Relativist morality could be seen as unfair, when looked at closely and seen from critics’ point of view it becomes clear that it is easy to question perhaps because of its weakness as a moral system. The weakness could somewhat be perceived as making Relativist morality unfair.
A relativist cannot pass judgement but yet to be true to their name ‘relativist’ they would be practising ‘do not pass judgement’ thus they are preaching to others that they should not do something in order for others to follow relativism. This concludes that relativism is self – refuting because a concept of relativism has been broken in order to follow it. This could be seen as unfair because to put relativist morality into …show more content…
practice would involve relativists telling an individual what to do, regarding personal idea raises the question ‘ if being relativist means you are able to break a rule you live by, then it is not fair in terms of my attitudes to ethical understanding. However it could be said that it’s not unfair as its one thing that relativists ask people to do in order to consider living from a relativist’s point of view.
In real life relativism would be extremely hard to live by in all situations, and again the idea of unfairness can be applied.
If for example a relativist lived in a society that refuses to punish an individual that kills a child, then they are entitled to not like this as it is their opinion but but they are not obliged to judge the abusers actions as unjust. It is apparent that killing a child is unjust and wrong but yet a relativist has no right to declare the murderer as guilty of wrongdoing, this rise a question ‘If we are certain that murder of a child is wrong, then how can relativism exists?’ How can it be fair to not be able to label something seen as cruel , as unjust and thus wrong how can it be possible to not see this as unjust? And how is this fair on the victim? That their death was in fact not wrong and not unjust because the actions were committed subject to the perpetrator’s moral understanding of what is right and good or because their society claims that this is right and …show more content…
good.
Relativists see no universal absolutes so nothing is universally bad or is it universally good thus this means that blame and praise would become nonexistent because praise comes from doing something good but without good this would be virtually impossible because good would not be judged and therefore it could not be praised in a moral sense. This again could be seen as unfair because it could an act of kindness but yet there is no absolute good in the act for example helping an elderly person with their shopping this is neither seen as good or bad and therefore no praise could come of doing what is believed to be good. Relativists can’t make charges of unfairness, despite what they may feel personally, say the relativist thought that it was unfair for Nazi Germany to slaughter many Jews , but Germany thought these actions to be correct because it is relative to their society then Germanys would say they were being fair and thus must the Relativist.
Many individuals will question this because these people that were slaughtered were innocent but yet a relativist would have see these acts as fair, it does not seem fair to have an opinion that these acts were unfair but have to agree that they were fair. How is this view fair for the millions of innocent Jews that were
slaughtered?.
There would be no prison if moral relativism was to be put into practise because if there is not universal good or bad, then no law would be in place because nobody can decipher the truth thus punishment would be nonexistent because there is no need for anybody to be punished if no one has the right to pass judgement on whether their actions are right or wrong and the reason for imprisonment is because someone has committed crime thus there is no reason for prison to exists however then how would society function, in a recognizable fair way for example the idea of shoplifting this would not be controlled neither would happenings such as rape. This would not be fair because individuals could hurt or steal because it was their moral understanding of good etc so harm would not be seen as bad and neither would theft and the country would therefore not be able to run because people would live how they pleased subject to their moral understanding. This type of life for people would not be fair with no guidelines people would be free do what they like causing pain to other psychically and emotionally and this would not be fair.
In conclusion it can be said that relativist morality would not be fair because of the complications it would have when followed correctly and how difficult it would be followed properly. It would cause many problems in reality that would not be fair on individuals.