Sociology

MORAL OBJECTIVISM



1 What is the issue



The present essay is a defense of a view called moral objectivism and attack on its opposite, subjectivism or moral relativism. Moral relativism is probably the subject concerning which more nonsense has been written and said in modern times than any other in moral philosophy. I suspect this is partly because people wish to provide arguments in favor of relativism without first having a clear idea of what their thesis is; partly because the authors\' arguments are mostly rationalizations; and partly because the authors have a poor grasp of moral concepts. There is little I can do about the second and third problems, but I will try to help the first here. In this section I define \"objectivism\" and important related terms and delineate several views that might be called subjectivism, which I contend are all demonstrably false.



I am not chiefly concerned herein to defend any particular moral claims, although I shall mention some uncontroversial moral truths for illustrative purposes. Rather, my concern is to show that questions of value have objective, rational answers but not to provide those answers. The latter is a task for another time.







1.1 \"Objectivism\" and \"relativism\"



\"Objectivism\" denotes the thesis that morality is objective. Subjectivism holds that morality is subjective. Relativism holds that morality is relative. In the sequel, I am interested in distinguishing moral objectivism from its denial; therefore, I assume that \"relative\" and \"subjective\" both mean \"non-objective\". If they do not already mean this, then I stipulate that meaning hereby. There are a number of people who believe moral relativism so defined.





1.2 What is \'morality\'



I want to make two points about what morality is as I understand it.



First, the term \"morality\" is subject to the same...