Debate: CONSCIENCE: IS THERE A UNIVERSAL MORAL LAW?
Side: yes

"How do you get from the assertion that Hitler thought he was right, to the conclusion that he was an ethical subjectivst" I think it is important to point out that relativism, "...is not a single doctrine but a family of views whose common theme is that some central aspect of experience, thought, evaluation, or even reality is somehow relative to something else." (Swoyer, Chris, "Relativism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Ethical Subjectivism that you are arguing from is based on "Voluntarism". In this debate, most comes from other views of relativism, mainly that of culture and the individual. You are saying that it is relative to choice where as they say it is relative to culture and the individual. It is possible to combine both the individual and culture."Are you making an implicit argument that if someone does something that seems wrong to most people, yet believes in his own heart that he is doing the right thing, that he must be a subjectivist? Stated that way, this seems like quite a leap of logic, which would designate all social reformers as subjectivists"Social reformers such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Mohatma Gandhi (In his autobiography acknowledged that he was influenced to the teaching of Jesus), and such like challenged the society in the time-frame they lived in by pointing out what was wrong with it. Hitler and the Nazi Party on the other hand, adopted Nietzsche's as the philosopher of National Socialism. That is, the doctrine of the"superman" (German: Ubermensch) is the man who realizes the human predicament, who creates his own values, and who fashions his life accordingly. Wicks argues that, "...during the 1930's, aspects of Nietzsche's thought were espoused by the Nazis and Italian Fascists, partly due to the encouragement of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche through her associations with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It was possible for the Nazi interpreters to assemble, quite selectively, various passages from Nietzsche's writings whose juxtaposition appeared to justify war, aggression and domination for the sake of nationalistic and racial self-glorification."(Wicks, Robert, "Friedrich Nietzsche", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). John L. Snell, was an author and professor of German history at Tulane University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina, wrote that, "Christian teaching scarcely reached the populations of industrial towns; European civilization became more and more secular as a result of the technical progress which took place in this rationalized and "unsupernatural" world. In Germany idealist philosophy, which had been a substitute for religion in bourgeois society for many years, began to be rejected, not in favor of philosophical materialism but of the modern "philosophy of life" which was spreading throughout Europe. This "philosophy of life" influenced large sections of society, and there was much talk of the supremacy of will, of biological explanations of mankind and of society, the glorification of physical strength, and of pure vitality, instead of a higher spirituality; the intellect and the rational were despised, while strong "instincts" (Triebe) and the vital impulse (the élan vital of H. Bergson) were admired. Nietzsche's doctrine of the superman and of the will to power as the prime force in the world, envisaged at first as an aristocratic ethical system, became in popular literature the deification of brutal mankind, of will to domination, of the eternal struggle for existence, of brute strength--though not without the complicity of that philosopher who unhesitatingly set the most daring aphorisms before the world. Darwinian ideas of the "survival of the fittest," of the eternal struggle for existence of all creatures, influenced all political thought." (Snell, L., John, "The Nazi Revolution: Hitler's Dictatorship and the German Nation, p. 26). Hitler was a social reformer, but not through moral objectivism, but ethical subjectivism."It seems more likely to me that Hitler had what he thought was an objective view of the world, and that he thought the rest of the world was just wrong from that standpoint. This is the typical perspective adopted by those who view themselves as reformers, wouldn't you agree?"No, I do not agree because it is historically inaccurate as pointed out. Secondly, the moral objective position and the ethical subjective position are in opposition. As I have previously pointed out if we are to go by the textbook definition of both positions."Those who think they somehow have access to objective moral truth might be capable of the most harm to others, considering that this sort of thinking seems to be what is behind violent acts of religious fundamentalism, for example the destruction of the World Trade Center, or the Crusades"First of all, you are dealing with two different world religions, right? So let us review Christianity and Islam. What is Jihad by definition? Moshay writes, "The Quran says that Jihad is, in fact, not just a religious duty, but a commerce, a business! (Surah 61:10-13)." (Moshay, G.J.O., "Who is this Allah, p.23). It is not radical, but in reality practicing Islam. This is Christianity, "But, I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also he other." (Luke 6:27-29). There is a huge difference between "Christianity" and "Christendom". Jesus clearly stated the evidences of discipleship: 1. the continuance principle (John 8:31-32), 2. the love principle (John 13:34-35), and 3. the fruit principle (John 15:7-8). "I doubt that the 9/11 hijackers considered themselves subjectivists, but rather heroes who were trying to make the world an objectively better place by fighting what they saw as injustice""To them, the fact that most of us disagree would have been irrelevent, because in their view we are blinded to the objective truth"There is a difference between beliefs and truths. What people believe is not what is important. People have different beliefs about things all the time, but what matters is which beliefs are true. That is, moral agreement vs factual disputes. A difference in values does not logically show that there can be no universal morality. Schick argued that, "To derive a moral judgment from a moral standard, we must have some beliefs about the facts of the case. Without such information, no moral judgment can be made. The formula for a moral judgment, then, can be expressed as follows: Moral standard + Factual beliefs = Moral judgment Some anthropologists believe that this is often the case. Solomon Asch writes: It has been customary to hold that diverse evaluations of the same act are automatic evidence for the presence of different principles of evaluation. The preceding examples point to an error in this interpretation. Indeed, an examination of the relational factors point to the operation of constant principles in situations that differ in concrete details. . . . Anthropological evidence does not furnish proof of relativism. We do not know of societies in which bravery is despised and cowardice held up to honor, in which generosity is considered a vice and ingratitude a virtue. It seems rather that the relations between valuation and meaning are invariant.(2) According to Asch, people in different cultures arrive at different moral judgments, not because they have different views about the nature of morality, but because they have different views about the nature of reality"(Theodore Schick, Jr., is Professor of Philosophy at Muhlenberg College and coauthor (with Lewis Vaughn) of How to Think about Weird Things (Mayfield, 1995) and Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments (Mayfield, 1999). Note: Schick quotes, Solomon Asch, a Social Psychologist: " Social Psychology, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1952), pp. 378-79.Therefore, the very fact that there is a differance of arrival of moral judgements in different cultures proves otherwise, that it is simply, "...because they have different views about the nature of reality (Schick).