Relativistic View Of Polygamy

In this project, I have assessed the differences in moral judgments between a police officer from the Bath police station and four young professionals working in the same city, with the objective to find the morality approach that most suits each. The hypothesis by which this project has been based by two premises. Firstly, the idea that the police officer would possess, due to his job and duties, a morality most related to moral rationalism. Secondly, the young professionals would have a tendency to choose a more relativistic view of morality.

1. Moral Rationalism.

Moral rationalism is the idea that we can discover true and universal morals simply by reasoning. This theory is particularly plausible when applied to concepts such as
The truth of moral judgments is therefore relative depending on a particular group of people (Gowans, 2008). For example, when we discuss about the morality of polygamy, some people may argue that this is an acceptable moral practice in one society, whilst another will treat it as an immoral practice. It is, therefore, justified by one society but not another. This theory denies the existence of universal moral values present in every human society, as every morality existing may be treated as a relative concept. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in this theory, “Every attempt to establish a single, objectively valid and universally binding set of moral principles runs up against formidable objections” (Westacott,
He argues that although in his profession he may possess a bit of power over people, this power is mostly used to do ‘good’, and those who over-use it are corrupted by a feeling of greed. This is interesting compared to his definition of good people and bad people. If police officers indeed enjoy more power than the rest of the population, in order to control the bad people, over-using the power will be considered an illegal action and therefore, the ‘good police officer’ immediately becomes a ‘bad police officer’. This shows that instead of a gradual change of being morally corrupted, it seems like the illegal action is what makes the ‘bad person’. At the start of the video, the participants were asked to mention the three top values a policeman should be example of, the majority of them said the same two: honesty and integrity. According to this surely, when these values are broken by the police officer, the power and respect they are given by the population should be taken away from them immediately. Instead it seems that we wait for a criminal act to be found out and prosecuted, making the person become the ‘bad police officer’. As my first hypothesis argued, this police officer does possess a strong rationalised moral view, and although there are statements that he said that could fall into grey