The Challenge of Cultural. Relativism James Rachels & Stuart Rachels Cultural Relativism The idea of universal truth in ethics is a myth. The customs of different.
The Challenge Of Cultural Relativism Summary![]() Ethical RelativismAn undergraduate anthropology student came to me with an assigned reading in a philosophy course at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. The student was confused. What he was learning in his philosophy class challenged what he had learned about cultural relativism as a core concept in anthropology and he was surprised to find it examined negatively by a philosopher. The article in his Ethics textbook was 'The Challenge of Cultural Relativism' by philosopher James Rachels (Rachels 1993). As we discussed the position James Rachels took in the article assigned to the ethics class, it became clear that Rachels' understanding of cultural relativism differed from that of most anthropologists: that cultural relativism is the attitude of 'objectivity' (left undefined) toward another culture, the opposite of ethnocentrism. Rachels rejects cultural relativism because, in his view, cultural relativism is identical to ethical relativism, and this equation leads to an inability to criticize any society's beliefs and practices, including our own. Medievil resurrection cso. Rachels The Challenge Of Cultural RelativismThe student had learned, however, that the anthropologist is a participant and an observer at the same time, and that our task is to faithfully portray a culture. Cultural relativism is part of our training as social scientists as well as humanists—we participate and learn to understand and appreciate [End Page 791] another culture, inevitably returning to our own culture to write and teach about what we have learned. That's part of what I told my student as we discussed Rachels' essay. However, several things soon became clear. Rachels' essay was chosen to represent the ethical issue of cultural relativism in an introductory textbook on ethics.
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