Common Sense Philosophy/Chapter 13

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Chapter 13: Cultural Relativism -- The Betrayal of Universal Humanity

The Comfortable Heresy

There is a position in contemporary intellectual life that has become so widely accepted, so deeply embedded in the educated sensibility, that questioning it feels almost like a social transgression. It is the position that cultures are fundamentally incommensurable -- that the values, practices, and institutions of one culture cannot be legitimately evaluated by the standards of another -- and that any attempt to do so is a form of cultural imperialism, an arrogant imposition of Western norms on non-Western peoples.

This position goes by several names: cultural relativism, multiculturalism, respect for diversity, cultural sensitivity. In its moderate forms, it expresses an important and hard-won insight: that human beings have a persistent tendency to assume that their own culture's way of doing things is the only right way, that other cultures are primitive, inferior, or barbaric, and that the "civilizing mission" of more "advanced" societies justifies the conquest, colonization, and cultural destruction of less powerful ones. This tendency has produced some of the worst atrocities in human history -- from the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas to the Belgian Congo to the "stolen generations" of Aboriginal Australians. The corrective impulse -- the determination to approach other cultures with humility, curiosity, and respect rather than condescension and contempt -- is not merely admirable. It is morally necessary.

But the corrective has become a pathology. In its strong form, cultural relativism does not merely caution against ethnocentrism. It denies the possibility of cross-cultural moral evaluation altogether. It holds that moral standards are entirely internal to cultures, that no external standpoint exists from which to evaluate them, and that the attempt to apply universal standards is itself a form of cultural violence. This position, articulated with considerable sophistication by anthropologists, philosophers, and postcolonial theorists, has achieved the status of orthodoxy in much of the academy and has profoundly influenced public policy, international relations, and human rights discourse.

And it is wrong. Not wrong in its impulse -- the impulse toward cultural humility is correct -- but catastrophically wrong in its conclusions. Because the strong form of cultural relativism, taken seriously, provides intellectual cover for some of the worst forms of human suffering on earth. It tells us that we cannot condemn the genital mutilation of girls because it is "their culture." It tells us that we cannot condemn the burning of widows because it is "their tradition." It tells us that we cannot condemn the denial of education to women because it is "their way of life." It tells us, in effect, that suffering does not count if it occurs within a cultural framework that the sufferer's own society endorses.

This chapter argues that this position is intellectually incoherent, morally bankrupt, and practically complicit in the suffering it refuses to condemn.

How Cultural Relativism Became Fashionable

The intellectual history of cultural relativism begins, paradoxically, with one of its most valuable contributions. Franz Boas, the German-American anthropologist who is considered the father of modern cultural anthropology, argued in the early twentieth century against the racist evolutionary schemas that classified human societies on a scale from "savage" to "civilized." Boas demonstrated, through extensive fieldwork among the Kwakiutl and other Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, that cultures that had been dismissed as "primitive" possessed complex social structures, sophisticated art, elaborate legal systems, and rich intellectual traditions. The apparent "simplicity" of non-Western cultures was an artifact of Western ignorance, not a reflection of genuine inferiority.

Boas's students -- Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Melville Herskovits -- extended his insight into a more systematic relativism. Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934) argued that each culture was a coherent "pattern" that could be understood only on its own terms, and that the Western tendency to judge other cultures by Western standards was a form of ethnocentrism that obscured genuine understanding. Herskovits, in his 1947 statement to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, argued explicitly against the possibility of universal human rights on the grounds that rights are culturally specific and that any attempt to universalize them would constitute cultural imperialism.

The philosophical elaboration of cultural relativism was developed in the work of thinkers like Clifford Geertz, whose "thick description" approach to cultural analysis emphasized the internal coherence and meaning of cultural practices, and Richard Rorty, who argued that moral standards are "ethnocentric" by nature -- products of particular historical communities that cannot claim universal validity. Postcolonial theory, particularly the work of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, added a political dimension: the claim to universal values was exposed as a mask for Western power, a means by which the colonizer justified the domination of the colonized.

These intellectual developments, taken together, created a climate in which the assertion of universal moral standards became deeply unfashionable in academic circles. To claim that some practices were objectively wrong -- not just wrong by Western standards but wrong for anyone, anywhere -- was to reveal oneself as naive at best and imperialist at worst. The sophisticated position was to recognize the "positionality" of all moral claims, to acknowledge the "situatedness" of all knowledge, and to refrain from imposing one's own cultural perspective on others.

The result was an intellectual culture in which the most privileged people on earth -- tenured professors at wealthy universities in democratic countries -- could not bring themselves to say clearly that the genital mutilation of a seven-year-old girl was wrong.

Where Cultural Relativism Goes Catastrophically Wrong

Let us examine the practices that cultural relativism asks us to refrain from condemning.

Female genital mutilation (FGM). Approximately 200 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to some form of FGM, which ranges from the removal of the clitoral hood to the complete excision of the clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora, followed by the stitching together of the vulva -- a procedure known as infibulation. The procedure is typically performed on girls between the ages of four and twelve, without anesthesia and often with unsterilized instruments. Its immediate consequences include severe pain, hemorrhage, infection, and death. Its long-term consequences include chronic pain, difficulty urinating and menstruating, complications in childbirth, and the permanent destruction of sexual pleasure. It is practiced primarily in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and it is defended by its practitioners as a cultural tradition that ensures a girl's marriageability, family honor, and conformity to community norms.

The cultural relativist position, taken seriously, requires us to say that this practice is "their culture" and that we have no standing to condemn it. But let us be clear about what this position entails. It entails saying that the suffering of a seven-year-old girl who is held down by relatives while her genitals are cut with a razor blade is not a matter of universal moral concern because her community endorses the practice. It entails saying that her pain, her terror, her permanent physical damage, and the destruction of her capacity for sexual pleasure are "culturally relative" -- morally significant within a framework that condemns them but morally neutral within a framework that endorses them.

This is not cultural sensitivity. It is moral abdication.

Honor killings. In numerous communities across the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, girls and women are killed by family members for perceived violations of sexual honor -- having a boyfriend, refusing an arranged marriage, being raped. The United Nations estimates that approximately 5,000 honor killings occur worldwide each year, though the actual number is certainly much higher due to underreporting. The perpetrators -- typically fathers, brothers, or uncles -- frequently go unpunished because local laws and customs treat the killing as justified defense of family honor.

Child marriage. Approximately 650 million girls and women alive today were married before the age of 18. In the poorest countries, girls are married as young as eight or nine. Child marriage effectively ends a girl's education, eliminates her economic independence, subjects her to sexual relations before physical and psychological maturity, and dramatically increases her risk of complications in pregnancy and childbirth. It is defended as "cultural tradition" by the communities that practice it, and it is enabled by religious authorities who provide scriptural justification.

Caste discrimination. As discussed in the previous chapter, the caste system subjects hundreds of millions of people to systematic discrimination based on the accident of birth. Dalits in India continue to face exclusion from education, employment, housing, and social life. They are subjected to violence, including sexual violence against Dalit women by upper-caste men, that is rarely prosecuted. The system is defended as an integral part of Hindu cultural and religious tradition.

In each of these cases, cultural relativism asks us to withhold moral judgment on the grounds that these practices are embedded in cultural contexts that give them meaning and legitimacy. The relativist does not deny that these practices cause suffering. They argue that the suffering must be understood within its cultural context and that outsiders have no standing to impose their own moral standards.

But notice who benefits from this position. It is not the seven-year-old girl undergoing FGM. It is not the teenage bride. It is not the Dalit laborer. It is the elders, the patriarchs, the upper-caste landowners, the religious authorities -- the people who have the power to define and enforce "cultural tradition" and who benefit from its continuation. Cultural relativism, in practice, is an alliance between Western intellectuals and local elites against the most vulnerable members of those societies.

"My Culture" as a Tool of Oppression

The phrase "it's our culture" deserves careful analysis, because it conceals an essential ambiguity. Whose culture? Defined by whom? Enforced by whom? For whose benefit?

Culture is not a monolith. Every culture contains multiple voices, competing values, internal critiques, and dissenting traditions. The claim that FGM is "African culture" obscures the fact that millions of Africans -- including the girls and women subjected to it, who have no say in the matter -- vehemently oppose it. The claim that child marriage is "South Asian culture" obscures the fact that South Asian women's rights activists have been fighting it for over a century. The claim that caste discrimination is "Hindu culture" obscures the entire anti-caste tradition from the Buddha through Kabir through Ambedkar to contemporary Dalit movements.

When a community elder says "this is our culture," what he typically means is "this is how I and people like me have always done things, and I do not want to change." The invocation of culture functions as a conversation-stopper, a way of placing practices beyond critique by wrapping them in the language of identity and tradition. It is a power move disguised as a heritage claim.

Martha Nussbaum has made this point with particular force. In her work on the capabilities approach, Nussbaum argues that the cultural relativist stance is self-defeating because it treats cultures as unified, static entities when they are in fact dynamic, contested, and internally diverse. The relevant question is not "what does the culture say?" but "what do the individuals within the culture need in order to live lives of dignity and freedom?"

Nussbaum's list of "central human capabilities" -- life, bodily health, bodily integrity, the ability to use one's senses and imagination, emotional health, practical reason, affiliation, the ability to live with other species, play, and control over one's environment -- is explicitly designed to be cross-culturally applicable while remaining sensitive to diverse forms of implementation. The capability to live to the end of a normal human lifespan is not "Western." The capability to be free from physical violence is not "European." The capability to receive an education is not "imperialist." These are conditions that human beings across cultures need in order to flourish, and any cultural practice that systematically denies them to a segment of the population is a legitimate object of moral critique.

Amartya Sen has made a parallel argument. In his essay "Human Rights and Asian Values," Sen demolished the claim that "Asian culture" is incompatible with human rights by demonstrating the long tradition of tolerance, dissent, and individual dignity within Asian intellectual history -- from the Buddhist emperor Ashoka's edicts of tolerance to the Mughal emperor Akbar's experiments in religious pluralism to the Confucian tradition of remonstrance against unjust rulers. The claim that human rights are "Western" turns out to be historically ignorant: every major civilization has produced thinkers who argued for human dignity, individual freedom, and the limitation of arbitrary power.

The "my culture" defense of harmful practices is, in the end, a defense of power, not of culture. It is wielded by those who benefit from existing arrangements against those who suffer under them. And the Western intellectual who accepts this defense in the name of "cultural sensitivity" is not showing respect for the culture. They are showing indifference to the suffering of the culture's most vulnerable members.

The False Dichotomy

Cultural relativism presents us with a false choice: either we accept all cultural practices as equally valid, or we impose Western values on the rest of the world. Either we are relativists or we are imperialists. There is no middle ground.

This dichotomy is false because it assumes that universalism must be Western and that critique must be imposed from outside. Both assumptions are wrong.

Universalism is not Western. The idea that human beings have inherent dignity and deserve freedom from arbitrary violence is not the exclusive property of European philosophy. It appears, in various forms, in every major intellectual tradition: in the Confucian concept of ren (benevolence), in the Buddhist concept of karuna (compassion), in the Islamic concept of fitrah (the innate nature shared by all human beings), in the African concept of ubuntu (humanity through others), in the Hindu concept of ahimsa (non-violence). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted not by Western nations acting alone but by a committee that included the Chinese philosopher P. C. Chang, the Lebanese philosopher Charles Malik, and the Indian jurist Hansa Mehta, among others. The claim that human rights are "Western" is not an argument against their universality. It is a failure of historical knowledge.

Critique need not be imposed from outside. Every culture contains internal critics -- individuals and movements that challenge harmful practices from within the culture's own resources. The most effective advocates for women's rights in the Muslim world are Muslim feminists who argue from within the Islamic tradition. The most effective advocates against caste discrimination in India are Dalit activists who draw on India's own democratic and anti-caste traditions. The most effective advocates for Indigenous rights are Indigenous leaders who combine traditional knowledge with modern legal frameworks. External solidarity can support these internal movements, but it does not replace them and should not attempt to.

The alternative to both relativism and imperialism is what might be called rational pluralism -- or, following the language of this book, the application of the rational compass across cultures. Rational pluralism holds that:

First, there is genuine diversity in human values and practices, and much of this diversity is to be celebrated rather than eliminated. Different cultures have developed different cuisines, artistic traditions, family structures, spiritual practices, social rituals, and modes of governance, many of which are equally valid ways of organizing human life. The world would be poorer, not richer, if all cultures converged on a single model.

Second, this genuine diversity does not extend to the infliction of avoidable suffering on non-consenting individuals. A cultural practice that causes severe physical harm to children who cannot consent is not "different." It is harmful. A cultural practice that denies education to half the population is not "diverse." It is oppressive. A cultural practice that kills women for exercising sexual autonomy is not "traditional." It is murder.

Third, the criterion for distinguishing legitimate diversity from unacceptable harm is not "Western" or "Eastern" but rational: does the practice reduce or increase avoidable suffering? Does it respect or violate the dignity of the individuals affected? Does it expand or restrict the capabilities of those who are subject to it? These questions can be asked -- and answered -- from within any cultural tradition, because the answers depend on empirical evidence about human wellbeing, not on the cultural perspective of the questioner.

Empirical Convergence: What All Cultures Actually Want

The cultural relativist claims that moral standards vary fundamentally across cultures -- that what counts as a good life in one culture may be entirely different from what counts as a good life in another. This claim has a certain anthropological plausibility when applied to surface-level cultural practices: the foods people eat, the clothes they wear, the gods they worship, the rituals they perform. But when applied to the fundamental conditions of human wellbeing, it is empirically false.

Consider what parents across all cultures want for their children. They want them to survive childhood. They want them to be healthy. They want them to be educated. They want them to be safe from violence. They want them to have opportunities to develop their capabilities. They want them to be treated with dignity. They want them to have some measure of freedom in choosing how to live their lives.

These desires are not culturally specific. They are universal. A mother in rural Nigeria wants her children to survive childhood just as much as a mother in suburban Oslo. A father in Afghanistan wants his children to receive an education just as much as a father in Japan. The differences in what they can provide -- and in the cultural and institutional structures that constrain or enable provision -- are enormous. But the underlying desires are the same.

The sociologist Christian Welzel, in his comprehensive analysis of global values data, has demonstrated that as societies develop economically and institutionally, their values converge toward what he calls "emancipative values" -- values that emphasize individual freedom, gender equality, tolerance of diversity, and civic participation. This convergence is not the result of Western cultural imperialism. It is the result of the logic of human development itself: as people gain economic security and access to education, they demand greater freedom and greater respect for individual dignity. The demand is not "Western." It is human.

This does not mean that all cultures are converging toward a single model. The forms in which emancipative values are expressed vary enormously across cultures, and this variation is legitimate and valuable. Gender equality in Scandinavia looks different from gender equality in Japan, which looks different from gender equality in Brazil. Each society finds its own way of implementing the underlying principle. But the underlying principle -- that women and men are equally entitled to freedom, dignity, and opportunity -- is converging across cultures because it is rationally compelling. It is what people want when they are free to want it.

The cultural relativist's error is to confuse the diversity of cultural forms with a diversity of fundamental values. The forms are diverse. The fundamental values -- the conditions that human beings need in order to flourish -- are remarkably consistent. And the cultures that provide these conditions are, by the only criterion that matters, better than the cultures that do not.

Toward a Genuine Universalism That Is Not Western Imperialism

The challenge, then, is to articulate a universalism that is genuinely universal -- not merely Western values dressed in universal language. This is a legitimate challenge, and it must be taken seriously. The history of "universalism" as a cover for Western imperialism is real and well-documented. The "civilizing mission" that justified European colonialism, the "white man's burden" that rationalized the exploitation of colonized peoples, the "Washington Consensus" that imposed neoliberal economic policies on developing countries -- these are genuine instances of particular interests masquerading as universal principles.

But the abuse of universalism is not an argument against universalism. It is an argument for a better, more honest, more genuinely inclusive universalism. Such a universalism would have several characteristics.

First, it would be empirically grounded. Its claims would rest not on abstract philosophical argument or religious revelation but on evidence about what actually produces human flourishing. The claim that education improves human capabilities is not a cultural assertion. It is an empirical fact, verified across every culture in which it has been tested. The claim that violence causes suffering is not a Western value. It is a neurobiological reality. A genuinely universal morality would derive its authority not from any particular cultural tradition but from the evidence of human experience.

Second, it would be procedurally inclusive. Universal standards should be developed through processes that include voices from all cultures, not imposed by powerful nations on weaker ones. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for all its imperfections, represents a genuine attempt at this kind of inclusive deliberation. Future developments in international human rights law should be even more inclusive, incorporating perspectives from Indigenous peoples, from the global South, and from marginalized communities within every society.

Third, it would be substantively modest. A genuine universalism does not need to specify in detail how every society should organize its institutions. It needs only to specify the minimum conditions that every society must meet: the prohibition of practices that cause severe, avoidable harm to non-consenting individuals; the guarantee of basic capabilities (life, health, education, bodily integrity); and the protection of individual agency against institutional coercion. Beyond these minima, societies are free to organize themselves in whatever way their members choose. The space for legitimate cultural diversity is enormous. What is not legitimate is the use of "cultural diversity" as a justification for inflicting preventable suffering.

Fourth, it would be self-critical. A genuine universalism would apply its standards to Western societies as readily as to non-Western ones. The mass incarceration of African Americans in the United States, the treatment of asylum seekers in European detention centers, the exploitation of migrant workers in the Gulf states by companies headquartered in London and New York, the environmental devastation inflicted by Western consumption patterns on the global South -- these are all legitimate objects of moral critique by the same universal standards that condemn FGM and honor killings. A universalism that condemns the practices of poor nations while excusing the practices of wealthy ones is not universalism. It is hypocrisy.

Fifth, it would be historically informed. A genuine universalism would acknowledge that the Western nations that now champion universal rights have their own history of grotesque violations -- slavery, colonialism, genocide, aggressive war -- and that this history gives them no moral authority to lecture other societies. But it would also insist that the sins of the West do not invalidate the principles that the West, along with every other civilization, has sometimes honored and sometimes betrayed. The fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves does not invalidate the claim that all men are created equal. It means that Jefferson was a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is an argument against the hypocrite, not against the principle.

The Courage to Judge

Cultural relativism, in its strong form, is ultimately a failure of courage. It is the position of people who know that some practices cause terrible suffering but who do not want to bear the social cost of saying so. It is more comfortable to say "who am I to judge?" than to say "this is wrong." It is more comfortable to cite the complexity of cultural contexts than to name the simplicity of a child's pain. It is more comfortable to write nuanced academic papers about the "positionality of moral claims" than to state plainly that cutting off a girl's clitoris is an act of violence regardless of the cultural context in which it occurs.

The philosopher Thomas Pogge has argued that the citizens of wealthy nations are not merely failing to help the global poor but are actively harming them through the maintenance of an unjust international order. A similar argument can be made about cultural relativism: the refusal to condemn harmful practices is not a neutral position. It is an active contribution to the maintenance of those practices, because it deprives their opponents of the international solidarity they need to challenge entrenched power.

When Waris Dirie, the Somali model and anti-FGM activist, speaks about her own experience of genital mutilation -- the terror, the pain, the lifelong consequences -- she is not asking the West to "impose its values." She is asking the world to recognize her humanity and the humanity of every girl who undergoes the same ordeal. When Malala Yousafzai argues for girls' education, she is not advocating for Western culture. She is advocating for a capability -- the capability to learn, to think, to develop one's mind -- that is as valuable in Peshawar as in Princeton. When Dalit activists demand an end to caste discrimination, they are not importing Western ideas. They are insisting on a principle -- the equal dignity of every human being -- that can be found in every intellectual tradition on earth.

The rational compass developed in this book does not tell us that Western culture is superior to other cultures. It tells us that practices which cause avoidable suffering, destroy human dignity, and restrict individual freedom are worse than practices that do not -- wherever they occur, in whatever cultural context, defended by whatever authority. This is not imperialism. It is honesty. And the refusal to say it is not tolerance. It is complicity.

Conclusion: Rational Pluralism

The position this chapter defends is not cultural uniformity. It is rational pluralism: the recognition that human cultures display enormous and valuable diversity in their forms of life, combined with the insistence that this diversity does not extend to the basic conditions of human flourishing. Cultures differ in how they cook food, but children everywhere need to be fed. Cultures differ in how they organize families, but women everywhere deserve freedom from violence. Cultures differ in their spiritual practices, but the suppression of reason and inquiry is harmful everywhere.

Rational pluralism requires both cultural humility and moral courage. Cultural humility means recognizing that our own culture is not the measure of all things, that other cultures possess wisdom and beauty that we lack, that our own practices are subject to the same critique we apply to others, and that the history of Western "universalism" has often been a history of domination rather than liberation.

Moral courage means being willing to say, when the evidence demands it, that a practice is wrong -- not wrong by our standards but wrong by the standard of human suffering that it produces. It means being willing to stand with the girl who is being cut, the widow who is being burned, the child who is being married off, the Dalit who is being degraded -- not as a cultural imperialist but as a fellow human being who recognizes their suffering and refuses to look away.

The cultural relativist will object that this position is arrogant. But consider the alternative. The alternative is to tell the girl being cut, the woman being stoned, the child being married, that their suffering is "culturally relative" -- that it would be wrong if it happened in London but is acceptable because it happens in Lagos or Lahore. If that is cultural sensitivity, then cultural sensitivity is a form of cruelty. And if that is the best that philosophy can offer, then philosophy has failed the people who need it most.

The next chapter examines two further obstacles to human flourishing that operate within societies rather than between them: corruption and the systematic oppression of minorities.

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