Forms of relativism
... moral relativism was developed more by philosophical critics of relativism, rather than by overt philosophical defenders of relativism. More recently, writers both inside and outside of the field of philosophy have advocated moral relativism. For example, anthropologist William Graham Sumner dramatically expresses the notion of moral relativism here: The "right" way is the way which the ancestors used and which has been handed down. The tradition is its own warrant. It is not held subject to verification by experience. The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves the authority of the ancestral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis. [Folkways (Boston: Ginn, 1906)] Arguments for moral relativism often involve two principal contentions: 1. Primacy of De Facto Values: our conceptions of morality should be based on how people actually behave (de facto values), and not on an ideal standard how people should behave (ideal values). 2. Cultural Variation: in point of fact, our main moral values vary from culture to culture. As to the first of these, moral relativists note that there are two ways that we can approach morality: as de facto morality or as ideal morality. De facto morality concerns they way people in fact behave, and involves the moral principles that are actually in place in a given culture. By contrast, ideal morality concerns the way people should behave, irrespective of their actual behavior. Regarding the second of the above claims, moral relativists emphasize the variation in values that we see in cultures around us. It is indisputable that some values vary from culture to culture, such as wearing clothes, child marriages, and eating the bodies of dead relatives. Although many of these values are more like rules of etiquette than rules of morality, it is clear that at least some important moral values vary from culture to culture. For example, in Mainland China, abortion is recognized as an important tool for popul...