Moral Relativism and the Ethics of Slavery, Essay Example

The defense of slavery through an appeal to moral relativism essentially seeks to delineate an ethical space in which slavery is not only possible, but moreover justified. From this moral relativist perspective, it appears that the historical presence of slavery in various societies – including the very society that gives ethics its name, the ancient Greek city-state – suggests that slavery is a phenomenon complicit with the particular moral values of a given paradigm. In this regard two questions are of pertinence: Firstly, does such an account provide a logical justification for slavery? Secondly, what does this say of moral relativism as an ethical position, insofar as it intimates a negation of ethics tout court?

The essential point of moral relativism is that any ethical position is tied to a specific discourse. The term discourse in philosophy has a complex conceptual history, but we use it to summarize a way of life that is conditioned by various historical, cultural, religious or linguistic norms. In other words, moral relativism emphasizes the particularity of ethical positions as opposed to their universality. As such, moral relativism recalls the broader scope of what is termed post-modernism. Post-modern generally emphasizes a relativity between discourses. This is concisely formulated in the archetypical definition of post-modernism as the “end of meta-narratives”. Thus, the moral relativist position suggests that any ethical discourse is merely a narrative amongst narratives: there is no universal ethical discourse that could declare what is right or wrong.

According to this account, an ethical justification for slavery would certainly seem plausible. Critiques of slavery that would appeal to a universal idea of the equality of men could be construed as variations of a meta-narrative, or a universal ethical position. This critique of slavery appears to be forbidden by moral relativism, as slavery is conceived as the product of a particular discourse, or how a particular society organizes itself. As no ethical position is universal, there is thus no ethical “ground” on which to critique slavery.

Nevertheless, there are two potential weaknesses that may be inherent to the moral relativist account. Firstly, from where does moral relativism assert that all ethical discourses are relative or particular? That is to say, is the broad claim that all ethical positions are relative not a universal claim about ethics? If the counterargument to this claim would be that moral relativism takes into account all the different types of ethical discourses, and noting their difference, extrapolates a greater relativity, how do they make this claim without taking into account the relativity of their own position? If this essentially empirical comparison between ethics leads to the conclusion of moral relativism, should they not consider their own empirical position as a form of discourse or narrative, that is, a particular way of looking at the world?

Secondly, the moral relativist position does not exclude the possible internal or immanent critique of a particular phenomenon such as slavery. This suggests the possibility of attempting to critique slavery from within a certain ethical discourse or narrative, using its own principles against it to develop a logical contradiction. For example, if a so-called democratic city-state of Ancient Greece had slaves, one could question the idea that these city-states were in fact democratic. Hence, for slaves to exist in the city-state could be argued as violating the city-state’s own democratic ethics. This of course depends, however, on the definition of a human being supported within the particular context of a certain city-state; yet nevertheless, the possibility for an immanent critique appears to go beyond the moral relativist position, forcing a given discourse to re-evaluate its norms.

Thus, while moral relativism seems to infer the negation of ethics and a justification of slavery, there are nevertheless problems with this account. Firstly, one can suggest that the moral relativist position betrays the radical particularity of ethical discourses that it seeks to defend by making a universal claim that all ethical discourses are relative. Secondly, it omits the possibility of an internal or immanent critique of a particular ethical position, which could potentially generate contradictions within a society and induce the latter to re-think its discourse.