A CRITICAL VIEW ON NORMATIVE CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Abstract

Cultural relativism, which has been discussed in the different modes of thought for many years by a great number of philosophers, greets the eye as one of the crucial subjects of philosophy. Whilst a number of philosophers have a tendency for supporting it, the other majority takes a critical stance towards it as opponents. But it is still unclear whether or not it may be possible to find a way out in order to assert that there could be a middle way. As the third group, the philosophers, who argue that there could be a middle way to discuss the matter, strongly take an attention of two categories concerning cultural relativism, namely descriptive and normative cultural relativism. Since descriptive cultural relativism is just due diligence, that is, it is only interested in the factual observations on cultures and it reports what it notes without any judgments and evaluations, descriptive cultural relativism says normatively nothing on the moral dimensions of cultures and societies. It may be the best way that the general proclivity to evaluate the matter is to focus on the arguments for/against to most specifically normative cultural relativism. In this paper, what we have tried to do is to emphasize the arguments for and against to normative cultural relativism so as to show whether or not it is sound and supportable.