title: Implications for education of Westermarck's ethical relativity
title: Some implications for education of Westermarck's ethical relativity
titleType: AlternativeTitle
Creators: name: Scott, William
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 1971
Subjects: subject: Annexe MSc Digitisation Project 2022 Block 36
subject: Westermarck's ethical relativity
subject: Education
subject: moral values
subject: Westermarck

description: Are moral values objective? This is the question which is considered in the first half of this essay. By 'objective' is meant: having 'a real existence apart from any reference to a human mind, that what is said to be good or bad, right or wrong cannot be reduced merely to what people think to be good or bad, right or wrong'. The work of Westermarck and others has been brought to bear on this question. The conclusion reached is that moral values are not objective but that they are contingent upon such factors as culture and context. The principal arguments by which this conclusion has been reached are as follows: 1. The diversity of morals shows (a) that it is at least not self- evident that there is only one correct set of moral values by which all men should be judged; for an indispensible condition for a proposition to be self-evident is that it should provoke universal assent. (b) that moral values are not objective if by objective is meant 'what would provoke universal assent’. 2. Westermarck has shown how ethical predicates such as good, bad etc. may be ultimately based upon the moral emotions of approval and disapproval. If this be accepted, then moral values have an emotional basis and have evolved as man himself has evolved. Thus moral values are contingent upon the nature of men, upon the culture in which they have grown up and the contexts in which they have found themselves. 3. Any moral judgement has an emotive flavour and involves a unique intensity of approval or disapproval. No two moral judgements are, therefore, ever identical (though they may be similar). Strict uniformity of moral judgements is, therefore, impossible: different people cannot be expected to make the same moral judgement. What is good or bad, right or wrong can, accordingly, be reduced to what people think to be good or bad, right or wrong. 4. No compelling arguments (i.e. arguments which are not 1culture bound’) can be given to show that the different moral values of other peoples are morally erroneous. The conclusion that moral values are not objective but relative to culture and context has an important social consequence: . those who believe that there is no one right way to live are likely to be more tolerant than those like the absolutists who believe that there is one way to live (embodied in their absolute values) which is right for all men in all ages. That is, relativism promotes tolerance. Some of the implications for education of ethical relativity are:- 1. If there are no absolute values (i.e. if there are no moral values which are objective), an absolutist moral education is logically unjustified. The teacher is not entitled to propagate the view that his values or the values of his group (e.g. communist, catholic, protestant, white South African) are superior to those of others, or are the only 'right' ones. If absolutism were held to be correct, the teacher would be entitled to encourage his pupils to be ethnocentric. 2. An absolutist moral education (the essence of which is the inculcation of one set of moral values which are held to be superior to all others) may logically be expected: (1) to rely on indoctrination: for if to be moral is merely to act in accordance with moral absolutes then all that need concern the educator is that they are inculcated. Indoctrination is the most efficient method. (2) to rely on authoritarianism: the absolutist moral educator regarding, as he does, moral values as objective thereby accords them the status of facts which he himself does not question. He is, therefore, unlikely to give reasons for things that he regards as unquestionable. (3) to cause rigidity, insensitivity and anxiety: the absolutist is continually in the invidious position of having to decide between conflicting absolutes e.g. birth-control or mass starvation. Yet absolutes cannot be hived off. They are supposed to apply always. (4) to cause ethnocentrism (especially race and religious prejudice) : if one's own values are held to be absolute i.e. apply to all men everywhere in all ages then contrary values are 'wrong' and inferior or heretical. (5) to cause war, blodshed and strife: if other people are regarded as heretical their conversion (or their extermination if heresy is an offence against the 'true' god) may be regarded as a duty. Equally if they are held to be inferior, their subjugation and persecution may be thought to be a right. If absolutism is untenable, and that is the substance of this thesis, then a moral education which is absolutist should cease to be practised; and a reduction in absolutism in moral education should provoke a diminution in its various defects. Chief among these is ethnocentrism. If absolutism were to disappear from schools people could be expected to be on the whole more tolerant. 3. Absolutism tends to promote heteronomy while relativism tends to promote autonomy. Moral progress cannot take place without autonomous people. For autonomy is a prerequisite of originality. Thus the acceptance of relativism provides for the possibility of moral progress in a way that absolutism does not.