Relativist Perspective

“The Relativist Perspective means the ethical behaviors that are derived subjectively from the experiences of individuals and groups” (Ferrell, Ferrell, Fraedrich, 2015). This philosophy is based around the actions of others and then they will choose the ethical standards in it being right or wrong. For example, in the business world a “relativist would try to anticipate the conflicts that might arise between the different philosophies held by members of the organizations, suppliers, customers, and the community at large” (Ferrell, Ferrell, Fraedrich, 2015). After a relativist mentors the actions of how their culture acts upon the situation, will in turn state if it’s right or wrong. If they believe it was the right action it will be seen as a positive consensus which is in return considered ethical, but it might change over the course of time. If the action is seen to be wrong, it’s a negative consensus which is unethical therefore they don’t follow in the same footsteps. There are three different types of relativism, descriptive, meta-ethical, and normative. A descriptive relativism relates to the observations of other cultures. Around the world there are hundreds of different cultures with different norms, customs, and beliefs, but some of the observations don’t do any of the cultures justice. The second type of relativism is meta-ethical, which proposes that people naturally see situations from their own perspectives, and there is no objective way of resolving ethical disputes between different value systems and individual’s. The last type of relativism is normative who assume one person’s opinion is as good as another’s. “From the result of ethical issues being embedded in a specific culture, the values and behaviors of people in one culture do not generally influence the behaviors of people in another culture” (Ferrell, Ferrell, Fraedrich, 2015).
Relativism is not like any other form of society. They are different in many ways such as they emphasize peoples’ differences while ignoring their basic similarities, and they negatively correlated to a person’s sensitivity to ethical issues. In an article written by Greg Koukl, it states seven different things that the normal person couldn’t do if they were a relativist. Number one states “relativists can’t accuse others of wrong-doing, they can’t complain about the problem of evil, can’t place blame or accept praise, can’t claim anything is unfair or unjust, can’t improve their morality, can’t hold meaningful discussions, and the last can’t promote the obligation of tolerance” (Koukl, 2006). In reality, relativist can’t do