The Lives and Opinions - Essay Example

This is obviously pretty useless for politicians who are supposed to lead and find a basic consensus between people so that everyone can work together. If we just let everyone do what they want our civilization would collapse pretty quickly. Some relativists plainly believe that there is no such thing as truth and that almost anything is permitted by anyone anywhere. In moral relativism there are no absolute, concrete rights and wrongs—there are just things people do and a whole bunch of different opinions about ethics.

It is pretty easy to win arguments against ethical relativists by talking about things like the Holocaust—since no one believes this was anything but a terrible event. However, a relativist might just say that the event was bad or immoral in relation to their own moral framework, and not claim objectively wrongness. This is not to say that absolutism is better than relativism, but its better to believe in something than to believe in nothing.