Navigating Through Cultural and Ethical Subjectivism: Understanding Morality Across Cultures

Is it possible that what you consider morally wrong is, in another part of the world, considered not just acceptable but virtuous? This isn’t a hypothetical puzzle – it’s a question at the heart of two deeply influential philosophical positions: cultural subjectivism and ethical subjectivism. As our world grows more interconnected, understanding how culture shapes moral perception has never been more urgent. These theories don’t just describe difference; they challenge us to rethink the very foundations of how we judge right from wrong.

What is ethical subjectivism? 🔗

At its core, ethical subjectivism is the view that moral statements are not objective truths – they are expressions of personal attitudes, feelings, or preferences. When someone says “stealing is wrong,” an ethical subjectivist interprets this not as a verifiable fact about the world, but as a statement about how that person feels about stealing. According to the Stanford-referenced Wikipedia entry on ethical subjectivism, on the influential version called emotivism – associated with philosopher A.J. Ayer – the sentence “Murder is wrong” is essentially equivalent in meaning to an expression like “Murder, Boo!” It expresses a sentiment, not a fact that can be proven true or false.

This distinction matters. Ethical subjectivism does not claim that morality doesn’t exist – it claims that moral truth is grounded in the mind of the individual, not in an external, universal moral order. The philosopher David Hume, a foundational figure in this tradition, argued that moral judgments arise from our emotional responses to the world. As discussed at the PPSC Philosophy textbook, subjectivists like Hume don’t deny that we have ethical sentiments – they simply argue that these sentiments are displays of feeling, not claims about objective moral reality.

One immediate consequence of this view is significant: if two people hold contradictory moral beliefs, neither can be factually “wrong.” Their beliefs simply report different internal states. This leads to what critics identify as a major problem – ethical subjectivism makes moral disagreement nearly incoherent and renders moral progress essentially impossible to define.

What is cultural subjectivism (cultural relativism)? 🔗

Cultural subjectivism, often used interchangeably with cultural relativism, shifts the frame from the individual to the community. Rather than locating moral truth in individual feelings, it locates it in the norms, traditions, and values of a given culture or society. The Simply Psychology overview of cultural relativism defines this as the claim that ethical practices differ among cultures, and that what is considered right in one culture may be considered wrong in another – with neither being inherently superior.

The concept was formally developed by anthropologist Franz Boas in the late 19th century, who argued that a culture must be understood on its own terms and not judged by the standards of another. As the Wikipedia article on cultural relativism notes, Boas viewed this approach as methodologically essential to scientific anthropology – a way to study societies without the distorting lens of ethnocentrism. His students, including Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovits, extended this further into ethics, arguing that a relativistic outlook could combat prejudice and promote tolerance.

In practice, cultural relativism implies that no single culture holds a moral high ground. Practices like arranged marriages, specific dietary customs, or particular gender roles may be morally normative in one society while appearing unjust or strange to outsiders. The relativist argument is straightforward: these practices must be evaluated within their own cultural context, not from the vantage point of a different – and potentially equally biased – culture.

The key difference between the two 🔗

Though related, cultural subjectivism and ethical subjectivism are not the same thing. As summarized in the Ethics and Society open textbook, cultural relativism holds that correct moral standards are relative to cultures or societies, while ethical subjectivism holds that correct moral standards are those endorsed by each individual. The difference is the unit of moral authority: the community versus the individual self.

This distinction has real implications. A person might follow their culture’s moral code without personally endorsing it – and under cultural relativism, that code is still morally binding for members of that culture. Under ethical subjectivism, only one’s own sincere convictions define what is right. These positions can overlap but do not entail one another, and understanding the distinction is crucial for any serious engagement with the ethics of cultural diversity.

No superior culture: the argument against ethnocentrism 🔗

One of the most powerful contributions of cultural subjectivism is its challenge to ethnocentrism – the tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one’s own, and often to assume one’s own culture is superior. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on moral relativism notes that the move toward cultural relativism in the 20th century was partly a critical reaction against the ethnocentrism embedded in colonial-era thinking, which treated Western moral frameworks as universal and superior.

From the cultural relativist perspective, no culture is superior to another when comparing systems of morality, law, or politics, because cultural norms derive their meaning within a specific social context. This view encourages what philosopher John Cook described as a recognition that what seems self-evidently true from within one culture may be little more than a culturally conditioned assumption. The self-evidence of our moral principles, Cook observed, is often a kind of illusion – a fact that cultural relativism forces us to confront.

Perceptual relativism and how culture shapes moral vision 🔗

Deeply tied to cultural subjectivism is the idea of perceptual relativism – the notion that our perception of moral facts is always filtered through our cultural lens. We do not encounter moral situations as blank slates; we come to them already shaped by language, tradition, religion, and social conditioning. What feels obviously right or obviously reprehensible is, in large part, a product of how we have been taught to see.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers a useful illustration: a conflict between the Indian traditionalist view that deference to parents is morally obligatory and the American individualist view that it is not. Each belief is internally coherent within its own ethical framework. The relativist point is that neither can simply be declared “correct” from a neutral, culture-free standpoint – because no such standpoint exists. Our moral perceptions are always, to some degree, relative to the frameworks through which we perceive.

This doesn’t mean that moral reasoning is impossible across cultures. It means that such reasoning requires explicit awareness of how one’s own cultural position shapes one’s conclusions – a form of epistemic humility that is increasingly recognized as essential in cross-cultural ethics.

The serious challenges of cultural and ethical subjectivism 🔗

Despite their philosophical appeal, both positions face significant criticism. The most damaging is what the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University identifies as the “anything goes” problem: if morality is entirely relative – either to individuals or to cultures – there is no external standard by which to condemn even the most horrific practices. Slavery, torture, genocide – if these were accepted within their cultural or historical contexts, a strict subjectivist or relativist would have no principled grounds to condemn them.

Consider the abolitionist movement in pre-Civil War America. If the moral code of the majority culture determined what was right, then abolitionists – who were a minority – were acting immorally by rejecting mainstream norms. That conclusion strikes most people as clearly backwards, which is precisely why critics argue that cultural relativism cannot fully account for moral reform or moral progress within societies. As the Ethics and Society textbook points out, certain practices – like slavery or the oppression of minorities – become “morally acceptable” under strict relativism simply because they enjoy cultural acceptance, which conflicts sharply with our deepest moral intuitions.

A second challenge concerns what the sustainability ethics resource Sustainability Directory calls the problem of incommensurability: if ethical frameworks are entirely culture-bound, how can meaningful cross-cultural dialogue on shared global challenges – climate change, human trafficking, genocide – even be possible? Radical relativism implies that different cultures operate in entirely separate moral universes, making collaborative ethical reasoning nearly impossible.

Common human nature as a moral bridge 🔗

The most promising response to these challenges does not involve abandoning cultural sensitivity – it involves recognizing a common human nature that underlies cultural diversity. As the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, critics of relativism often point out that relativists exaggerate cultural diversity, since superficial differences frequently mask deeper shared agreements. Virtually all human societies prohibit murder within the group, require some form of care for children, and recognize concepts of fairness and reciprocity – even if the specific expressions of these values differ.

Philosophers like Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have developed what is called the capabilities approach, a moderate universalism that argues certain human capacities – health, dignity, social participation, practical reasoning – are universal and ought to be protected across all cultures. This framework, discussed in the context of cross-cultural ethics by the Journal of Business Ethics, offers a middle path: it acknowledges that cultures interpret values differently while insisting that some baseline principles of human dignity are not culturally negotiable.

This position avoids two equally problematic extremes. On one side is cultural imperialism – imposing one culture’s moral framework on others. On the other is radical relativism – refusing to make any moral judgments across cultural lines. The middle ground recognizes difference without surrendering the possibility of cross-cultural moral reasoning.

Toward dialogue: navigating morality across cultures 🔗

The practical implication of all this is a call for genuine intercultural ethical dialogue – not the imposition of one culture’s standards, and not the uncritical acceptance of all practices simply because they exist. As the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs notes, cultural relativists in international relations evaluate actions according to the ethical standards of the society within which they occur – but the field increasingly recognizes that even this must be balanced against shared global commitments to human rights and dignity.

What this dialogue requires is epistemic humility – the willingness to recognize that one’s own moral perceptions are shaped by cultural context – combined with moral seriousness – the refusal to treat all practices as equally valid simply because they exist somewhere. The goal is not relativism for its own sake, but the kind of engaged, respectful, and critical cross-cultural understanding that allows us to identify both genuine difference and genuine common ground.

Cultural and ethical subjectivism, taken together, do not give us a finished moral theory. But they do give us something invaluable: a reminder that moral arrogance – the assumption that our own cultural moral framework is simply correct – is philosophically unjustified, historically dangerous, and humanly unwise.

What do you think? If no culture holds a moral high ground, does that make it impossible to challenge harmful practices in another culture – or does a shared human nature give us the grounds to do exactly that? And in your own moral reasoning, how much do you think your cultural background shapes what feels “obviously” right or wrong to you?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_subjectivism
2. https://pressbooks.ccconline.org/introtophilosophy/chapter/3-3-2-ethical-relativism-2/
3. https://www.simplypsychology.org/cultural-relativism.html
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism
5. https://viva.pressbooks.pub/phi220ethics/chapter/arent-right-and-wrong-just-matters-of-opinion-on-moral-relativism-and-subjectivism-introduction-to-philosophy-ethics/
6. https://iep.utm.edu/moral-re/
7. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/
8. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/ethical-relativism/
9. https://pollution.sustainability-directory.com/term/cultural-ethical-relativism/
10. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-013-1814-z
11. https://carnegiecouncil.org/explore-engage/key-terms/cultural-relativism