A Refutation of Moral Relativism

(This text is taken from a blog by Peter Kreeft- professor of Philosophy at Boston College)

A good society is one that makes it easy for you to be good. Correlatively, a free society is one that makes it easy to be free. To be free, and to live freely, is to live spiritually, because only spirit is free-matter is not. To live spiritually is to live morally. The two essential properties of spirit that distinguish it from matter are intellect and will-the capacity for knowledge and moral choice. The ideals of truth and goodness.

The most radical threat to living morally today is the loss of moral principles.

Principles mean moral absolutes. Unchanging rocks beneath the changing waves of feelings and practices. Moral relativism is a philosophy that denies moral absolutes.

How important is this issue? After all, it's just a philosophy, and philosophy is just ideas. But ideas have consequences. Sometimes these consequences are as momentous as a holocaust, or a Hiroshima. Sometimes even more momentous. Philosophy is just thought, but sow a thought, reap an act; sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny. This is just as true for societies as it is for individuals.

How important is the issue? The issue of moral relativism is merely the single most important issue of our age, for no society in all of human history has ever survived without rejecting the philosophy of moral relativism.

Moral relativism usually includes three claims: That morality is first of all changeable; secondly, subjective; and third, individual. Moral absolutism claims that there are moral principles that are unchangeable, objective, and universal.

For more on this topic, see the book A Refutation of Moral Relativism.