Cultural Relativism

Definitions and Historical Background

Cultural relativism is the broad family of views according to which beliefs, values, and practices are intelligible, and often justifiable, only in relation to a specific cultural framework. In ethics, it is commonly understood as the thesis that what is morally right or wrong for a person depends on the norms of that person’s culture, and that there is no culture-independent standpoint from which to judge all practices.

Historically, cultural relativism emerged from early 20th‑century anthropology, especially in the work of Franz Boas and his students, who opposed evolutionary hierarchies that ranked some societies as “primitive” and others as “advanced.” They emphasized understanding practices—such as kinship systems, religious rituals, or gender roles—in terms of their function and meaning within a particular way of life.

In philosophy, cultural relativism is closely linked to metaethical debates about whether moral truths are objective or instead relative to cultures, traditions, or conceptual schemes. It is often contrasted with moral universalism, which holds that at least some moral norms apply to all human beings regardless of culture.

Main Forms of Cultural Relativism

Philosophers and anthropologists distinguish several forms of cultural relativism, which can come apart:

1. Descriptive cultural relativism
   This is an empirical claim: different cultures in fact endorse different moral norms, values, and conceptual schemes. For example, cultures may differ on issues such as polygamy, attitudes to truth-telling in war, or obligations to extended family. Descriptive relativism by itself does not say which, if any, are correct; it simply notes diversity.

2. Normative (moral) cultural relativism
   This is an ethical thesis about what one ought to do. In one common formulation:

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   An action is morally right for a person if and only if it accords with the moral code of that person’s culture.

   Under this view, there is no single true morality for all cultures; moral correctness is relative to a cultural standard. A stronger normative form adds a further principle: that one ought not morally criticize the practices of other cultures if they are endorsed within those cultures.

3. Metaethical cultural relativism
   This is a thesis about the status or truth conditions of moral claims. It holds that the truth or justification of moral judgments is relative to cultural frameworks. For example, “Torture is wrong” may be true relative to one culture and false relative to another, without there being any culture-independent fact of the matter. This is a form of moral relativism, with cultures rather than individuals as the relevant basis.

4. Methodological cultural relativism (in anthropology)
   Anthropologists often adopt a methodological stance of suspending their own moral judgments in order to understand practices “from the inside.” This approach encourages interpreting actions within local systems of meaning, avoiding premature condemnation or ethnocentric bias. Methodological relativism is a research strategy and does not, by itself, commit one to any ethical or metaethical relativist thesis.

5. Conceptual or cognitive relativism (related debates)
   A more general philosophical form claims that standards of rationality, truth, or evidence can also be relative to cultures. This broader relativism is associated with debates about incommensurable conceptual schemes, though it is distinct from moral cultural relativism and often treated separately.

Arguments For and Against

Arguments in Support

Proponents advance several lines of argument:

• Anti-ethnocentrism and tolerance
  Cultural relativism is often motivated by a desire to avoid ethnocentrism, the tendency to treat one’s own culture as the default or superior standard. By emphasizing that norms are culturally grounded, relativists argue for humility and greater tolerance toward practices that initially appear strange or wrong.

• Explanation from diversity of moral codes
  Relativists point to deep and persistent moral disagreements between cultures. They contend that if there were a single objective moral truth, we would expect convergence over time. The continued diversity is taken as evidence that moral standards are constructed within cultures rather than discovered as universal facts.

• Context-sensitivity of norms
  Some defend relativism by stressing the role of local conditions—economic, ecological, historical, religious—in shaping which moral norms are reasonable. Practices that appear objectionable from the outside may serve crucial functions within a social or ecological niche, suggesting that moral assessment must be context-bound.

• Challenge to claims of moral imperialism
  Cultural relativism has been invoked to criticize attempts by powerful states or groups to impose their moral views on others under the guise of universal norms. By questioning universality, relativists seek to expose how appeals to “universal values” can mask political or economic domination.

Major Criticisms

Critics raise several influential objections:

• The reformer problem
  If moral rightness is defined by a culture’s current norms, then moral reformers who challenge those norms—such as abolitionists opposing slavery—are, by definition, morally wrong within their own culture at the time. Many philosophers take this as an implausible implication: relativism seems unable to account for the possibility of justified moral criticism from within a culture.

• The impossibility of criticizing harmful practices
  If one ought never to condemn practices accepted in another culture, then it appears impossible to criticise practices widely regarded as serious human rights violations (such as genocide, systematic discrimination, or torture) when they are culturally sanctioned. Critics argue that this insulates harmful practices from moral evaluation.

• Collapse of cross-cultural moral disagreement
  Under some formulations of relativism, when two cultures disagree about a moral statement, they are not actually contradicting each other, since each statement is true relative to its own culture. Critics contend this misrepresents genuine moral disagreement and undermines the idea of moral argument across cultures.

• Self-refutation worries
  Some argue that the claim “All moral truths are relative to cultures” is itself presented as a universal thesis. If it is only relatively true, members of cultures that endorse moral objectivism would have no reason to accept it; if it is universally true, it contradicts its own content. Relativists respond with more careful formulations, but the tension remains a central point of debate.

• Weakness in guiding action
  Opponents also say that cultural relativism offers limited guidance when multiple cultural frameworks overlap or when individuals belong to several cultural groups with conflicting norms. It can also struggle to address internal dissent within a culture.

Relation to Universalism and Human Rights

Debates about cultural relativism frequently intersect with disputes over moral universalism and human rights. Universalists argue that at least some core rights or duties—such as basic protections against cruelty or arbitrary killing—apply to all human beings, independent of culture. International human rights doctrines are often framed in universalist terms.

Critics influenced by cultural relativism question whether such rights are genuinely universal or instead rooted in particular historical and cultural traditions (for example, Enlightenment liberalism). They warn that universalist frameworks may ignore or suppress alternative moral traditions and local concepts of justice, obligation, or personhood.

Some contemporary theorists propose moderate or pluralist positions that acknowledge both:

• the importance of cultural context and local moral vocabularies, and
• the possibility of limited, overlapping, or “thin” universal norms (such as prohibitions on extreme cruelty).

In this way, cultural relativism continues to function both as a substantive metaethical position and as a critical tool for questioning claims to universality in ethics, law, and international politics, without a settled consensus on its ultimate validity or scope.