Moral relativism has nothing to do with tolerance

Tackling a philosophical pet peeve

My academic work is mostly in the field of metaethics, which is the area of philosophy that investigates the nature of morality. It’s a rather abstract subject, but one that almost everyone has views about, however inchoate. When I try to explain to someone what metaethics is about, I’ll usually say something like, “I study questions like whether or not morality is relative.” This usually gets people on the right page, because everyone has heard of the idea of moral relativism, and everyone has opinions about it. It’s not a particularly popular view! Indeed, the term ‘moral relativism’ is often used as a kind of epithet or term of abuse. (As in, “What kind of stupid moral relativism is this?”) People don’t like moral relativism because they equate it with a kind of unthinking non-judgmentalism or radical tolerance. “That’s what I think, but they think differently, and who am I to judge?” But that’s not what moral relativism is.

Now I am wary of linguistic prescriptivism. I don’t want to be the guy who insists “You’re using the term wrong!” when 99% of people use a term in one way, and I’m the holdout who uses the term in some other, more traditional way. If people have decided to use the term ‘moral relativism’ to refer to a kind of radical tolerance, then I won’t try to stop them. But I think that almost everyone knows that moral relativism doesn’t mean radical tolerance. Rather, they think that there’s a simple argument that takes us from moral relativism to radical tolerance. That simple argument would go something like this:

If moral relativism is true, then what’s wrong for me might not be wrong for you. Indeed, the fact that you’re doing something means that you probably think it’s ok. And if you think it’s ok, then, if moral relativism is true, it is ok (for you). So no one could be justified in criticizing you for your actions. After all, by your lights, you’re not doing anything wrong. By my lights you are, but my perspective is no more valid than yours, so I have no right to impose my perspective on you.

This can then easily lead into an argument for a form of moral realism, like:

But what you’re doing is really, really bad. You’re murdering babies! Of course I have a right to criticize that action. Therefore, moral relativism must be wrong.

But both of these arguments are very bad. Let me explain why.

Let’s begin by thinking about what moral relativism is. I hope that everyone agrees that moral relativism is well-captured by the simple slogan, “Morality is relative.” Let’s pick that apart a bit. First off, note that moral relativism isn’t the view that morality doesn’t exist or isn’t real. That is a different view in metaethics (usually called moral error theory). If you think that some subject isn’t real, you say it isn’t real, you don’t say it’s all relative. Atheists don’t say that God is relative; people who look down on astrology don’t say that astrology is all relative. They say it’s wrong, or mistaken. So moral relativism is thus the view that there are moral facts, of a kind. These facts are just relative.

But relative to what? Our simple slogan doesn’t tell us. The most common versions of relativism say that morality is relative to either personal moral beliefs or to cultural norms. On the former view, the standards for morality vary from person to person; what’s morally right and wrong depends on what matters to me or to you. On the latter view, the standards of morality are social or cultural; what’s morally right and wrong depends on the dominant norms of some society. (Note that on the former view, people’s moral views are always, in a sense, correct, and trivially so, because the standards for evaluating a person’s moral beliefs are just their own moral beliefs. On the latter view, people could have incorrect moral views. An ethical vegetarian in a society full of meat-eaters would just be wrong about what morality requires of her because, in her society, eating meat is ok.)

This complicates our definition of moral relativism somewhat. Both the personal and the cultural versions of moral relativism are indeed versions of moral relativism, so we need to be somewhat schematic when defining moral relativism to capture the fact that there are different versions of the view. So let us say that moral relativism is the idea that moral facts are facts only relative to some framework. Different versions of moral relativism will say what a framework is.

But saying this leaves things too underspecified. What should we say about the view that moral facts are facts only relative to some framework, but the framework that they are facts relative to is the objective moral law? That doesn’t look like a kind of relativism at all. So we should say that moral relativism is the view that moral facts are facts relative to some framework, and there is more than one valid moral framework.¹

Ok, so that’s relativism. Now what about tolerance? Tolerance is, in general, the idea that we shouldn’t judge/criticize/ostracize/whatever others. Perhaps, keeping an eye on how we defined relativism, we should add that we shouldn’t judge/etc others if they are acting in a way that is acceptable relative to some valid moral framework. Depending on how we feel about the debate I mentioned in the footnote at the end of the last paragraph, that might be a significant addition to the idea of tolerance. But either way, tolerance is a moral norm. It says what you should or shouldn’t do.

The central question we’re interested in is whether or not we should be tolerant if moral relativism is true. But if moral relativism is true, then there’s no objective fact of the matter about whether or not we should be tolerant. And if moral relativism is true, then there’s no objective fact of the matter about whether or not we should be tolerant if moral relativism is true. Whether or not we should be tolerant depends on our moral framework! That’s the whole point of relativism!

To illustrate, let’s consider the version of relativism where what’s right or wrong depends on your own particular subjective moral views. And you yourself are very committed to not tolerating baby murder (I hope). Indeed, according to your moral framework, baby murder is exactly the kind of thing we should be condemning. In this case, it would be wrong (for you) to tolerate baby murder. Now, of course, it would be wrong for you to condemn baby murder according to the moral framework of the baby murderer. But so what? That’s not your framework! Why in the world do you need to act in accordance with the baby murderer’s framework? He’s a sick fuck!

The argument that moral relativism implies radical tolerance assumes that we can and should be taking a kind of weird, free-floating position on moral norms. We shouldn’t be looking at what is true according to our own moral frameworks. Rather, we should be freeing ourselves from our own moral frameworks, and recognizing that all moral frameworks have their own kind of validity. And, recognizing that all moral frameworks have their own kind of validity, we should respect the validity of frameworks other than our own, and that means not judging people who are acting in accordance with their own moral frameworks. But this free-floating moral position on moral norms is not entailed by moral relativism; it is just another moral framework. It might be one that moral relativists are tempted to accept, but that doesn’t make that framework a part of moral relativism. It’s very much not.

And honestly, there aren’t too many relativists who are tempted to accept that free-floating framework, at least not in full generality. (Ask the stereotypical lefty moral relativist what he thinks about Gaza.) Tolerance is considered to be a virtue in contemporary liberal society, and perhaps a kind of tolerance is a virtue. But no one is really radically tolerant. And that’s a good thing! Moral relativism gives us no reason to be radically tolerant. Nothing does.

This isn’t to say that there is no problem with moral relativism. I’m not a moral relativist myself. But that’s because I have worries about the coherence of the notion of framework-relative moral truth that relativists are committed to. The idea that moral relativism entails some sort of norm of radical tolerance is a ridiculous brain worm that has infected the popular understanding of metaethics. It’s the product of sloppy thinking, and we are best rid of it.

1. Some might say that this still leaves things too underspecified. If all that is required for moral relativism is that there is more than one valid moral framework, then moral relativism is consistent with the idea that there are only two moral frameworks. And those two moral frameworks might be very similar, yielding identical judgments about a wide variety of cases, and only yielding different verdicts about a relatively small slice of disagreements. In such a case, the range of views that are correct relative to some framework or another would be rather small, and many things would be wrong according to every valid framework. It’s unclear what to make of this observation. Lots of people at this point will say that it’s essential to the spirit of relativism that any action could be morally right or could be morally wrong, all depending on the framework. So we need to say not just that there is more than one valid moral framework, but that there are a vast plethora of valid moral frameworks, and that, for any action, there is some framework where it is right and some where it is wrong. But plenty of others will say that, no, there really is a restricted range of valid moral frameworks. There are no valid frameworks on which it is acceptable to murder babies. In this way, relativism can capture the idea that it is always wrong, for everyone to murder babies. In fact, this is exactly what many contemporary moral relativists say in order to answer the objection that their view has counter-intuitive implications about the potential wrongness of baby murder. Critics reply that this isn’t really relativism. I take no stand on this issue here, and it doesn’t make a difference to my main argument above, which is why I put this discussion in a footnote. But I still think it’s interesting and worth drawing attention to.