Civilisations: all Relative and all Different

Ethical Relativism versus Cultural Relativism

Abstract

The recent important debate on ethics and cultural relativism has called the attention to the old question of the foundation of judgements of value, i.e. the argumentations we use to judge other people. By discussing the two classical examples of Diderot and Montaigne, the essay aims at articulating two main theses. On one side, it argues that both absolutist and sceptical solutions to the problem of the foundation of values are the outcome of an ethical foundationalism, which is not acceptable from an epistemological point of view. On the other side, it shows that the theory of ethical relativism, if correctly understood, can be used as a tool for avoiding both the affirmation of the superiority of one culture and a cultural relativism based on the indifference of ethical positions and the impossibility to make judgements and comparisons between different values and cultures.