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Moral relativism attracts and repels. What is defensible in it and what is to be rejected? Do we as human beings have no shared standards by which we can understand one another? Can we abstain from judging one another's practices? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, virtue and vice, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that trumps it all? These questions turn up everywhere, from Montaigne's essay on cannibals, to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to the debate over female genital mutilation. They become ever more urgent with the growth of mass immigration, the rise of religious extremism, the challenges of Islamist terrorism, the rise of identity politics, and the resentment at colonialism and the massive disparities of wealth and power between North and South. Are human rights and humanitarian interventions just the latest form of cultural imperialism? By what right do we judge particular practices as barbaric? Who are the real barbarians? In this provocative new book, the distinguished social theorist Steven Lukes takes an incisive and enlightening look at these and other challenging questions and considers the very foundations of what we believe, why we believe it, and whether there is a profound discord between "us" and "them."

Ethical relativism.

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Ethical relativism

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In this new edition of Foundations for Moral Relativism, a distinguished moral philosopher tames a bugbear of current debate about cultural difference. J. David Velleman shows that different communities can indeed be subject to incompatible moralities, because their local mores are rationally binding. At the same time, he explains why the mores of different communities, even when incompatible, are still variations on the same moral themes. The book thus maps out a universe of many moral worlds without, as Velleman puts it, “moral black holes”. The six self-standing chapters discuss such diverse topics as online avatars and virtual worlds, lying in Russian and truth-telling in Quechua, the pleasure of solitude and the fear of absurdity. Accessibly written, Foundations for Moral Relativism presupposes no prior training in philosophy.

Ethical relativism.

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Programs of ethical relativism notoriously face two great difficulties: 1) how can they account for our need to make ethical judgements about other groups and individuals with whom we come into conflict? and 2) how can they allow for us to criticize the group, set of desires, etc. to which our ethical norms are said to be relative? Integrity and Moral Relativism develops a moderate version of cultural relativism that can answer these questions. After examining and defending the notion of a "world-picture," and of incommensurable differences across world-pictures, the book brings its theoretical framework together with the history of anthropology to argue that a culture is indeed the appropriate expression of a world picture. It then draws on literary, philosophical and historical resources to illustrate the way in which Western society, specifically, contains traditions distinguishing legitimate cross-cultural judgment, and legitimate from illegitimate cultural self-criticism. As long as there is a language for these possibilities, an individual can see ethics as culturally based without compromising his or her integrity.

Ethical relativism. --- Integrity. --- Ethical relativism --- Integrity

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Ethics. --- Anthropology. --- Ethical relativism.