ABSTRACT
In all societies evaluations exist which, to a greater or lesser extent, are shared, and this is an important part of their culture. The history of moral philosophy has been characterized as a history of succeeding orthodoxies and the logical status of moral terms and moral propositions is still as disputed as it ever was, so one should not expect consensus in sociology. Ethical relativism is a challenging subject in itself. But the fact that the diffusion of the social sciences has, along with certain other factors, served to encourage its acceptance makes it doubly important. American sociology in particular has tended to regard values as the analytic terminus in the understanding of culture. Such a tendency is especially evident in the conceptions of society offered by the Parsonian school.
