ABSTRACT
In the relations of ethical theory and social science ethical relativity has been rooted in a syllogism which may be loosely expressed as follows: Ethics is a cultural phenomenon, culture is relative, therefore ethics is relative. The specific types of relations or ways in which moral ideas depend on the rest of the cultural and social milieu require careful analysis. The chief dissenting voice to the view that moral ideas are socio-cultural phenomena comes from the major tradition in philosophical theory which looks for moral “essences.” It wants to know what respect for parents, justice, chastity, success are “in themselves,” and looks upon socio-cultural references as merely “applications” of an antecedently determined and logically independent idea. The differentiating thesis of cultural relativity is to be found beyond this in an insistence on the uniqueness of particular cultures.
