Who Decides What's Right? The Trouble with Moral Relativism

A Bold Challenge at the United Nations

In 1947, the United Nations began drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The goal was to say that all people everywhere deserve certain basic freedoms. But just before the final vote, a group of cultural anthropologists sent a startling message. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) argued that moral values come from a person’s culture, and that no culture’s moral code can be proved better than another’s. They warned that declaring one set of rights for everyone might simply impose Western values on the rest of the world.

That statement fired the starting gun on a debate that still rages today: are there moral truths that hold for all people at all times, or is right and wrong always shaped by the society you grow up in? This is the core question of moral relativism.

What If Right and Wrong Depend on Where You Are?

Philosophers distinguish two main forms of moral relativism. The first is Descriptive Moral Relativism (DMR). This is a claim about facts: across different societies, there are deep and widespread moral disagreements. You can see it easily. In some countries, arranged marriage is perfectly normal; in others, it is condemned. Some cultures practice female circumcision; others see it as cruel. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) and her teacher Franz Boas (1858–1942) documented these differences in detail. They argued that what a person calls right or wrong depends mostly on what their culture taught them.

DMR doesn’t say that these disagreements are good or bad, only that they exist. But from this starting point, many philosophers take a bigger step toward Metaethical Moral Relativism (MMR). MMR says that the truth or falsity of a moral judgment — like “Polygamy is wrong” — is not absolute. Instead, a moral claim can be true relative to one culture and false relative to another. There is no single, universal fact of the matter.

The philosopher David Wong (born 1954) points out that cultures often have very different basic moral frameworks. Some prize the rights of the individual; others put the good of the community first. If there is no neutral, culture-free method to settle which framework is correct, then moral truth itself seems to be plural — and relative.

The Big Debate: Can We Resolve Moral Disagreements?

Defenders of MMR often argue that fundamental moral disagreements cannot be rationally resolved. Suppose a community believes that a widow should take her own life as an act of honor, and another believes suicide is always wrong. Each side appeals to its own deep values. Neither makes a simple factual mistake. Proponents of MMR say that without a shared set of standards, there is no way to show one side is rationally superior. This is a “faultless disagreement” — the parties clash, but nobody is making a logical error.

Moral objectivists push back. Moral objectivism is the view that some moral claims are true or false for everyone, regardless of culture. Objectivists argue that many apparent disagreements are really disagreements about facts or religious beliefs, not about morality itself. For example, two societies might both value human welfare, but one believes the soul is reborn and therefore treats pain differently. If you correct the factual belief, the moral disagreement might vanish.

Objectivists also point to the argument of the philosopher Donald Davidson (1917–2003). Davidson claimed that radical disagreement cannot exist without a huge background of agreement. If another culture seemed to say completely different things about a concept like “right,” we would probably have mistranslated their word. So, he thought, there must be enough common ground to reason across cultures.

Relativists reply that these strategies overstate the power of shared concepts. Gilbert Harman (1938–2021) argued that moral agreements often depend on implicit bargains within a group, not on universal reason. Even if many cultures share a rough idea like the Golden Rule, they interpret it in wildly different ways. The more we study moral diversity, the harder it becomes to believe that one culture has the final, objective answer.

A Middle Ground? Mixed Positions

Not every philosopher picks either full-blown objectivism or full relativism. Some defend mixed positions. The philosopher Philippa Foot (1920–2010) argued that human nature sets firm limits on what can count as a good life. No society can genuinely flourish if it celebrates cowardice or cruelty, for example. But beyond those limits, she thought, some moral disagreements might never be rationally settled, and different practices could be permissible for different groups.

David Wong has developed a similar but more detailed view he calls “pluralistic relativism.” Wong says that deep facts about human needs — for survival, cooperation, and identity — mean that not just any morality can be a true morality. But those necessary constraints still leave room for more than one correct moral system. The constraints are like the rules of a building code: you have to build a safe house, but you can choose a log cabin, a skyscraper, or a courtyard home. Different true moralities emphasize different values: one might put individual rights first, another might stress community harmony. Neither is simply mistaken.

Philosophers who favor mixed views hope to capture the best of both sides. They honor the intuition that some things (like the Nazi extermination of the Jews) are objectively wrong, while still making sense of the moral variety we actually find in the world. But critics on both ends ask whether these middle positions are stable. If some moral truths are relative, how do we decide which ones? And if the objective limits are very broad, does that still feel like real objectivity?

Why This Fight Still Matters to You

This isn’t just a dusty argument for professors. Every day, you encounter moral disagreements — in your friend group, between your parents’ values and your own, or across the internet. When you read about protests abroad for women’s rights, or hear arguments about what makes a fair immigration policy, you’re walking straight into the territory of DMR and MMR.

The debate also connects directly to tolerance. Many people assume that if moral relativism is true, we should be tolerant of other cultures: never interfere with practices we personally reject. But philosophers point out that relativism itself can’t give you a universal duty to be tolerant. If MMR says the truth “Be tolerant” is itself relative, then a culture that values intolerance is not making a mistake. So relativism alone doesn’t supply a solid argument for treating others gently.

Yet Wong and others argue that any workable morality must include what he calls “accommodation” — a commitment to peaceful, non‑coercive relationships with people who see the world differently. Some psychological studies even suggest that people who lean toward relativist views tend to be more open to alternative ways of living. So even if relativism can’t prove tolerance mathematically, it might encourage a habit of listening before judging.

So the question remains: when you feel absolutely certain that something is wrong, is that certainty a sign that you’ve touched a universal moral truth, or is it simply a signal that you’ve fully absorbed the values of your own culture? The puzzle the AAA dropped on the UN’s doorstep in 1947 is still wide open — and it’s yours to wrestle with.

Think about it

1. If you discovered a small community where everyone thought it was perfectly fine to lie, would that make lying right for them, or would they simply be mistaken?
2. Can a person from one culture fairly judge a practice from another culture without first living among them for years?
3. Suppose you could prove that moral relativism is true — that right and wrong always depend on where you were born. Would that change how you treat people who disagree with you?