ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to consider whether any precise sense can be attached to the ideas of the moral improvement and deterioration of a society, or whether we ought strictly to speak only of moral change. It offers some analysis of the term which features largely in popular discussions of this topic — ‘the permissive society’. When people speak of the moral decline or improvement of a society, their evaluations may be referring to one or other of three different, although connected, phenomena: the actual conduct of the members of the society, their rules or standards, their institutions. A relativist account of morality can be objectivist. The relativist will hold that moral values reflect the economic and general cultural outlook of a society. An objectivist position which was also absolutist would be to the effect that moral judgements are true or false in virtue of some non-natural fact, some absolute value or Platonic Form which never changes.
