In my English class a few months ago we were talking about ethics and whether they are relative or not. For those of you who haven't taken philosophy and/or have no idea what I'm talking about, for an ethic to not be relative, it means that a law or right is applicable to every culture. For example, if slavery is wrong in today's society, then it has always been wrong. On the other side of the argument, this means that slavery may have been okay in another culture, like the ancient Greeks, but is not okay in our society. Relative ethics means that every society should have different rules/laws, etc. depending on their culture and traditions.
A lot of people in my class believe that ethics are relative. We also talked about this in my Philosophy class last year and we were pretty unanimous that ethics are not relative.
The idea of ethics being relative is really dangerous in our society for several reasons. For one, it gives individuals the right to form their own societeis with their own rules and obligations, etc. It's like saying that a cult can be a different society so if the leader wants to murder everyone in the cult and those people all agree, then that's okay. Basically, ehtics being relative is comparative to the theory of anarchy in government.
From what I've explained, what do you think? Should ethics be considered relative or not? Feel free to argue against what I've said if you think I'm wrong.
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