The world would appear red even though red is not a feature of the objective world in itself. Red is a feature of the subjective world. Kant said that we see the world in terms of entities because we have an entity category built into our minds. For that same reason, we experience the world in terms of a system of causal networks.
Kant holds that the mind is concurrently both helpless and creatively powerful. It is helpless with respect to knowing the objective world but it is omnipotent regarding the social world i.
Reality becomes social because people create reality. According to Kant, there is only one type of human mind that is universally the same except for individual idiosyncrasies that occur because of our humanity and hence imperfection. Each person has the same categories and thus constructs the world in the same way. As members of the same species, we each have the same processing apparatus. Kant contended that reality as far as we can know it depends on the cognitive functioning of the human mind in total.
Society sets the norms of truth and falsity and right and wrong. If a man sees things differently than the majority, then he must be mistaken due to some defect in his own information processing mechanism.
Truth, to the extent that it can be known in the phenomenal world, is to be determined by means of public polls. Contrariwise, Hegel argued that they evolve and change and that evolution is essential to understanding consciousness, history, and mankind. Marx claimed that they changed differentially according to economic subgroups. Each multicultural subgroup has its own reality, its own logic, its own truth and falsity, and its own right and wrong. With no way to reason among the groups, the only alternatives are either isolationism or group warfare through which political power is used to slug out group differences.
Rousseau held that reason had its opportunity but had failed, claiming that the act of reflection is contrary to nature. He proceeded to attack the Age of Reason by emphasizing feeling, the opposite of reason, as the key to reality and the future. His thought thereby foreshadowed and gave impetus to the Romantic Movement.
In their view, man is essentially an emotional being and therefore must seek the truth and act accordingly. Godwin had a profound sense of egalitarianism. He believed that it was desirable and just for the output of society, to which all contribute, to be shared among all with some degree of equalization. Although he realized that some differences were the results of inheritance, he firmly believed that proper environmental structuring could overcome any inherent inequalities. Nietzsche contended that feeling and intuition are actually forms of reason and viewed the universe as a realm of colliding wills and violent conflict.
These exceptional individuals, possessing the highest level of development of intellectual, physical, and emotional strength, would possess the courage to revalue all values and act with freedom to their internal Will to Power.
As a result, the lowest levels of society would believe themselves to be exploited and oppressed and would experience a deep-rooted resentment. The result would be a negative psychic attitude, a will to the denial of life, and revenge in the form of translating the virtues of the superior into vices. Kierkegaard said that truth is subjectivity and that authentic existence is a matter of faith and commitment.
These are the concepts that underlie, in varying proportions, the various intellectual descendents of cultural relativism. Multiculturalism The main idea of multiculturalism is the equal value of all cultures i. However, multiculturalism does not mean cultures as normally understood but rather as biologically defined i. Multiculturalism, a politicized form of cultural relativism, rejects the idea that there are general truths, norms, or rules with respect to both knowledge and morals.
Gone are the Enlightenment beliefs in objectivity, reason and evidence, and principles of freedom and justice that apply equally to all individuals. Multiculturalists dismiss the significance of Western civilization by claiming that Western traditions of elitism, racism, and sexism are the cause of most of our current problems.
They accept a Romantic view of human nature as beneficent and benign until it was corrupted by flawed Western ideology and culture. There are many closed systems of perception, thought, and feeling each affiliated with some biologically defined group. At one time, truth was viewed as transcendent, fixed, and unchanging. Epistemological egalitarianism has accompanied the loss of transcendence.
Each group of persons now is thought to have an equal right to make truth claims. Truth is now thought to be a constructed cultural product that is immanent in each individual culture or subgroup. For the multiculturalist, truth only exists by consensus within each biologically defined group.
Multiculturalism is anti-individualistic in the sense that it expects each person to agree with the perceptions, thoughts, and judgments of his group in order for his own perceptions, thoughts, and judgments to be legitimate. The victim mentality is both a cause and effect of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism promotes a culture of victims who have a perpetual claim on society and the government.
The result is the division of society into political interest groups with conflicting demands that cannot all be met. Educational proposals from multiculturalists attempt to inculcate in students the idea that Western classical liberal order is, in fact, the most oppressive order of all times.
As a result, people are taught to view themselves as victims. This perspective is based on the relativistic assumption that because all cultures are inherently equal, differences in wealth, power, and accomplishments between cultures are, for the most part, due to oppression. Thus, in order to establish cultural equality, multiculturalists emphasizing non-Western virtues and Western oppression dismiss the illiberal traditions of other cultures and attack the ideas of a common culture based on an intellectual, moral, and artistic legacy derived from the Greeks and the Bible.
There would be no harm in multiculturalism if the term simply meant that we should acknowledge and teach truths about many cultures. It is admirable to teach students both the noblest aspects of various cultures and of their failings. What would it be like if it were true? He says that there is no measure of right and wrong other than the standards of one's society: "The notion of right is in the folkways. Suppose we took this seriously. What would be some of the consequences? We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own.
This, of course, is one of the main points stressed by Cultural Relativism. We would have to stop condemning other societies merely because they are "different:' So long as we concentrate on certain examples, such as the funerary practices of the Greeks and Callatians, this may seem to be a sophisticated, enlightened attitude.
However, we would also be stopped from criticizing other, less benign practices. Suppose a society waged war on its neighbors for the purpose of taking slaves. Or suppose a society was violently anti-Semitic and its leaders set out to destroy the Jews. Cultural Relativism would preclude us from saying that either of these practices was wrong. We would not even be able to say that a society tolerant of Jews is better than the anti- Semitic society, for that would imply some sort of transcultural standard of comparison.
The failure to condemn these practices does not seem enlightened; on the contrary, slavery and anti-Semitism seem wrong wherever they occur. Nevertheless, if we took Cultural Relativism seriously, we would have to regard these social practices as also immune from criticism.
We could decide whether actions are right or wrong just by consulting the standards of our society. Cultural Relativism suggests a simple test for determining what is right and what is wrong: All one need do is ask whether the action is in accordance with the code of one's society.
Suppose in , a resident of South Africa was wondering whether his country's policy of aparthei d—a rigidly racist system—was morally correct. All he has to do is ask whether this policy conformed to his society's moral code.
If it did, there would have been nothing to worry about, at least from a moral point of view. This implication of Cultural Relativism is disturbing because few of us think that our society's code is perfect; we can think of ways it might be improved.
Yet Cultural Relativism would not only forbid us from criticizing the codes of other societies; it would stop us from criticizing our own. After all, if right and wrong are relative to culture, this must be true for our own culture just as much as for other cultures.
The idea of moral progress is called into doubt. Usually, we think that at least some social changes are for the better.
Although, of course, other changes may be for the worse. Throughout most of Western history the place of women in society was narrowly circumscribed. They could not own property; they could not vote or hold political office; and generally they were under the almost absolute control of their husbands.
Recently much of this has changed, and most people think of it as progress. If Cultural Relativism is correct, can we legitimately think of this as progress? Progress means replacing a way of doing things with a better way. But by what standard do we judge the new ways as better? If the old ways were in accordance with the social standards of their time, then Cultural Relativism would say it is a mistake to judge them by the standards of a different time.
Eighteenth-century society was, in effect, a different society from the one we have now. To say that we have made progress implies a judgment that present-day society is better, and that is just the sort of transcultural judgment that, according to Cultural Relativism, is impermissible.
Our idea of social reform will also have to be reconsidered. Reformers such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Within the constraints imposed by Cultural Relativism, there is one way this might be done. If a society is not living up to its own ideals, the reformer may be regarded as acting for the best: The ideals of the society are the standard by which we judge his or her proposals as worthwhile. But the "reformer" may not challenge the ideals themselves, for those ideals are by definition correct.
According to Cultural Relativism, then, the idea of social reform makes sense only in this limited way. These three consequences of Cultural Relativism have led many thinkers to reject it as implausible on its face. It does make sense, they say, to condemn some practices, such as slavery and anti-Semitism, wherever they occur. It makes sense to think that our own society has made some moral progress, while admitting that it is still imperfect and in need of reform.
Because Cultural Relativism says that these judgments make no sense, the argument goes, it cannot be right. The original impetus for Cultural Relativism comes from the observation that cultures differ dramatically in their views of right and wrong. But just how much do they differ? It is true that there are differences. However, it is easy to overestimate the extent of those differences, Often, when we examine what seems to be a dramatic difference, we find that the cultures do not differ nearly as much as it appears.
Consider a culture in which people believe it is wrong to eat cows. This may even be a poor culture, in which there is not enough food; still, the cows are not to be touched. Such a society would appear to have values very different from our own. But does it? We have not yet asked why these people will not eat cows. Suppose it is because they believe that after death the souls of humans inhabit the bodies of animals, especially cows, so that a cow may be someone's grandmother.
Now do we want to say that their values are different from ours? No; the difference lies elsewhere. The difference is in our belief systems, not in our values. We agree that we shouldn't eat Grandma; we simply disagree about whether the cow is or could be Grandma. The point is that many factors work together to produce the customs of a society.
The society's values are only one of them. Other matters, such as the religions and factual beliefs held by its members, and the physical circumstances in which they must live, are also important. We cannot conclude, then, merely because customs differ, that there is a disagreement about values. The difference in customs may be attributable to some other aspects of social life. Thus there may be less disagreement about values than there appears to be.
Consider again the Eskimos, who often kill perfectly normal infants, especially girls. We do not approve of such things; a parent who killed a baby in our society would be locked up. Thus there appears to be a great difference in the values of our two cultures. But suppose we ask why the Eskimos do this. The explanation is not that they have less affection for their children or less respect for human life. An Eskimo family will always protect its babies if conditions permit.
But they live in a harsh environment, where food is in short supply. A fundamental postulate of Eskimos thought is: "Life is hard, and the margin of safety small:' A family may want to nourish its babies but be unable to do so. As in many "primitive" societies, Eskimo mothers will nurse their infants over a much longer period of time than mothers in our culture. The child will take nourishment from its mother's breast for four years, perhaps even longer.
So even in the best of times there are limits to the number of infants that one mother can sustain. Moreover, the Eskimos are a nomadic people—unable to farm, they must move about in search of food. Infants must be carried, and a mother can carry only one baby in her parka as she travels and goes about her outdoor work.
Other family members help whenever they can. Infant girls are more readily disposed of because, first, in this society the males are the primary food providers—they are the hunters, according to the traditional division of labor—and it is obviously important to maintain a sufficient number of food providers.
But there is an important second reason as well. Because the hunters suffer a high casualty rate, the adult men who die prematurely far outnumber the women who die early. Thus if male and female infants survived in equal numbers, the female adult population would greatly outnumber the male adult population. Examining the available statistics, one writer concluded that "were it not for female infanticide…there would be approximately one-and-a-half times as many females in the average Eskimo local group as there are food-producing males.
So among the Eskimos, infanticide does not signal a fundamentally different attitude toward children. Instead, it is a recognition that drastic measures are sometimes needed to ensure the family's survival.
Even then, however, killing the baby is not the first option considered. Adoption is common; childless couples are especially happy to take a more fertile couple's "surplus.
It caused the big toe to be closer to the heel causing the foot to bow. Because men only wanted women with small feet, even after this practice was banned in , women still continued to do it. To Western cultures the idea of feet binding might seems torturous, but for the Chinese culture it was a symbol of beauty that has been ingrained the culture for hundreds of years.
The idea of beauty differs from culture to culture. Skip to main content. Chapter 1: What is Anthropology? Search for:. Cultural Relativism The Cross-Cultural Relationship is the idea that people from different cultures can have relationships that acknowledge, respect and begin to understand each others diverse lives.
Is cultural relativism true? What are the five claims of cultural relativism? Is cultural relativism bad or good? What claims cultural relativism? What is cultural relativism ethics? What is the strength of cultural relativism?
What is the difference between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism? What is the main argument for cultural relativism? What is Xenocentrism and examples?
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