What is cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is expressed and understood in different ways. Most often it is understood as a person's dependence on the ethical views of the culture to which he belongs.

Yes, any of us has grown up in a concrete society that has its own system of views on the phenomena and objects of the surrounding world. A person begins to adhere to certain ethical and cultural principles not for the reason that they became the subject of his searches, but because they are adhered to all around. Yes, we really take a lot from society, in which we get education, grow, develop. Cultural human rights are based on the fact that each of us has access to the cultural achievements of society, can to some extent use them. Is aesthetic views determined by culture? In most cases, yes. For this reason, they can not be called objectively true. Cultural relativism is based on the fact that people involuntarily impose those or other positions, determine his views. In principle, there is nothing terrible here. It's about the fact that the human rights issue is not affected, and a developed personality will be able to decide for herself what she needs.

It is worth noting that in ancient times (sometimes today) people whose opinions were at variance with the opinion of society were severely punished. Culturally nondeterministic views can in fact be perceived as hostile and aggressive in any situation. In any era, one could observe people criticizing their contemporaries.

Cultural relativism is understood and somewhat different. In a sense, it is ethnocentrism. It is a situation when the individual is fully convinced that his people's views on culture are the only true ones, and the beliefs of other peoples are absurd, which has nothing to do with reality. This is a kind of extreme.

Many scholars believe that ethnocentrism is the preaching of ignorance, intolerance, arrogance, and so on. This statement is connected with the fact that many people are really ready to prove the rightness of the views of their people even when it is proved that they are not true. A person who views the views of his society is not fanatic or even indifferent, in most cases is ready to recognize that the opinions of people of other peoples in certain issues may be more correct.

Some thinkers assumed the existence of some objective moral truth, existing in the form of pure knowledge. The bottom line is that this truth is one for all, that is, for any people. Cultural relativism rejects the existence of such truth. Its absence is explained by the fact that all views on morality are culturally deterministic, and the standard on which one culture could prove that it is better than another does not exist and will never exist.

Based on everything that was said above, one can conclude: attempts to influence the beliefs of a representative of another culture are a gross violation of the rules of tolerance.

Cultural relativism is associated with some specific problems. One of them is based on the fact that today there is a propaganda of any person regardless of nationality, sex, profession and so on. In some countries, people are still oppressed, which, on the one hand, can be considered barbarous, and on the other hand, peculiarities of a particular people. Is the whole world really to be tolerant of the fact that somehow its human dignity is degraded? Is third-party intervention permissible? These questions are actually much more complicated than they seem. A single answer to them still does not exist.