REALISM CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Various debates about relativism often

revolve around the frequently cited but
“Human nature is a starting point for unclear notion of cultural relativism which
classical political realism. Realists view can be traced back to the 485-425 B.C.
human beings as inherently egoistic and but gained its wide currency when Franz
self-interested to the extent that self- Boas, responsible for the founding of
interest overcomes moral principles. At social anthropology in the U.S., claimed
the debate in Sparta, described in Book I that the data of ethnology prove that not
of Thucydides’ History, the Athenians only our knowledge but also our emotions
affirm the priority of self-interest over are the result of the form of our social life
morality. They say that considerations of and of the history of the people to whom
right and wrong have “never turned we belong. (Boas 1940: 636)
people aside from the opportunities of
aggrandizement offered by superior Boas’s views became the orthodoxy of
strength.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of anthropology through M. J. Herskovits’
Philosophy, 2016, chap. 1 par. 76) “principle of cultural relativism” stating:
“Judgments are based on experience,
and experience is interpreted by each
individual in terms of his own
enculturation” (Herskovits 1955:15).
An influential form of cultural relativism
Wright (1992) offers a nice statement of owes its genesis to linguistics. Benjamin
this way of thinking about realism.) These Whorf, inspired by his teacher Edward
theses imply that our claims are Sapir, who in turn was supervised by the
objectively true or false, depending on social anthropologist Franz Boas, used
how the world they are about is. The world ethnographic evidence from American
that we represent in our thoughts or Indian languages, such as Hopi, to argue
language is an objective world. (Realism that languages mold our views of the
may be restricted to some subject-matter, world and different languages do so
or range of discourse, but for simplicity, differently, because “we dissect nature
we will talk about only its global form.) along lines laid down by our native
languages” (Whorf 1956: 213).

This so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,

and the position known as “linguistic
relativity”, became popular in both
psychology and social anthropology in the
mid 20th century.

It is often argued that these theses require It is the view that no culture is superior to
some form of the correspondence theory any other culture when comparing
of truth. Putnam (1978, p. 18) notes, systems of morality, law, politics, etc. It's
“Whatever else realists say, they typically the philosophical notion that all cultural
say that they believe in a beliefs are equally valid and that truth
‘correspondence theory of truth”. Such a
theory will provide an account of objective
relations of reference and satisfaction,
and show how these determine the truth
or falsehood of what we say about the
world.
Field’s own approach (1972) to this
problem seeks a physicalist explanation
of reference. But realism is a more
general idea than physicalism. Any theory
that provides objective relations of
reference and satisfaction, and builds up
a theory of truth from them, would give a
form of realism. Making the objectivity of
reference the key to realism is
characteristic of work of Putnam where
the key features of realism, as we will take
it, are that: the world exists objectively,
independently of the ways we think about
it or describe it.
Our thoughts and claims are about that
world.
itself is relative, depending on the cultural
environment. Those who hold to cultural
relativism hold that all religious, ethical,
aesthetic, and political beliefs are
completely relative to the individual within
a cultural identity. Relativism often
includes moral relativism (ethics depend
on a social construct), situational
relativism (right or wrong is based on the
particular situation), and cognitive
relativism (truth itself has no objective
standard).
(Cultural-Relativism.com)
Cultural relativism is the ability to
understand a culture on its own terms and
not to make judgments using the
standards of one’s own culture. The goal
of this is promote understanding of
cultural practices that are not typically
part of one’s own culture. Using the
perspective of cultural relativism leads to
the view that no one culture is superior
than another culture when compared to
systems of morality, law, politics, etc. [11]
The concept of cultural relativism also
means that any opinion on ethics is
subject to the perspective of each person
within their particular culture. Overall,
there is no right or wrong ethical system.
In a holistic understanding of the term
cultural relativism, it tries to promote the
understanding of cultural practices that
are unfamiliar to other cultures such as
eating insects, genocides or genital
cutting.