Jonathan Barazzutti

Cultural relativism is a topic that is extensively debated, not only in political circles but also in religious circles to a degree. These debates often get very heated for a number of reasons, but one of the primary ones is that they generally consist of people talking past one another. Some will argue that certain cultures are better than others because they prioritize sets of values that lead to human flourishing, however defined. Others will counter that there is no objective standard by which you can evaluate the cultures of others, and that holding a culture to a particular standard risks misunderstanding the culture or even being prejudiced towards those who adhere to that culture.

This disagreement stems from a misunderstanding of two ideas. The first is what culture is, and the second is what relativism is. Relativism in particular is a tricky issue as it actually has several definitions in the cultural relativism debate, which are often substituted for one another in the middle of a discussion. However, once these terms are clarified, it becomes easier to discuss the merits and drawbacks of cultural relativism in a meaningful way.

I hold that cultural relativism is fine as a methodology through which to study cultures, and its framework can allow us to better empathize with those from different cultures. At the same time, if one suggests that no culture is better than another, then one has to argue that no political ideologies, scientific theories, or ideas in general are better than others. In practice, this latter type of cultural relativism is never adhered to consistently and amounts to an incoherent rhetorical strategy when employed.

What is Culture?

But first, what is culture? Culture is a set of values, beliefs, and practices that a particular group of people have. This broad definition is generally well-understood by people. However, what this definition fully encompasses is typically not appreciated. Culture under this definition would not only encompass things as simple as rituals or customs, but also political ideologies, theories of history, and even scientific propositions.

For example, historically, European cultures believed in spontaneous generation theory, according to which living creatures naturally arise from non-living matter in common and regular instances. For instance, maggots were thought to naturally generate out of flesh, because they were generally observed surrounding flesh when it was exposed for long enough. This was later disproven through experiments done in the 17th century involving putting meat in jars and then leaving them either sealed or unsealed, demonstrating that maggots don’t spontaneously generate from meat. Instead, flies are attracted to exposed meat, lay eggs in it, and those eggs hatch into maggots that consume the meat.

This theory of life’s origin was not merely a cultural belief with no impact on the practices of European societies. Spontaneous generation theory had a direct effect on things as simple as dietary decisions during Lent to things as consequential as disease prevention. During the Black Death epidemic that ravaged Europe between the years 1347 and 1352, there were active attempts to prevent the spread of the disease, which relied on the notion that the disease was caused by “bad air” as opposed to bacteria. One of the cultural practices that emerged from this was that people would carry bouquets of flowers, which they would hold to their faces. This was because it was believed that flowers would ward off the bad air which causes the disease, and it would also effectively fumigate one’s lungs if a person had already contracted the disease. As expected, the practice was completely ineffective in actually preventing the spread of the bubonic plague.

This cultural practice can be conceived both as a custom or ritual, as well as a scientific proposition, as the practice itself was derived from a scientific belief about the world. This understanding will become crucial when assessing cultural relativism, as it will clarify how broad culture is and why, depending on how relativism is defined, whether or not it has merits will vary widely.

The Three Types of Relativism

Relativism has a number of definitions depending on who one asks. As the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology’s entry on cultural relativism notes, “Cultural relativism is not so much a single position as a name shared by several related positions, many of which have importance not only in the social sciences (especially anthropology) but in law and philosophy.” These differences in definition stem not from a difference in understanding of what culture is, which while often misunderstood, is used in the same context regardless of what definition of cultural relativism is being invoked. Instead, they stem from differences in how culture is analyzed or perceived, which depends on the definition of “relativism” that is used. I want to specify three types of cultural relativism that are useful to discuss. While this doesn’t capture every context in which the concept is used, it does capture the major philosophical frameworks.

The first type of cultural relativism I want to discuss is what I’ll call “hard moral relativism”. The “hard moral relativism” type of cultural relativism argues that it is immoral to judge a culture by the standards of another because no culture can be said to be “better” than another. This is distinct but somewhat related to the broader concept of moral relativism, which is often defined as the view that morality itself only exists relative to individuals, and so nothing can be said to be objectively “right” or “wrong”.

Another type of cultural relativism concerns morality, but doesn’t make as sweeping claims as “hard moral relativism” does. This viewpoint, what I’ll call “soft moral relativism”, argues that it is often wrong to judge another culture because cultures exist within a broader social context that judges their existence. Furthermore, it is wrong to judge people within a culture for adhering to certain cultural values when those values are what they were socialized with. This type of cultural relativism, unlike “hard moral relativism”, allows one to argue that some cultures are “better” than others. Still, it nonetheless precludes one from being harsh against cultures or their adherents in many circumstances.

The third and final type of cultural relativism I want to discuss is what I’ll call “methodological relativism”. This type of cultural relativism does not concern ethics as the previous two types did, but rather concerns research. It holds that when studying a culture as an anthropologist or other type of social scientist, one should take the culture as it presents itself without imposing any external value judgments onto what is being studied. Methodological relativists could also be either “soft” or “hard” moral relativists, or neither, but nonetheless believe that when trying to understand a culture it’s best to examine it without any preconceptions.

I will discuss these three notions of cultural relativism in turn. In this discussion, I will use the aforementioned example of European cultural practices in response to the black death epidemic to discuss whether each type of relativism has merit.

Hard Moral Relativism

“Hard moral relativism”, seeing no culture as inherently better than another, would be forced to suggest that the European cultural responses to the bubonic plague were not inherently “good” or “bad”, but were merely part of the European people’s culture. A set of a few hypotheticals can be used to demonstrate why this position is untenable.

Suppose you were to go back to the year 1349 in what is now modern-day France, amid the Black Death epidemic. Would it have been moral for you to critique the cultural practice of holding flowers to your face, or critique spontaneous generation theory more broadly? Would it be rude to the culture to suggest better means by which the Europeans at that time could have prevented the spread of the disease? Is holding flowers to one’s face really “better” than another disease prevention method?

When the stakes are high enough, even the most radical “hard moral relativists” would shirk their notion that no culture is “better” than another, and instead go with what saves lives. Because if the cultural relativist didn’t critique the cultural practices of the time, it would have potentially led to millions of people dying from the plague who wouldn’t have died otherwise.

Note that in this hypothetical, despite merely relying on what are, at face value, relatively benign practices and beliefs, such as the notion of spontaneous generation theory, there is still reason to critique the culture. Nowhere in this hypothetical were any extreme ideas invoked that practically everyone would dispute from the get-go, such as advocacy for genocide, and despite that, anyone who examined the implications of the surface-level benign and harmless cultural idea would still conclude that it should be critiqued. But why?

The reason is that there is an underlying value being adhered to, which ultimately supersedes any appeal to cultural preservation. The exact specifics of this value set might differ from person to person engaging in the hypothetical, but it will generally revolve around some attempt to maximize human well-being. Even if one exists external to the culture being critiqued, as anyone today would be in the Black Death hypothetical which goes back to a culture which no longer exists, anyone engaging with the hypothetical would naturally assert that they should get the Europeans at the time to change their cultural practices to improve their well-being.

Many “hard moral relativists” will critique those who attempt to judge a culture from an outsider perspective, without having any strong issue with the culture itself changing over time as long as it’s done internally. However, whether there is something particularly wrong with a person external to a culture critiquing that culture relative to a person internal to a culture critiquing it also brings forth a host of problems. Suppose that instead of someone today who knows where diseases come from being transported back to 1349 in France, a Frenchman in the year 1349 somehow came to the same knowledge. This Frenchman, therefore, knew that the practice of putting flowers to one’s face did not help stop the spread of the epidemic, and instead knew of other public health means by which the epidemic could be more effectively dealt with. Would it be more justified for that person to critique the European cultural beliefs and practices just because he grew up within them?

The same reasoning that says no culture is better than another, which is used to suggest that a person outside of a culture cannot critique that culture, can just as easily be invoked to argue that a person inside a culture cannot critique their own culture. What makes a person inside a culture uniquely justified in critiquing their own culture, that makes a person outside a culture not? If the answer is knowledge, then suppose both individuals have identical knowledge about the culture. Is there a difference then?

Furthermore, note that when cultural relativists argue that it is wrong for a person to critique another culture, they are making a value judgment themselves. Do adherents to cultural relativism make up one or more cultures in themselves? If so, then does that make their value judgment any better than another’s? Furthermore, do those who critique other cultures make up one or more cultures in themselves? If so, then is it justified for cultural relativists to critique the critiquing of another culture?

While it is generally imprudent to assume motives on the part of adherents to a particular set of beliefs, it is difficult for me to see these types of cultural relativists as arguing in good faith. This is because in practice, no one actually adheres to this formulation of cultural relativism. Whenever the notion is invoked, it is clearly used as a rhetorical convention to prevent certain ideas from being critiqued. Fundamentally, cultures are just sets of ideas. So, if no idea is immune from criticism, then it follows that no culture is immune from criticism either.

This helps to solve part of how cultural relativism debates involve parties talking past one another. Some parties have a particular sensitivity against criticizing cultures because their adherents may belong to an ethnic or racial minority group. But if one recognizes that culture is not distinct from a set of ideas, then it becomes clear that attempts to critique cultures are not meant to attack people. Attempts to critique cultures are not even unique to critiquing elements of ethnic or racial minority cultures either, as the aforementioned example of critiquing a European culture demonstrates.

Many view culture as being inherently associated with ethnic or racial minority groups, where something is seen as “cultural” if it’s not seen as the default in the west. This view is false. Ironically, many who engage in this reasoning also critique the concept of “whiteness”, which they view as the notion that what is “white” is seen as the default in society. But defining every deviation from so-called “whiteness” as necessarily being “cultural” contributes to this very notion that “whiteness” is a default.

Soft Moral Relativism

If “hard moral relativism” is untenable, what about “soft moral relativism”? A “soft moral relativist” would argue that one should not be so quick to judge a culture for its practices, given the broader context in which the culture was created. In the case of the black death epidemic, a “soft moral relativist” would suggest that at the time the Europeans lived, the practice of holding flowers to one’s face to prevent the spread of the disease wasn’t as unreasonable as it might seem from a modern, outsider’s perspective.

In the short essay entitled “The Relativity of Wrong,” 20th-century biochemist Isaac Asimov argues that “right” and “wrong” in science are not absolute terms, but rather are fuzzy concepts. He gives the example of early civilizations that believed the Earth was flat. While this belief seems preposterous to the average person today, given the information available to early civilizations, this was a very reasonable proposition. People at that time would observe that the ground appeared to level out on average over distances, that even when there were hills and valleys, there was still an average elevation that land didn’t seem to deviate significantly from, with few exceptions. Per mile, the actual curvature of the earth is approximately 0 miles, meaning that from the perspective of those seeing land in front of them, even long distances of land, the world both looks flat and is essentially flat.

Similar to how the view that the Earth was flat, while wrong, was not unreasonable, this analysis can also be reasonably applied to the flower-holding practice of the Europeans. This practice, as discussed, was built upon the view of diseases as originating from “bad air”. While seen as clearly false now, it makes a lot of sense when considering the information set Europeans had access to at that time.

A “soft moral relativist” view extends this to cultures in general. While many cultural practices are wrong in some way, there is value in not impugning individuals who belong to that culture or even the culture itself, because cultures are generally not formed in isolation but are highly dependent on a number of external factors. Ignoring these external factors can lead one to make unfair judgments of other individuals or groups. And this is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint.

Methodological Relativism

“Methodological relativism” goes entirely outside of the realm of morality, unlike the previous two definitions I described, and instead represents a perspective on how cultures should be studied, irrespective of one’s views of a particular culture. A “methodological relativist”, instead of attempting to praise or denigrate a culture or its adherents for participating in a given practice, would try to understand the culture in its own terms.

In the example of the flower-holding cultural practice of the Europeans, this would take a somewhat similar form to how “soft moral relativists” would examine the practice, except in this case it’s not a view on morality but an attempt to study the culture. The “methodological relativist” would examine the reasons why Europeans adopted that practice, with a particular focus on their information sets. They would pay particular attention to how Europeans concluded that holding flowers to one’s face would reduce the chance of getting the disease and would also fumigate one’s lungs, without imposing a particular judgment.

For the purposes of scientific understanding, “methodological relativism” is an excellent means by which one could better understand the culture that a person belongs to. It not only gives us insight into that culture, but also into human nature more broadly, through examining how the logics of different cultures operate. Therefore, this type of cultural relativism is essential to anthropological study.

The Bottom Line

Culture is a set of ideas that can be defined in an infinite number of ways based on the generalities of particular groups of people. Africans have a culture, or at least a set of cultures, as do Asians and Europeans. Cambodians similarly have a culture or set of cultures, as do Nigerians and Italians. Culture isn’t simply limited to ethnicity either. It embodies all sets of ideas. Progressives have a culture, conservatives have a culture, and even scientists have a culture. Even online subforums from weebs to incels each have a culture. Understanding that culture embodies all of these things at once allows us to recognize that there is nothing inherently wrong with praising or critiquing a culture or set of cultural beliefs, just as there’s nothing inherently wrong with praising or critiquing an idea or set of ideas.

At the same time, it would be wrong to suggest that cultural relativism offers no ideas of value. While the bent of cultural relativism that says it is inherently wrong to critique a culture is untenable, being neutral towards a culture while studying it or being careful to not quickly judge a culture without considering the circumstances within which it was brought about are reasonable positions to have.

An important caveat that must be stated regarding all of this is that not all cultural practices have things in them that are obviously praiseworthy or objectionable from a descriptive or normative view. Many can be viewed as more or less neutral, such as particular ritualistic practices some cultures may engage in. Many of these practices are particular to a group of people and serve as social bonding exercises, and it’s difficult to evaluate them on any descriptive or normative level. Other types of practices within a culture likely fall into this category as well, so while this does require a qualifier in the analysis of cultural relativism, it doesn’t undermine the critiques made of cultural relativism’s particular instantiations.

Beyond the Logic of Cultural Relativism

I find that this type of examination of cultural relativism works well with very analytically-minded individuals, but this all misses another piece of the picture. While I have shown that it is reasonable to critique cultures in many circumstances, this doesn’t address the emotional aspect of the discomfort many have with the whole discussion. Part of this is due to the common misconception, as previously discussed, that culture is exclusive to ethnic minorities. Consequently, the dominant “expanding moral circle” narrative in today’s society will, by its very nature, engage in a sacralization of culture itself. However, I think there is something deeper going on.

Culture is something essential to people’s identities, and so they naturally become highly attached to it. When you ask many people who they are, one of the first things they might say is the culture they belong to, or at least something that their culture would directly or indirectly encompass. In a sense, it is understandable that many people have the view that any time a culture is being critiqued, it is inherently dehumanizing to others. It is this, above the actual analysis of cultural relativism, that is likely driving its adherence by many. Indeed, much of the subconscious motivation behind cultural relativism, like many other views under the umbrella of the “expanding moral circle” narrative, is to function as a signal of niceness and tolerance towards others. I must admit that while I can intellectually understand this motivation, it is difficult for me to grasp the emotions behind it.

This difficulty might be because I generally haven’t strongly attached my identity to any groups that I belong to. In cases where I may have, it’s been relatively short-lived. I was raised in a Roman Catholic family and was brought up in the religion to a heavy degree. I attended a Catholic school for much of my early childhood, where I was required to learn the teachings of the religion every day. For years, I also attended church weekly.

However, I began having doubts about the religion as early as 8 years old. Over the next few years, the number and intensity of these doubts grew. While my memory of this period is somewhat hazy, I can point to a number of these issues that I was starting to have, although I couldn’t fully put them into words at the time. For example, my Catholic education taught me about an extensive number of miracles that occurred throughout history, events where God intervened in someone’s life to defy the laws of nature. However, one observation I made was that at the same time that technology was advancing – and with it the ability to document, record, or prove that any individual miracle had occurred – it seemed like the actual number of miracles that were happening according to the church had drastically gone down, if not virtually disappeared. If anything, with a greater ability for people today to document these types of occurrences relative to 2000 years ago, one would expect there to be more instances of God’s intervention in people’s lives if God really was intervening in the world. And yet, that is not what was seen, which led me to wonder if there were actually any miracles in the first place. At some point between the ages of 9 and 11, I considered myself an atheist. I’m not sure I was aware of the term at the time, but it was somewhere in that time range when I no longer believed in the existence of a god.

Religious people may have rebuttals to this objection and the other objections I had at the time. But the point is not that these were strong or weak objections, but that this is the natural temperament I operate with when examining culture. I had several significant shifts in my worldview throughout my teenage years, from a weird set of hyper-left political and philosophical beliefs between the ages of 11 and 13, to a MAGA republican between the ages of 13 and 15, to a leftist between the ages of 15 and 17. While I have had a relatively consistent set of beliefs since the age of 18, I still have shifts in my views, and I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing. Throughout all of this, I was in different social circles which had different cultures embedded within them. These included different tolerances for types of humor, as well as different social standards surrounding how people should relate to one another. And in having a particular set of political values, I was by necessity critiquing certain political cultures which I felt were damaging.

As is heavily implied from these anecdotes, a significant aspect of my temperament is characterized by high levels of the personality trait “openness to experience”. I’m naturally inclined against a static view of culture, of one’s identity, and of one’s beliefs, seeing these things as ever fluid and changing. I believe society ought to embrace this and progressively expand upon and evolve its values over time. This has come naturally to me in my personal life, in the same way that changing my view on a scientific proposition with new evidence would come naturally to me. But I recognize that this can come across as cold and mechanical to many people.

Conclusion

But while much of this analysis can be challenging to swallow, the reality is that culture has never been a static and unchanging thing. Cultures constantly change, even with the natural passage of time, and there isn’t anything inherently wrong with it. So when people suggest that it is wrong to critique a culture because no culture is better than another, they are fundamentally critiquing change itself.

The cultural relativism debate is a confusing one. It is in part confusing because of the numerous definitions, which extend even beyond the three I laid out. But it is also confusing because of the reasoning that some engage with in this conversation, which is blatantly irrational. The ability to critique and modify ideas and cultures alike is crucial to the flourishing of people, as individuals and as collectives.