Many of our interlocutors here often complain about the lengthy comments KF often posts which frame the necessity of a cohesive and coherent worldview when it comes to moral views and arguments. With others, their arguments often hinge around the insistence that either morals simply are not objective in nature, or that there is no way to tell. Even when the logic shows how subjective morality fails to provide a sound basis for behavior or argument, and fails to differentiate any moral view from another, their mantra seems to be a big “so what?”
IOW, so what if their worldview is rationally inconsistent with their behavior? So what if ultimately subjective morality endorses any and all behavior as moral equivalents? That’s not how most people actually behave, they counter, so worrying about worse-case scenarios derived from subjective morality is a groundless concern, especially since believing in objective morality doesn’t appear to make people behave better. Most people, they argue, have similar enough conscience and empathy and other feelings so that if they just adhere to those, we can have a generally-agreed upon and workable moral system without worrying about whether or not it is objectively true.
One problem with this line of thought – especially for those who grew up in western countries – is that it fails to recognize how a “similar-enough” set of personal feelings about others in society has developed within the framework of a virtually universal belief in certain moral absolutes (inviolable rights). Moral relativists take for granted the impact of hundreds of years of post-Enlightement Christian moral objectivism upon our culture and society when they appeal to feelings baked into culture from hundreds of years of enlightened Christianity as their basis of morality.
IOW, their moral views and feelings (even those that superficially appear to contradict some formal Christian “sins”) are the very product of a culture based on and inextricably steeped in post-enlightenment Christian moral objectivism. Their moral relativism is a privileged position sitting atop, relying upon and operating through the very thing it says does not exist.
Even when the Western moral relativist mistakenly argues for an end to discrimination against transgenders, they are taking for granted that “discrimination” against a minority is “a bad thing” that “most people” would automatically “feel bad” about. They are using an Christian Enlightenment-generated set of moral absolutes entrenched in the citizenry to make an emotional case against what they mistakenly frame as “discrimination”, when anti-discrimination as a good thing itself is not something a relativist would probably have access to use outside of Western Christian Enlightenment. Just look around the world to find that out.
Yeah, it’s real easy to point at empathy and feelings when you can rely on most people around you to share similar feelings. Looking outside of the enlightened, western-civilization box, this isn’t something we find to be a universally-shared moral feeling, even if the precept of moral equality is one you can find from sages of all times and from all locations around the world. Around the world you have entire cultures that have no problem at all seeing women and children as inferior objects to be used and abused, seeing other tribes and cultures as something to be exterminated, beheading gays and mutilating people for small legal infractions. They have zero expectation of any moral equality or rights.
The Western objective-morality idea of an objective, god-given inviolable right to liberty and self-determination set the table for today’s western, post-modern moral relativists; how convenient for them when they offer up a big fat “so what” in arguments showing the logical soundness of objective morality and the principles that came from the Enlightenment. They don’t have to account for their moral perspective and tender sensibilities as long as they ignore where they are drawing them from and what has protected their feelings from the brutality of other social mores in other other places in the world.
Moral subjectivists need to check their moral privilege. If they’re going to dismiss the enlightened Christian natural law objective morality basis, they have no right to take for granted the “feelings” and “conscience” and “empathy” it has generated for them to rely on in their arguments supporting moral relativism. Every time they claim someone has a right or that they should have some liberty, they are intellectually freeloading on hundreds of years of moral objectivism and enlightened Christian views permeating the society they grew up in.