WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT ISN'T,
AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
Come back soon for a true understanding of what cultural relativism is.
Simply put:
(1) All statements about good/normal/moral/legal/valuable and about meaning are judgments.
(2) All judgments are made in reference to or by comparison with or "relative to" some standard of judgment--some set of goods, norms, morals, laws, values, or meanings.
(3) Each culture has or is a set of such standards.
(4) Therefore, there is more than one standard of goods, norms, morals, laws, values, or meanings to judge particular actions against.
(5) Which standard you use will determine what judgment you arrive at--the same behavior may be good or normal or moral in one culture and bad or abnormal or immoral in another. The same action or word or symbol or gesture may have one meaning in a culture and a very different meaning in another culture.
Therefore, judgments of good/normal/moral/legal/valuable and so on are relative to the particular culture in question.
