by Lanae

Created on: October 10, 2009

The etymology of the words ethics and morality are derived from the roots ethos and mos which both convey a meaning describing customs or habits. This etymology supports the claims of anthropologist Ruth Benedict in her belief that all values are rooted in customs and habits of a culture because the words moral and ethics themselves were essentially created to describe customs and habits.

The words morals and ethics are the terms that modern day societies use to debate and exemplify a different cultures values and fundamental beliefs. Obviously ancient cultures were thinking that values and beliefs are created from their habits and customs if they were to create words in a manner that links the two concepts.

Ruth Benedict is among a group called the cultural relativists that believe whatever is normal and customary is what is right, and whatever is abnormal and deviant is wrong. Cultural relativism stresses acceptance because it is a de facto of human reality. De facto is a term that portrays the concept of the way it is. Cultural relativism believes that customs portray good and deviance portrays what is bad and that is just the way it is, there is no room for argument. Because they feel that morals and values are defined by the customs themselves then they do not take their own morals and values into account when judging other cultures.
Cultural relativists accept that customs simply are and hold strong to the belief that customs are de facto and not subject to judgment by any other set of beliefs.

Over time, the concept of cultural relativism has occasionally developed into subjective relativism. Subjective relativism is a term describing a person's ability to decide what is right and wrong. Because the power of ethics lies in the beliefs of a culture, subjective relativism stresses that ethics can be defined by whatever an individual chooses to believe. Subjective, a term stressing the authority of an individual's perception translates into subjective realism, a declaration that each person is their own source for their moral principals. Ultimately, this type of thinking led to ethical nihilism, which stresses the belief that the view or attitudes in which moral values are regarded as basically meaningless. This view is based on the idea that nothing can transcend the choices of an individual. Anything and everything becomes permissible in ethical nihilism.

Politically, it would be comparable to anarchy. The no government and no rules aspects of anarchy are just as ethical nihilism stresses no authority, no morals, and no common strand of ethics.

I would certainly not want to live in a world with no structure, where each person lived by their own standards and viewed all others as subject to their own will. The chaos would very quickly destroy our world and send our generations advances in a rapidly spiraling regression.

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