief. Let some other of the tribes.” Immediately they set up the war pole to announce their intention of wiping out the injury, and gathered a war party. They set out, and found seven men and two children asleep and killed them. “Then they felt good when they arrived at Sebaa in the evening.” The point which is of interest to us is that in our society those who on that occasion would feel good when they arrived at Sebaa that evening would be the definitely abnormal. There would be some, even in our society, but it is not a rec- ognized and approved mood under the circumstances. On the Northwest Coast those are favored and fortunate to whom that mood under those circumstances is congenial, and those to whom it is repugnant are unlucky. This latter minority can register in their own culture only by doing violence to their congenial responses and acquiring others that are difficult for them. The person, for instance, who, like a Plains Indian whose wife has been taken from him, is too proud to fight, can deal with the Northwest Coast civilization only by ignoring its strongest bents. If he can- not achieve it, he is the deviant in that culture, their instance of
  • 27. abnormality. This head-hunting that takes place on the Northwest Coast after a death is no matter of blood revenge or of organized vengeance. There is no effort to tie up the subsequent killing with any responsibility on the part of the victim for the death of the person who is being mourned. A chief whose son has died goes visiting wher- ever his fancy dictates, and he says to his host, “My prince has died today, and you go with him.” Then he kills him. In this, according to their interpretation, he acts nobly because he has not been downed. He has thrust back in return. The whole procedure is meaningless without the fundamental paranoid reading of bereave- ment. Death, like all the other untoward accidents of existence, confounds man’s pride and can only be handled in the category of insults. Behavior honored upon the Northwest Coast is one which is recognized as abnormal in our civilization, and yet it is sufficiently close to the attitudes of our own culture to be intelligible to us and to have a definite vocabulary with which we may discuss it. The megalomaniac paranoid trend is a definite danger in our society. It is encouraged by some of our major preoccupations, and it confronts us with a choice of two possible attitudes. One is to brand it as abnormal and repre- hensible, and is the attitude we have chosen in our civilization. The other is to make
  • 28. it an essential attribute of ideal man, and this is the solution in the culture of the Northwest Coast. These illustrations, which it has been possible to indicate only in the briefest manner, force upon us the fact that normality is culturally defined. An adult shaped to the drives and standards of either of these cultures, if he were transported into our civilization, would fall into our categories of abnormality. He would be faced with the psychic dilemmas of the socially unavailable. In his own culture, however, he is the pillar of society, the end result of socially inculcated mores, and the prob- lem of personal instability in his case simply does not arise. No one civilization can possibly utilize in its mores the whole potential range of human behavior. Just as there are great numbers of possible phonetic articulations, 82 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn
  • 30. ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. and the possibility of language depends on a selection and standardization of a few of these in order that speech communication may be possible at all, so the possibil- ity of organized behavior of every sort, from the fashions of local dress and houses to the dicta of a people’s ethics and religion, depends upon a similar selection among the possible behavior traits. In the field of recognized economic obligations or sex tabus this selection is as non-rational and subconscious a process as it is in the field of phonetics. It is a process which goes on in the group
  • 31. for long periods of time and is historically conditioned by innumerable accidents of isolation or of con- tact of peoples. In any comprehensive study of psychology, the selection that differ- ent cultures have made in the course of history within the great circumference of potential behavior is of great significance. Every society, beginning with some slight inclination in one direction or another, carries its preference farther and farther, integrating itself more and more completely upon its chosen basis, and discarding those types of behavior that are uncongenial. Most of those organizations of personality that seem to us most uncontrovertibly abnormal have been used by different civilizations in the very foundations of their institutional life. Conversely the most valued traits of normal individuals have been looked on in differently organized cultures as aberrant. Nor- mality, in short, within a very wide range, is culturally defined. It is primarily a term for the socially elaborated segment of human behavior in any culture; and abnormality, a term for the segment that that particular civilization does not use. The very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long tradi- tional habits of our own society. It is a point that has been made more often in relation to ethics than in relation to psychiatry. We do not any longer make the mistake of
  • 32. deriving the morality of our locality and decade directly from the inevitable constitution of human nature. We do not elevate it to the dignity of a first principle. We recognize that morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Man- kind has always preferred to say, “It is morally good,” rather than “It is habitual,” and the fact of this preference is matter enough for a critical science of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous. The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good. It is that which society has approved. A normal action is one which falls well within the limits of expected behavior for a particular society. Its variability among different peoples is essentially a function of the variability of the behavior patterns that dif- ferent societies have created for themselves, and can never be wholly divorced from a consideration of culturally institutionalized types of behavior. Each culture is a more or less elaborate working-out of the potentialities of the segment it has chosen. In so far as a civilization is well integrated and consistent within itself, it will tend to carry farther and farther, according to its nature, its ini- tial impulse toward a particular type of action, and from the point of view of any other culture those elaborations will include more and more extreme and aberrant traits.
  • 33. Each of these traits, in proportion as it reinforces the chosen behavior patterns of that culture, is for that culture normal. Those individuals to whom it is congenial either congenitally, or as the result of childhood sets, are accorded prestige in that culture, and are not visited with the social contempt or disapproval which their RUTH BENEDICT: A DEFENSE OF MORAL RELATIVISM 83 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es
  • 35. ho riz at io n. traits would call down upon them in a society that was differently organized. On the other hand, those individuals whose characteristics are not congenial to the selected type of human behavior in that community are the deviants, no matter how valued their personality traits may be in a contrasted civilization. The Dobuan who is not easily susceptible to fear of treachery, who enjoys work and likes to be helpful, is their neurotic and regarded as silly. On the Northwest Coast the person who finds it difficult to read life in terms of an insult contest will be the person upon whom fall all the difficulties of the culturally unprovided for. The person who does not find it easy to humiliate a neighbor, nor to see humilia- tion in his own experience, who is genial and loving, may, of course, find some unstandardized way of achieving satisfactions in his society, but not in the major patterned responses that his culture requires of him. If he is born to play an impor- tant rôle in a family with many hereditary privileges, he can
  • 36. succeed only by doing violence to his whole personality. If he does not succeed, he has betrayed his cul- ture; that is, he is abnormal. I have spoken of individuals as having sets toward certain types of behavior, and of these sets as running sometimes counter to the types of behavior which are institutionalized in the culture to which they belong. From all that we know of con- trasting cultures it seems clear that differences of temperament occur in every soci- ety. The matter has never been made the subject of investigation, but from the available material it would appear that these temperament types are very likely of universal recurrence. That is, there is an ascertainable range of human behavior that is found wherever a sufficiently large series of individuals is observed. But the pro- portion in which behavior types stand to one another in different societies is not universal. The vast majority of the individuals in any group are shaped to the fash- ion of that culture. In other words, most individuals are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born. In a society that values trance, as in India, they will have supernormal experience. In a society that institutionalizes homosexuality, they will be homosexual. In a society that sets the gathering of pos- sessions as the chief human objective, they will amass property. The deviants, what- ever the type of behavior the culture has institutionalized, will
  • 37. remain few in number, and there seems no more difficulty in moulding that vast malleable major- ity to the “normality” of what we consider an aberrant trait, such as delusions of reference, than to the normality of such accepted behavior patterns as acquisitive- ness. The small proportion of the number of the deviants in any culture is not a function of the sure instinct with which that society has built itself upon the funda- mental sanities, but of the universal fact that, happily, the majority of mankind quite readily take any shape that is presented to them.… STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Do you think that the fact of cultural diversity is itself an argument for ethical relativ- ism? Explain. 2. If Benedict’s defense of ethical relativism is correct, then the correct way to resolve a personal dilemma might be to take a survey or poll to see what the majority in your society think is right. If the majority favor capital punishment and oppose abortion, for example, then capital punishment is right and abortion is wrong. Can you defend Benedict against this odd consequence? Explain. 84 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C
  • 39. n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. 3. Do you think that certain types of behavior (for example, executing children or beating animals to death) are wrong wherever they occur, despite attitudes prevailing in the societies that practice them? If you believe that such acts are
  • 40. universally wrong, what makes them wrong? 4. How might Benedict account for notions of moral enlightenment and moral progress? A Defense of Cultural Relativism William Graham Sumner William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) was a sociologist, an economist, and a proponent of Darwinism. His books include What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883) and Folkways (1906). William Graham Sumner claims that his ethical relativism is derived from having observed other societies. According to Sumner, the “folkways”— that is, the customs, mores, and traditions of each society—are so ingrained in its members that they naturally come to think of them as objectively “right” and “good.” We may build elaborate philosophical and legal doctrines around these concepts, but it is the folkways that deter- mine their true meaning. There is a right way to catch game, to win a wife, to make one’s self appear, to cure disease, to honor ghosts, to treat comrades or strangers, to behave when a child is born, on the warpath, in council, and so on in all cases which can arise. The ways
  • 41. are defined on the negative side, that is, by taboos. The “right” way is the way which the ancestors used and which has been handed down. The tradition is its own warrant. It is not held subject to verification by experience. The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to them to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves the authority of the ances- tral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis. The notion of right and ought is the same in regard to all the folkways.… The morality of a group at a time is the sum of the taboos and prescriptions in the folkways by which right conduct is defined. Therefore morals can never be intu- itive. They are historical, institutional, and empirical. World philosophy, life policy, right, rights, and morality are all products of the folkways. They are reflections on, and generalizations from, the experience of pleasure and pain which is won in efforts to carry on the struggle for existence under actual life conditions. A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM From Folkways by William Graham Sumner. WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM 85
  • 43. ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. The generalizations are very crude and vague in their germinal forms. They are all
  • 44. embodied in folklore, and all our philosophy and science have been developed out of them. Mores Are a Directive Force Of course the view which has been stated is antagonistic to the view that philoso- phy and ethics furnish creative and determining forces in society and history. That view comes down to us from the Greek philosophy and it has now prevailed so long that all current discussion conforms to it. Philosophy and ethics are pursued as independent disciplines, and the results are brought to the science of society and to statesmanship and legislation as authoritative dicta. We also have Völkerpsycho- logie, Sozialpolitik, and other intermediate forms which show the struggle of meta- physics to retain control of the science of society. The “historic sense,” the Zeitgeist, and other terms of similar import are partial recognitions of the mores and their importance in the science of society. We shall see below that philosophy and ethics are products of the folkways. They are taken out of the mores, but are never original and creative; they are secondary and derived. They often interfere in the second stage of the sequence—act, thought, act. Then they produce harm, but some ground is furnished for the claim that they are creative or at least regulative. In fact, the real process in great bodies of men is not one of deduction from any
  • 45. great principle of philosophy or ethics. It is one of minute efforts to live well under existing conditions, which efforts are repeated indefinitely by great numbers, getting strength from habit and from the fellowship of united action. The resultant folkways become coercive. All are forced to conform, and the folkways dominate the societal life. Then they seem true and right, and arise into mores as the norm of welfare. Thence are produced faiths, ideas, doctrines, religions, and philosophies, according to the stage of civilization and the fashions of reflection and generalization. What Is Goodness or Badness of the Mores? It is most important to notice that, for the people of a time and place, their own mores are always good, or rather that for them there can be no question of the goodness or badness of their mores. The reason is because the standards of good and right are in the mores. If the life conditions change, the traditional folkways may produce pain and loss, or fail to produce the same good as formerly. Then the loss of comfort and ease brings doubt into the judgment of welfare (causing doubt of the pleasure of the gods, or of war power, or of health), and thus dis- turbs the unconscious philosophy of the mores. Then a later time will pass judg- ment on the mores. Another society may also pass judgment on the mores. In our
  • 46. literary and historical study of the mores we want to get from them their educa- tional value, which consists in the stimulus or warning as to what is, in its effects, societally good or bad. This may lead us to reject or neglect a phenomenon like infanticide, slavery, or witchcraft, as an old “abuse” and “evil,” or to pass by the crusades as a folly which cannot recur. Such a course would be a great error. Everything in the mores of a time and place must be regarded as justified with 86 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht
  • 48. a ut ho riz at io n. regard to that time and place. “Good” mores are those which are well adapted to the situation. “Bad” mores are those which are not so adapted. The mores are not so stereotyped and changeless as might appear, because they are forever moving towards more complete adaptation to conditions and interests, and also towards more complete adjustment to each other. People in mass have never made or kept up a custom in order to hurt their own interests. They have made innumerable errors as to what their interests were and how to satisfy them, but they have always aimed to serve their interests as well as they could. This gives the stand- point for the student of the mores. All things in them come before him on the same plane. They all bring instruction and warning. They all have the same rela- tion to power and welfare. The mistakes in them are component parts of them. We do not study them in order to approve some of them and
  • 49. condemn others. They are all equally worthy of attention from the fact that they existed and were used. The chief object of study in them is their adjustment to interests, their rela- tion to welfare, and their coordination in a harmonious system of life policy. For the men of the time there are no “bad” mores. What is traditional and current is the standard of what ought to be. The masses never raise any question about such things. If a few raise doubts and questions, this proves that the folkways have already begun to lose firmness and the regulative element in the mores has begun to lose authority. This indicates that the folkways are on their way to a new adjustment. The extreme of folly, wickedness, and absurdity in the mores is witch persecutions, but the best men in the seventeenth century had no doubt that witches existed, and that they ought to be burned. The religion, statecraft, juris- prudence, philosophy, and social system of that age all contributed to maintain that belief. It was rather a culmination than a contradiction of the current faiths and convictions, just as the dogma that all men are equal and that one ought to have as much political power in the state as another was the culmination of the political dogmatism and social philosophy of the nineteenth century. Hence our judgments of the good or evil consequences of folkways are to be kept separate from our study of the historical phenomena of them, and of their
  • 50. strength and the reasons for it. The judgments have their place in plans and doctrines for the future, not in a retrospect. The Mores Have the Authority of Facts The mores come down to us from the past. Each individual is born into them as he is born into the atmosphere, and he does not reflect on them, or criticize them any more than a baby analyzes the atmosphere before he begins to breathe it. Each one is subjected to the influence of the mores, and formed by them, before he is capable of reasoning about them. It may be objected that nowadays, at least, we criticize all traditions, and accept none just because they are handed down to us. If we take up cases of things which are still entirely or almost entirely in the mores, we shall see that this is not so. There are sects of free- lovers amongst us who want to discuss pair marriage. They are not simply people of evil life. They invite us to discuss rationally our inherited customs and ideas as to marriage, which, they say, are by no means so excellent and elevated as we believe. They WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM 87 © C
  • 52. n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. have never won any serious attention. Some others want to argue in favor of polygamy on grounds of expediency. They fail to obtain a hearing. Others want to discuss property. In spite of some literary activity on their
  • 53. part, no discussion of property, bequest, and inheritance has ever been opened. Property and mar- riage are in the mores. Nothing can ever change them but the unconscious and imperceptible movement of the mores. Religion was originally a matter of the mores. It became a societal institution and a function of the state. It has now to a great extent been put back into the mores. Since laws with penalties to enforce religious creeds or practices have gone out of use any one may think and act as he pleases about religion. Therefore, it is not now “good form” to attack religion. Infidel publications are now tabooed by the mores, and are more effectually repressed than ever before. They produce no controversy. Democracy is in our American mores. It is a product of our physical and economic conditions. It is impossible to discuss or criticize it. It is glorified for popularity, and is a subject of dithyrambic rhetoric. No one treats it with complete candor and sincerity. No one dares to analyze it as he would aristocracy or autocracy. He would get no hearing and would only incur abuse. The thing to be noticed in all these cases is that the masses oppose a deaf ear to every argument against the mores. It is only insofar as things have been transferred from the mores into laws and positive institutions that there is discussion about them or rationalizing upon them. The mores contain the norm by which, if we should discuss the
  • 54. mores, we should have to judge the mores. We learn the mores as unconsciously as we learn to walk and eat and breathe. The masses never learn how we walk, and eat, and breathe, and they never know any reason why the mores are what they are. The justification of them is that when we wake to consciousness of life we find them facts which already hold us in the bonds of tradition, custom, and habit. The mores contain embodied in them notions, doctrines, and maxims, but they are facts. They are in the present tense. They have nothing to do with what ought to be, will be, may be, or once was, if it is not now. Mores and Morals; Social Code For everyone the mores give the notion of what ought to be. This includes the notion of what ought to be done, for all should cooperate to bring to pass, in the order of life, what ought to be. All notions of propriety, decency, chastity, polite- ness, order, duty, right, rights, discipline, respect, reverence, cooperation, and fel- lowship, especially all things in regard to which good and ill depend entirely on the point at which the line is drawn, are in the mores. The mores can make things seem right and good to one group or one age which to another seem antagonistic to every instinct of human nature. The thirteenth century bred in every heart such a sentiment in regard to heretics that inquisitors had no more
  • 55. misgivings in their pro- ceedings than men would have now if they should attempt to exterminate rattle- snakes. The sixteenth century gave to all such notions about witches that witch persecutors thought they were waging war on enemies of God and man. Of course the inquisitors and witch persecutors constantly developed the notions of heretics and witches. They exaggerated the notions and then gave them back again to the 88 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r
  • 57. ut ho riz at io n. mores, in their expanded form, to inflame the hearts of men with terror and hate and to become, in the next stage, so much more fantastic and ferocious motives. Such is the reaction between the mores and the acts of the living generation. The world philosophy of the age is never anything but the reflection on the mental hori- zon, which is formed out of the mores, of the ruling ideas which are in the mores themselves. It is from a failure to recognize the to and fro in this reaction that the current notion arises that mores are produced by doctrines. The “morals” of an age are never anything but the consonance between what is done and what the mores of the age require. The whole revolves on itself, in the relation of the specific to the general, within the horizon formed by the mores. Every attempt to win an outside standpoint from which to reduce the whole to an absolute philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is a delusion. New elements are brought in
  • 58. only by new conquests of nature through science and art. The new conquests change the conditions of life and the interests of the members of the society. Then the mores change by adaptation to new conditions and interests. The philosophy and ethics then follow to account for and justify the changes in the mores; often, also, to claim that they have caused the changes. They never do anything but draw new lines of bearing between the parts of the mores and the horizon of thought within which they are enclosed, and which is a deduction from the mores. The horizon is widened by more knowledge, but for one age it is just as much a generalization from the mores as for another. It is always unreal. It is only a prod- uct of thought. The ethical philosophers select points on this horizon from which to take their bearings, and they think that they have won some authority for their sys- tems when they travel back again from the generalization to the specific custom out of which it was deduced. The cases of the inquisitors and witch persecutors who toiled arduously and continually for their chosen ends, for little or no reward, show us the relation between mores on the one side and philosophy, ethics, and religion on the other. STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Sumner says, “For the people of a time and place, their own mores are always good,
  • 59. or rather … for them there can be no question of the goodness or badness of their mores.” Explain his position. Has Sumner overlooked the possibility that a people could wonder whether their own mores are correct? Or does Sumner deny this is possible? 2. Sumner says that we often pass judgment on mores of the past or on mores of other people in the present. For example, we now think that infanticide and slavery were wrong. Why does Sumner believe that such moralizing is inappropriate? 3. Sumner believes that mores change when scientific discoveries or technological inven- tions change the conditions of life. Why is it only practical inventions that change mores, and not moral insights? 4. What is the Zeitgeist? How is the concept relevant to Sumner’s theory? 5. Sumner denies that mores are ever produced by doctrines. Does this mean that the moral doctrines of philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, or Mill have no influence on what counts as moral? Explain. WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: A DEFENSE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM 89 © C
  • 61. n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. Cultural Relativism and Universal Rights Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (b. 1945) is a professor of anthropology
  • 62. at Rhode Island College, where she is director of the general education program. She has written a number of works on Islamic culture and practice, including Modern Egypt and Its Heritage (1990), Islamic Society in Practice (1994), and Race and Racism: An Introduction (2006). Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban is an anthropologist who objects to the widespread acceptance of ethical relativism by her peers. She points out that in 1947, when the idea of an international declaration of universal human rights was first being discussed, anthropologists, who were mainly ethical relati- vists, declined to participate. Fluehr-Lobban says that this laissez-faire pos- ture must change: “the time has come” for anthropologists to take a stand on key human-rights issues. This will entail morally judging and condemn- ing some of the societies they study. In particular, Fluehr- Lobban con- demns the mores that in many cultures contribute to the exploitation and degradation of women. Fluehr-Lobban advocates active measures to get social change: “We cannot just be bystanders.” Cultural relativism, long a key concept in anthropology, asserts that since each cul- ture has its own values and practices, anthropologists should not make value judg- ments about cultural differences. As a result, anthropological
  • 63. pedagogy has stressed that the study of customs and norms should be value-free, and that the appropriate role of the anthropologist is that of observer and recorder. Today, however, this view is being challenged by critics inside and outside the discipline, especially those who want anthropologists to take a stand on key human-rights issues. I agree that the time has come for anthropologists to become more actively engaged in safeguarding the rights of people whose lives and cultures they study. Historically, anthropology as a discipline has declined to participate in the dia- logue that produced international conventions regarding human rights. For exam- ple, in 1947, when the executive board of the American Anthropological Association withdrew from discussions that led to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” it did so in the belief that no such declaration would be applicable to all human beings. But the world and anthropology have changed. Because their research involves extended interaction with people at the grassroots, anthropolo- gists are in a unique position to lend knowledge and expertise to the international debate regarding human rights. CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSAL RIGHTS Used by permission of the author.
  • 64. 90 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st
  • 66. Doing so does not represent a complete break with the traditions of our field. After all, in the past, anthropologists did not hesitate to speak out against such rep- rehensible practices as Nazi genocide and South African apartheid. And they have testified in U.S. courts against government rules that impinge on the religious tradi- tions or sacred lands of Native Americans, decrying government policies that treat groups of people unjustly. However, other practices that violate individual rights or oppress particular groups have not been denounced. Anthropologists generally have not spoken out, for example, against the practice in many cultures of female circumcision, which critics call a mutilation of women. They have been unwilling to pass judgment on such forms of culturally based homicide as the killing of infants or the aged. Some have withheld judgment on acts of communal violence, such as clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India or Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, perhaps because the animosities between those groups are of long standing. Moreover, as a practical matter, organized anthropology’s refusal to participate in drafting the 1947 human-rights declaration has meant that anthropologists have not had much of a role in drafting later human-rights statements, such as the United
  • 67. Nations’ “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women,” approved in 1979. In many international forums discussing women’s rights, participants have specifically rejected using cultural relativism as a barrier to improving women’s lives. The issue of violence against women throws the perils of cultural relativism into stark relief. Following the lead of human-rights advocates, a growing number of anthropologists and others are coming to recognize that violence against women should be acknowledged as a violation of a basic human right to be free from harm. They believe that such violence cannot be excused or justified on cultural grounds. Let me refer to my own experience. For nearly 25 years, I have conducted research in the Sudan, one of the African countries where the practice of female cir- cumcision is widespread, affecting the vast majority of females in the northern Sudan. Chronic infections are a common result, and sexual intercourse and child- birth are rendered difficult and painful. However, cultural ideology in the Sudan holds that an uncircumcised woman is not respectable, and few families would risk their daughter’s chances of marrying by not having her circumcised. British colonial officials outlawed the practice in 1946, but this served only to make it sur-
  • 68. reptitious and thus more dangerous. Women found it harder to get treatment for mistakes or for side effects of the illegal surgery. For a long time I felt trapped between, on one side, my anthropologist’s under- standing of the custom and of the sensitivities about it among the people with whom I was working, and, on the other, the largely feminist campaign in the West to eradicate what critics see as a “barbaric” custom. To ally myself with Western feminists and condemn female circumcision seemed to me to be a betrayal of the value system and culture of the Sudan, which I had come to understand. But as I was asked over the years to comment on female circumcision because of my expertise in the Sudan, I came to realize how deeply I felt that the practice was harmful and wrong. CAROLYN FLUEHR-LOBBAN: CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSAL RIGHTS 91 © C en ga ge L ea rn
  • 70. ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. In 1993, female circumcision was one of the practices deemed harmful by delegates at the international Human Rights Conference in Vienna. During their dis- cussions, they came to view circumcision as a violation of the rights of children as well as of the women who suffer its consequences throughout life. Those discussions made me realize that there was a moral agenda larger than myself, larger than West- ern culture or the culture of the northern Sudan or my discipline. I decided to join colleagues from other disciplines and cultures in speaking out
  • 71. against the practice. Some cultures are beginning to change, although cause and effect are difficult to determine. Women’s associations in the Ivory Coast are calling for an end to female circumcision. In Egypt, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights has reported the first publicly acknowledged marriage of an uncircumcised woman. In the United States, a Nigerian woman recently was granted asylum on the ground that her returning to her country would result in the forcible circumcision of her daughter, which was deemed a violation of the girl’s human rights. To be sure, it is not easy to achieve consensus concerning the point at which cultural practices cross the line and become violations of human rights. But it is important that scholars and human-rights activists discuss the issue. Some examples of when the line is crossed may be clearer than others. The action of a Japanese wife who feels honor-bound to commit suicide because of the shame of her husband’s infidelity can be explained and perhaps justified by the traditional code of honor in Japanese society. However, when she decides to take the lives of her children as well, she is committing murder, which may be easier to condemn than suicide. What about “honor” killings of sisters and daughters accused of sexual miscon-
  • 72. duct in some Middle Eastern and Mediterranean societies? Some anthropologists have explained this practice in culturally relativist terms, saying that severe disrup- tions of the moral order occur when sexual impropriety is alleged or takes place. To restore the social equilibrium and avoid feuds, the local culture requires the shed- ding of blood to wash away the shame of sexual dishonor. The practice of honor killings, which victimizes mainly women, has been defended in some local courts as less serious than premeditated murder, because it stems from longstanding cul- tural traditions. While some judges have agreed, anthropologists should see a differ- ent picture: a pattern of cultural discrimination against women. As the issue of domestic violence shows, we need to explore the ways that we balance individual and cultural rights. The “right” of a man to discipline, slap, hit, or beat his wife (and often, by extension, his children) is widely recognized across many cultures in which male dominance is an accepted fact of life. Indeed, the issue of domestic violence has only recently been added to the international human-rights agenda, with the addition of women’s rights to the list of basic human rights at the Vienna conference. The fact that domestic violence is being openly discussed and challenged in some societies (the United States is among the leaders) helps to encourage dialogue
  • 73. in societies in which domestic violence has been a taboo subject. This dialogue is relatively new, and no clear principles have emerged. But anthropologists could inform and enrich the discussion, using their knowledge of family and community life in different cultures. 92 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve
  • 75. at io n. Cases of genocide may allow the clearest insight into where the line between local culture and universal morality lies. Many anthropologists have urged the Brazilian and Venezuelan governments to stop gold miners from slaughtering the Yanomami people, who are battling the encroachment of miners on their rain for- ests. Other practices that harm individuals or categories of people (such as the elderly, women, and enslaved or formerly enslaved people) may not represent geno- cide per se, and thus may present somewhat harder questions about the morality of traditional practices. We need to focus on the harm done, however, and not on the scale of the abuse. We need to be sensitive to cultural differences but not allow them to override widely recognized human rights. The exchange of ideas across cultures is already fostering a growing acceptance of the universal nature of some human rights, regardless of cultural differences. The right of individuals to be free from harm or the threat of harm, and the right of cultural minorities to exist freely within states, are just two examples of rights that
  • 76. are beginning to be universally recognized—although not universally applied. Fortunately, organized anthropology is beginning to change its attitude toward cultural relativism and human rights. The theme of the 1994 convention of the American Anthropological Association was human rights. At the sessions organized around the topic, many anthropologists said they no longer were absolutely com- mitted to cultural relativism. The association has responded to the changing attitude among its members by forming a Commission for Human Rights, charged with developing a specifically anthropological perspective on those rights, and with chal- lenging violations and promoting education about them. Nevertheless, many anthropologists continue to express strong support for cul- tural relativism. One of the most contentious issues arises from the fundamental question: What authority do we Westerners have to impose our own concept of universal rights on the rest of humanity? It is true that Western ideas of human rights have so far dominated international discourse. On the other hand, the cul- tural relativists’ argument is often used by repressive governments to deflect interna- tional criticism of their abuse of their citizens. At the very least, anthropologists need to condemn such misuse of cultural relativism, even if it means that they may be denied permission to do research in the country in question.
  • 77. Personally, I would go further: I believe that we should not let the concept of relativism stop us from using national and international forums to examine ways to protect the lives and dignity of people in every culture. Because of our involve- ment in local societies, anthropologists could provide early warnings of abuses—for example, by reporting data to international human-rights organizations, and by joining the dialogue at international conferences. When there is a choice between defending human rights and defending cultural relativism, anthropologists should choose to protect and promote human rights. We cannot just be bystanders. STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What prompted Fluehr-Lobban to pass moral judgment on the societies she was studying? How does she justify this to herself as an anthropologist who is sensitive to the feelings of the people she is judging? 2. Now that she is no longer merely standing by as an observer, what role does Fluehr-Lobban see herself playing? CAROLYN FLUEHR-LOBBAN: CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSAL RIGHTS 93 © C
  • 79. n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. 3. How, in the opinion of Fluehr-Lobban, is “cultural relativism” being misused by some anthropologists? 4. Give an example of what Fluehr-Lobban considers to be an
  • 80. abusive practice in a soci- ety, and state what human right it violates. How might an outsider go about getting the abusive practice changed? Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation and Ethical Relativism Loretta M. Kopelman Loretta Kopelman (b. 1938) is professor emeritus at East Carolina Univer- sity. She specializes in bioethics and has written more than 140 articles and edited several books on the topic. Some relativists claim that “an action is right if it is approved in a person’s culture and wrong if it is disapproved.” By this reasoning, no culture has the moral authority to criticize the practices of other cultures; each society determines for itself what is right and wrong. Kopelman opposes this the- ory and points out that it can be used to justify horrific practices like apartheid, genocide, and war—and female genital mutilation (FGM). She rejects the relativist view on the grounds that moral judgments, like medi- cal or scientific findings, can be evaluated for consistency and empirical accuracy. Those who defend FGM, for example, often justify it by claiming it is a religious imperative and is essential to women’s health. In fact, it is
  • 81. not required by the Koran, and it is manifestly bad for women’s health. Most cultures, says Kopelman, share similar basic moral values and goals, such as the alleviation of suffering and the promotion of personal well- being. They are also responsive to logic and rules of evidence. These com- mon goals give her hope that we can engage in meaningful intercultural discussions about right and wrong. In northern Africa and southern Arabia many girls undergo ritual surgery involving removal of parts of their external genitalia; the surgery is often accompanied by cer- emonies intended to honor and welcome the girls into their communities. About 80 million living women have had this surgery, and an additional 4 or 5 million girls undergo it each year. Usually performed between infancy and puberty, these Loretta M. Kopelman, “Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation and Ethical Relativism,” Second Opinion 20, no. 2 (October 1994): 55–71. Reprinted by permission of the Park Ridge Center. 94 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga
  • 83. lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. ancient practices are supposed to promote chastity, religion, group identity, cleanli- ness, health, family values, and marriage goals. This tradition is prevalent and deeply embedded in many countries, including Ethiopia, the Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Central African Republic, Chad, Gambia, Liberia, Mali,
  • 84. Senegal, Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Mauritania, Nigeria, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, and Egypt. Modified versions of the surgeries are also performed in Southern Yemen and Musqat-Oman. Tragically, the usual ways of performing these surgeries deny women sexual orgasms, cause significant morbidity or mortality among women and children, and strain the overburdened health care systems in these developing countries. Some refer to these practices as female cir- cumcision, but those wishing to stop them increasingly use the description female genital mutilation. Impassioned cultural clashes erupt when people from societies practicing female circumcision/genital mutilation settle in other parts of the world and bring these rites with them. It is practiced, for example, by Muslim groups in the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Europe, and North America. Parents may use tradi- tional practitioners or seek medical facilities to reduce the morbidity or mortality of this genital surgery. Some doctors and nurses perform the procedures for large fees or because they are concerned about the unhygienic techniques that traditional practitioners may use. In the United Kingdom, where about 2,000 girls undergo the surgery annually, it is classified as child abuse. Other countries have also classi- fied it as child abuse, including Canada and France….
  • 85. Many international agencies like UNICEF, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the World Health Organization (WHO) openly condemn and try to stop the practices of female genital mutilation. Such national groups as the American Medical Association … have also denounced these rituals. Women’s groups from around the world protest these practices and the lack of notice they receive…. Most women in cultures practicing female circumcision/genital mutilation, when interviewed by investigators from their culture, state that they do not believe that such practices deprive them of anything important. They do not think that women can have orgasms or that sex can be directly pleasing to women but assume that their pleasure comes only from knowing they contribute to their husbands’ enjoyment. Some critics argue that women who hold such beliefs cannot be under- stood to be making an informed choice; they thus condemn this custom as a form of oppression…. International discussion, criticisms, and condemnation of female circumcision/ genital mutilation help activists who struggle to change these rites that are thor- oughly entrenched in their own cultures. Not surprisingly, people who want to con- tinue these practices resent such criticisms, seeing them as assaults upon their deeply
  • 86. embedded and popular cultural traditions. Underlying intercultural disputes is often a basic moral controversy: Does praise or criticism from outside a culture or society have any moral authority within it? That is, do the moral judgments from one culture have any relevance to judg- ments about what is right or wrong within another culture? According to some ver- sions of ethical relativism, to say that something is right means that it is approved of in the speaker’s culture; to say that something is wrong means that it is LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 95 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll
  • 88. re ss a ut ho riz at io n. disapproved. If this is correct, there is no rational basis for establishing across cultures that one set of culturally established moral values is right and the other wrong. The right action is one that is approved by the person’s society or culture, and the wrong action is one that is disapproved by the person’s society or culture; there are moral truths, but they are determined by the norms of the society. On this view, then, the cultural approval of female circumcision/genital mutilation means that the practice is right; disapproval means that it is wrong. In contrast to such versions of ethical relativism, other traditions hold that to say something is morally right means that the claim can be defended with reasons in a certain way. Saying that something is approved (such as slavery) does not settle
  • 89. whether it is right, because something can be wrong even when it is approved by most people in a culture. Moral judgments do not describe what is approved but prescribe what ought to be approved; if worthy of being called moral or ethical judgments, they must be defensible with reasons that are consistent and empirically defensible. As we shall find, advocates of the practice of female circumcision/genital mutilation do not say, “We approve of these rituals, and that is the end of the matter.” Rather, they try to defend the practice as useful in promoting many impor- tant goals. In fact, however, the practice is inconsistent with important goals and values of the cultures in which it is practiced. We find that we can evaluate some of the reasons given for performing these rituals and that despite our cultural differ- ences about what to value and how to act, we share many methods of discovery, evaluation, and explanation. These enable us sometimes correctly to judge other cultures, and they us. Moral judgments can be evaluated at least in terms of their consistency and their relation to stable evidence, like medical or scientific findings. By this means certain moral claims can be challenged, even where we have different cultural values, and the practice of female circumcision/genital mutilation shown to be wrong. Thus, both intercultural and intracultural discussions, criticisms, and condemnation of female genital mutilation as well as support for activists seeking
  • 90. to stop the practice can have moral authority, or so I argue. After considering some of the health hazards of female circumcision/genital mutilation, I review the version of ethical relativism that denies moral authority to cross-cultural moral judgments. By examining the cultural reasons used to justify female circumcision/genital mutilation, I want to show that many aspects of this discussion are open to cross-cultural evaluation and understanding and hence that this version of ethical relativism fails. After discussing some anticipated objections, I conclude that these relativists have a heavy burden of proof to show why we cannot make intercultural judgments that have moral force concerning female geni- tal mutilation, just as we do concerning such things as oppression, intolerance, exploitation, waste, aggression, and torture or imprisonment of dissidents. Types of Surgery and Their Health Consequences Female circumcision/genital mutilation takes three forms. Type 1 circumcision involves pricking or removing the clitoral hood, or prepuce. This is the least muti- lating type and should not preclude sexual orgasms in later life, unlike other forms. When this surgery is performed on infants and small children, however, it may be difficult to avoid removal of additional tissue, because infants’ genitalia are small,
  • 91. 96 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve d. N o di st
  • 93. and the tools commonly used are pins, scissors, razors, and knives. In the southern Arabian countries of Southern Yemen and Musqat-Oman, Type 1 circumcision is commonly practiced. In African countries, however, Type 1 circumcision is often not regarded as a genuine circumcision. Only about 3 percent of the women in one east African survey had this type of circumcision, and none in another where all the women surveyed had been circumcised. Type 2, or intermediary, circumcision involves removal of the clitoris and most or all of the labia minora. In Type 3 circumcision, or infibulation, the cli- toris, labia minora, and parts of the labia majora are removed. The gaping wound to the vulva is stitched tightly closed, leaving a tiny opening so that the woman can pass urine and menstrual flow. (Type 3 is also known as Pharaonic circumcision, suggesting that it has been done since the time of the pharaohs.) In some African countries most young girls between infancy and 10 years of age have Type 3 circumcision. Traditional practitioners often use sharpened or hot stones, razors, or knives, frequently without anesthesia or antibiotics. In many communities thorns are used to stitch the wound closed, and a twig is inserted to keep an opening. The girl’s legs may be bound for a month or more while the scar heals….
  • 94. Almost all girls experience immediate pain following the surgery. El Dareer found other immediate consequences, including bleeding, infection, and shock correlating with the type of circumcision. The published studies by investigators from the regions where these rituals are practiced uniformly find that women expressed similar complaints and had similar complications from female circumci- sion/genital mutilation: at the site of the surgery, scarring can make penetration difficult and intercourse painful; cysts may form, requiring surgical repairs; a vari- ety of menstrual problems arise if the opening left is too small to allow adequate drainage; fistulas or tears in the bowel or urinary tract are common, causing incontinence, which in turn leads to social as well as medical problems; maternal-fetal complications and prolonged and obstructed labor are also well- established consequences. El Dareer writes, “The result almost invariably causes immediate and long-term medical complications, especially at childbirth. Consum- mation of marriage is always a difficult experience for both partners, and marital problems often result. Psychological disturbances in girls due to circumcision are not uncommon.” The operation can also be fatal because of shock, tetanus, and septicemia…. Ethical Relativism
  • 95. Female circumcision/genital mutilation serves as a test case for some versions of eth- ical relativism because the practice has widespread approval within the cultures where it is practiced and widespread disapproval outside those cultures. Relativism, however, means different things to different “academic cultures.” Indeed one of the most striking things about the term relativism is that it is used in so many different ways, spanning the banal to the highly controversial. In the Encyclopedia of Philos- ophy, Richard D. Brandt writes, “Contemporary philosophers generally apply the term [ethical relativism] to some position they disagree with or consider absurd, sel- dom to their own views; social scientists, however, often classify themselves as LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 97 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g.
  • 97. t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. relativists.” Philosophers and those in religious studies often distinguish two ways to understand relativism: one is controversial, and the other is not. The noncontro- versial, descriptive version, often called descriptive relativism, is the view that peo- ple from different cultures do act differently and have distinct norms. Social scientists often work as descriptive relativists: they try to understand cultural differ- ences and look for any underlying similarities. Those studying or criticizing female circumcision/genital mutilation, of course, recognize that we do act differently and have different values. But descriptions about how or in what way we are different
  • 98. do not entail statements about how we ought to act. The controversial position, called ethical relativism, is that an action is right if it is approved in a person’s culture and wrong if it is disapproved. Another version of this controversial view is that to say something is right means it has cultural approval; to say something is wrong means it has cultural disapproval. According to this view, which some call cultural relativism, there is no way to evaluate moral claims across cultures; positions taken by international groups like the World Health Organization merely express a cluster of particular societal opinions and have no moral standing in other cultures. On this view it is incoherent to claim that something is wrong in a culture yet approved, or right yet disapproved; people can express moral judgments about things done in their own or other cultures, but they are expressing only their cultural point of view, not one that has moral author- ity in another culture…. I would begin by observing that we seem to share methods of discovery, evaluation, negotiation, and explanation that can be used to help assess moral judg- ments. For example, we agree how to evaluate methods and research in science, engineering, and medicine, and on how to translate, debate, deliberate, criticize, negotiate, and use technology. To do these things, however, we must first have
  • 99. agreed to some extent on how to distinguish good and bad methods and research in science, engineering, and medicine, and what constitutes a good or bad transla- tion, debate, deliberation, criticism, negotiation, or use of technology. These shared methods can be used to help evaluate moral judgments from one culture to another in a way that sometimes has moral authority. An example of a belief that could be evaluated by stable medical evidence is the assertion by people in some regions that the infant’s “death could result if, during delivery, the baby’s head touches the clitoris.” In addition, some moral claims can be evaluated in terms of their coher- ence. It seems incompatible to promote maternal-fetal health as a good and also to advocate avoidable practices known to cause serious perinatal and neonatal infections. We need not rank values similarly with people in another culture, or our own, to have coherent discussions about their consistency, consequences, or factual pre- suppositions. That is, even if some moral or ethical (I use these terms interchange- ably) judgments express unique cultural norms, they may still be morally evaluated by another culture on the basis of their logical consistency and their coherence with stable and cross-culturally accepted empirical information. In addition, we seem to share some moral values, goals, and judgments such as those about the evils of
  • 100. unnecessary suffering and lost opportunities, the need for food and shelter, the duty to help children, and the goods of promoting public health and personal well-being. Let us consider therefore, the reasons given by men and women 98 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve
  • 102. at io n. who practice female circumcision/genital mutilation in their communities. The information presented herein is based upon studies done by investigators who come from these cultures, some of whom had this ritual surgery as children (El Dareer is one such investigator). We can examine whether these reasons allow peo- ple from other cultures any way of entering the debate based upon such considera- tions as consistency or stable medical findings. Reasons Given for Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation According to four independent series of studies conducted by investigators from countries where female circumcision is widely practiced, the primary reasons given for performing this ritual surgery are that it (1) meets a religious requirement, (2) preserves group identity, (3) helps to maintain cleanliness and health, (4) preserves virginity and family honor and prevents immorality, and (5) furthers marriage goals including greater sexual pleasure for men. El Dareer conducted her studies in the Sudan, Dr. Olayinka Koso-Thomas in and around Sierra Leone, and Raquiya Haji Dualeh Abdalla and
  • 103. Daphne Williams Ntiri in Somalia. They argue that the reasons for continuing this practice in their respective countries float on a sea of false beliefs, beliefs that thrive because of a lack of education and open discussion about reproduction and sexuality. Insofar as intercultural methods for evaluating factual and logical statements exist, people from other cultures should at least be able to understand these inconsistencies or mistaken factual beliefs and use them as a basis for making some judgments having intercultural moral authority. First, according to these studies the main reason given for performing female circumcision/genital mutilation is that it is regarded as a religious requirement. Most of the people practicing this ritual are Muslims, but it is not a practice required by the Koran. El Dareer writes: “Circumcision of women is not explicitly enjoined in the Koran, but there are two implicit sayings of the Prophet Mohammed: ‘Circumcision is an ordinance in men and an embellishment in women’ and, reportedly Mohammed said to Om Attiya, a woman who circumcised girls in El Medina, ‘Do not go deep. It is more illuminating to the face and more enjoyable to the husband.’ Another version says, ‘Reduce but do not destroy. This is enjoyable to the woman and preferable to the man.’ But there is nothing in the Koran to suggest that the Prophet commanded that women be
  • 104. circumcised. He advised that it was important to both sexes that very little should be taken.” Female circumcision/genital mutilation, moreover, is not practiced in the spiritual center of Islam, Saudi Arabia. Another reason for questioning this as a Muslim practice is that clitoridectomy and infibulation predate Islam, going back to the time of the pharaohs…. Second, many argue that the practice helps to preserve group identity. When Christian colonialists in Kenya introduced laws opposing the practice of female cir- cumcision in the 1930s, African leader Kenyatta expressed a view still popular today: “This operation is still regarded as the very essence of an institution which has enormous educational, social, moral and religious implications, quite apart from the operation itself. For the present, it is impossible for a member of the [Kikuyu] tribe to imagine an initiation without clitoridectomy the abolition of LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 99 © C en ga ge
  • 106. w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. IRUA [the ritual operation] will destroy the tribal symbol which identifies the age group and prevent the Kikuyu from perpetuating that spirit of collectivism and national solidarity which they have been able to maintain from time immemorial.” In addition, the practice is of social and economic importance to older women who are paid for performing the rituals….
  • 107. Drs. Koso-Thomas, El Dareer, and Abdalla agree that people in these countries support female circumcision as a good practice, but only because they do not understand that it is a leading cause of sickness or even death for girls, mothers, and infants, and a major cause of infertility, infection, and maternal-fetal and mari- tal complications. They conclude that these facts are not confronted because these societies do not speak openly of such matters. Abdalla writes, “There is no longer any reason, given the present state of progress in science, to tolerate confusion and ignorance about reproduction and women’s sexuality.” Female circumcision/genital mutilation is intended to honor women as male circumcision honors men, and members of cultures where the surgery is practiced are shocked by the analogy of clitoridectomy to removal of the penis…. Third, the belief that the practice advances health and hygiene is incompatible with stable data from surveys done in these cultures, where female circumcision/ genital mutilation has been linked to mortality or morbidity such as shock, infertil- ity, infections, incontinence, maternal-fetal complications, and protracted labor…. Fourth, investigators found that circumcision is thought necessary in these cultures to preserve virginity and family honor and to prevent immorality. Type 3
  • 108. circumcision is used to keep women from having sexual intercourse before marriage and conceiving illegitimate children. In addition, many believe that Types 2 and 3 circumcision must be done because uncircumcised women have excessive and uncontrollable sexual drives. El Dareer, however, believes that this view is not con- sistently held—that women in the Sudan are respected and that Sudanese men would be shocked to apply this sometimes-held cultural view to members of their own families. This reason also seems incompatible with the general view, which investigators found was held by both men and women in these cultures, that sex cannot be pleasant for women. In addition, female circumcision/genital mutilation offers no foolproof way to promote chastity and can even lead to promiscuity because it does not diminish desire or libido even where it makes orgasms impossi- ble. Some women continually seek experiences with new sexual partners because they are left unsatisfied in their sexual encounters. Moreover, some pretend to be virgins by getting stitched up tightly again…. Fifth, interviewers found that people practicing female circumcision/genital mutilation believe that it furthers marriage goals, including greater sexual pleasure for men. To survive economically, women in these cultures must marry, and they will not be acceptable marriage partners unless they have undergone this ritual
  • 109. surgery. It is a curse, for example, to say that someone is the child of an uncir- cumcised woman. The widely held belief that infibulation enhances women’s beauty and men’s sexual pleasure makes it difficult for women who wish to marry to resist this practice. Some men from these cultures, however, report that they enjoy sex more with uncircumcised women. Furthermore, female circumcision/ genital mutilation is inconsistent with the established goals of some of these cultures because it is a leading cause of disability and contributes to the high mortality rate 100 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig
  • 111. ss a ut ho riz at io n. among mothers, fetuses, and children. Far from promoting the goals of marriage, it causes difficulty in consummating marriage, infertility, prolonged and obstructed labor, and morbidity and mortality. Criticisms of Ethical Relativism Examination of the debate concerning female circumcision suggests several conclu- sions about the extent to which people from outside a culture can understand or contribute to moral debates within it in a way that has moral force. First, the fact that a culture’s moral and religious views are often intertwined with beliefs that are open to rational and empirical evaluation can be a basis of cross-cultural examina- tion and intercultural moral criticism. Beliefs that the practice enhances fertility and promotes health, that women cannot have orgasms, and that
  • 112. allowing the baby’s head to touch the clitoris during delivery causes death to the baby are incompatible with stable medical data. Thus an opening is allowed for genuine cross-cultural dis- cussion or criticism of the practice. Some claims about female circumcision/genital mutilation, however, are not as easily open to cross-cultural understanding. For example, cultures practicing the Type 3 surgery, infibulation, believe that it makes women more beautiful. For those who are not from these cultures, this belief is difficult to understand, especially when surveys show that many women in these cultures, when inter- viewed, attribute to infibulation their keloid scars, urine retention, pelvic infec- tions, puerperal sepsis, and obstetrical problems. Koso-Thomas writes: “None of the reasons put forward in favor of circumcision have any real scientific or logical basis. It is surprising that aesthetics and the maintenance of cleanliness are advanced as grounds for female circumcision. The scars could hardly be thought of as contributing to beauty. The hardened scar and stump usually seen where the clitoris should be, or in the case of the infibulated vulva, taut skin with an ugly long scar down the middle, present a horrifying picture.” Thus not everyone in these cultures believes that these rituals enhance beauty; some find such claims dif- ficult to understand.
  • 113. Second, the debate over female circumcision/genital mutilation illustrates another difficulty for defenders of this version of ethical relativism concerning the problem of differentiating cultures. People who brought the practice of female cir- cumcision/genital mutilation with them when they moved to another nation still claim to be a distinct cultural group. Some who moved to Britain, for example, resent the interference in their culture represented by laws that condemn the prac- tice as child abuse. If ethical relativists are to appeal to cultural approval in making the final determination of what is good or bad, right or wrong, they must tell us how to distinguish one culture from another. How exactly do we count or separate cultures? A society is not a nation-state, because some social groups have distinctive identities within nations. If we do not define societies as nations, however, how do we distinguish among cultural groups, for example, well enough to say that an action is child abuse in one culture but not in another? Subcultures in nations typically overlap and have many variations. Even if we could count cultural groups well enough to say exactly how to distinguish one culture from another, how and when would this be relevant? How big or old or LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 101
  • 115. ut io n al lo w ed w ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. vital must a culture, subculture, group, or cult be in order to be
  • 116. recognized as a society whose moral distinctions are self-contained and self- justifying? A related problem is that there can be passionate disagreement, ambivalence, or rapid changes within a culture or group over what is approved or disapproved. According to ethical relativism, where there is significant disagreement within a cul- ture there is no way to determine what is right or wrong. But what disagreement is significant? Third, despite some clear disagreement such as that over the rightness of female circumcision/genital mutilation, people from different parts of the world share com- mon goals like the desirability of promoting people’s health, happiness, opportu- nities, and cooperation, and the wisdom of stopping war, pollution, oppression, torture, and exploitation. These common goals make us a world community, and using shared methods of reasoning and evaluation, we can discuss how they are understood or how well they are implemented in different parts of our world com- munity. We can use these shared goals to assess whether female circumcision/genital mutilation is more like respect or oppression, more like enhancement or diminish- ment of opportunities, or more like pleasure or torture. Another way to express this is to say that we should recognize universal human rights or be respectful of each
  • 117. other as persons capable of reasoned discourse. Fourth, this version of ethical relativism, if consistently held, leads to the abhor- rent conclusion that we cannot make intercultural judgments with moral force about societies that start wars, practice torture, or exploit and oppress other groups; as long as these activities are approved in the society that does them, they are allegedly right. Yet the world community believed that it was making a cross- cultural judgment with moral force when it criticized the Communist Chinese gov- ernment for crushing a pro-democracy student protest rally, the South Africans for upholding apartheid, the Soviets for using psychiatry to suppress dissent, and the Bosnian Serbs for carrying out the siege of Sarajevo. And the judgment was expressed without anyone’s ascertaining whether the respective actions had wide-spread approval in those countries. In each case, repre- sentatives from the criticized society usually said something like, “You don’t understand why this is morally justified in our culture even if it would not be in your society.” If ethical relativism were convincing, these responses ought to be as well. Relativists who want to defend sound social cross-cultural and moral judg- ments about the value of freedom and human rights in other cultures seem to have
  • 118. two choices. On the one hand, if they agree that some cross- cultural norms have moral authority, they should also agree that some intercultural judgments about female circumcision/genital mutilation may have moral authority. Some relativists take this route …, thereby abandoning the version of ethical relativism being criti- cized herein. On the other hand, if they defend this version of ethical relativism yet make cross-cultural moral judgments about the importance of values like tolerance, group benefit, and the survival of cultures, they will have to admit to an inconsis- tency in their arguments. For example, anthropologist Scheper- Hughes… advocates tolerance of other cultural value systems; she fails to see that she is saying that tol- erance between cultures is right and that this is a cross-cultural moral judgment using a moral norm (tolerance). Similarly, relativists who say it is wrong to 102 I S IT ALL RELATIVE? © C en ga ge L ea rn
  • 120. ith ou t e xp re ss a ut ho riz at io n. eliminate rituals that give meaning to other cultures are also inconsistent in making a judgment that presumes to have genuine cross-cultural moral authority. The burden of proof, then, is upon defenders of this version of ethical relativ- ism to show why we cannot do something we think we sometimes do very well, namely, engage in intercultural moral discussion, cooperation, or criticism and give support to people whose welfare or rights are in jeopardy in other cultures. In
  • 121. addition, defenders of ethical relativism need to explain how we can justify the actions of international professional societies that take moral stands in adopting policy. For example, international groups may take moral stands that advocate fighting pandemics, stopping wars, halting oppression, promoting health education, or eliminating poverty, and they seem to have moral authority in some cases. Some might respond that our professional groups are themselves cultures of a sort. But this response raises the already discussed problem of how to individuate a culture or society. Objections Some standard rejoinders are made to criticism of relativism, but they leave untouched the arguments against the particular version of ethical relativism dis- cussed herein. First, some defenders argue that cross-cultural moral judgments per- petuate the evils of absolutism, cultural dogmatism, or cultural imperialism. People rarely admit to such transgressions, often enlisting medicine, religion, science, or the “pure light of reason” to arrive at an allegedly impartial, disinterested, and justified conclusion that they should “enlighten” and “educate” the “natives,” “savages,” or “infidels.” Anthropologist Scheper-Hughes writes, “I don’t ‘like’ the idea of clitori- dectomy any better than any other woman I know. But I like even less the western
  • 122. ‘voices of reason’ [imposing their views].” Scheper-Hughes and others suggest that, in arguing that we can make moral judgments across cultures, we are thereby claiming a particular culture knows best and has the right to impose its allegedly superior knowledge on other cultures. Claiming that we can sometimes judge another culture in a way that has moral force, however, does not entail that one culture is always right, that absolutism is legitimate, or that we can impose our beliefs on others. Relativists sometimes respond that even if this is not a strict logical consequence, it is a practical result. Sherwin writes, “Many social scientists have endorsed versions of relativism pre- cisely out of their sense that the alternative promotes cultural dominance. They may be making a philosophical error in drawing that conclusion, but I do not think that they are making an empirical one.”… The version of ethical relativism we have been considering, however, does not avoid cultural imperialism. To say that an act is right, on this view, means that it has cultural approval, including acts of war, oppression, enslavement, aggression, exploitation, racism, or torture. On this view, the disapproval of other cultures is irrelevant in determining whether these acts are right or wrong; accordingly, the disapproval of people in other cultures, even victims of war,
  • 123. oppression, enslavement, aggression, exploitation, racism, or torture, does not count in deciding what is right or wrong except in their own culture. This view thus leads to abhorrent conclusions. It entails not only the affirmation that LORETTA M. KOPELMAN: FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/GENITAL MUTILATION 103 © C en ga ge L ea rn in g. A ll rig ht s r es er ve
  • 125. at io n. female circumcision/genital mutilation is right in cultures where it is approved but the affirmation that anything with wide social approval is right, including slavery, war, discrimination, oppression, racism, and torture. If defenders of the version of ethical relativism criticized herein are consistent, they will dismiss any objections by people in other cultures as merely an expression of their own cul- tural preferences, having no moral standing whatsoever in the society that is engaging in the acts in question. Defenders of ethical relativism must explain why we should adopt a view lead- ing to such abhorrent conclusions. They may respond that cultures sometimes over- lap and hence that the victims’ protests within or between cultures ought to count. But this response raises two further difficulties for defenders of ethical relativism. First, it is inconsistent if it means that the views of people in other cultures have moral standing and oppressors ought to consider the views of victims. Such judg- ments are inconsistent with this version of ethical relativism because they are
  • 126. cross-cultural judgments with moral authority. The second difficulty with this defense, also discussed above, is that it raises the problem of how we differentiate a culture or society. Second, some defenders of ethical relativism argue that we cannot know enough about another culture to make any cross-cultural moral judgments. We can- not really understand another society well enough to criticize it, they claim, because our feelings, concepts, or ways of reasoning are too different; our so-called ordinary moral views about what is permissible are determined by our upbringing and envir- onments to such a degree that they cannot be transferred to other cultures. There are two ways to understand this objection. The first is that nothing counts as understanding another culture except being raised in it. If that is what is meant, then the objection is valid in a trivial way. But it does not address the important issue of whether we can comprehend well enough to make relevant moral distinc- tions or engage in critical ethical discussions about the universal human right to be free of oppression. The second, and nontrivial, way to understand this objection is that we cannot understand another society well enough to justify claiming to know what is right or wrong in that society or even to raise moral questions about what enhances or