On Moral Relativism

Yes, there is such a thing as right and wrong:

The once-great West is well on the way to oblivion because it has largely abandoned fundamental realities, such us objective truth and objective morality. And that is because we have largely abandoned the reality of God – a God that is the source of truth and morality.

Plenty of important thinkers, both past and present, could be appealed to here. One figure that comes to mind is C. S. Lewis. In a number of places, he made a powerful case for objective morality. As he wrote in Mere Christianity:

When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality.

Or as he put it in Miracles:

When men say ‘I ought’ they certainly think they are saying something, and something true, about the nature of a proposed action, and not merely about their own feelings. But if Naturalism is true, ‘I ought’ is the same sort of statement as ‘I itch’ or ‘I’m going to be sick’. In real life when a man says ‘I ought’, we may reply, ‘Yes, you’re right. That is what you ought to do,’ or else, ‘No, I think you’re mistaken.’ But in a world of Naturalists…the only sensible reply would be, ‘Oh, are you’?

But here I appeal to the American Christian philosopher, J. Budziszewski. He has written often about such matters, including in his latest book: Pandemic of Lunacy (Creed & Culture, 2026). I have already discussed that book, such as in this piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/06/06/on-our-lunacy-pandemic/  

In the book’s 30 chapters he examines 30 lunacies. I will focus on Lunacy 2: “Basic Right and Wrong Are Different for Everyone”. He begins by recognising that people are different and think and act differently. He goes on to say this:

Today we treat such variations as though they prove that morality itself is different for everyone. What’s right or wrong for one person, or for one group of people, may not be right or wrong for another. Logically, this doesn’t follow. If every nation practices slavery, it doesn’t follow that slavery is right; if some practice it and some don’t, it doesn’t follow that slavery is wrong for those who don’t and right for those who do. That cannibalism has become very rare among us isn’t just a difference between old times and new ones; it’s a genuine moral advance.

 

On still closer examination, we see that the story about everyone having completely different ways of life is grossly exaggerated. Not all of the variations in practice reflect variations in belief, for no nation entirely lives up to what it professes. Moreover, even the variations in moral belief lie mostly in details….

He offers some examples of this and then goes on to discuss the Ten Commandments. He cites some anthropologists on this and notes how universally recognised moral norms actually are. He then writes: “The fact that pretty much the same basic moral norms are acknowledged everywhere should not be misunderstood. People try to evade them everywhere, too, and different evasions tend to become common in different cultures….”

Budziszewski continues:

Even people whom we rightly consider moral monsters do not have a different moral law; if they did, we could not consider them monsters. Nor are they ignorant of the moral law; rather, they pervert it. The Nazi butchers knew full well that it is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life. Grotesquely, however, they insisted that Jews were not human. Prisoners were driven naked to the barracks through stockades so that they would seem more like animals, “to make it possible for [the guards] to do what they did.”

 

Of course, what is right for you and me can differ in one sense, because duties depend on relationships and status. I should be sexually faithful to my wife. You should be sexually faithful to yours. You’d better not think you should be sexually faithful to mine! But the duty of faithfulness to one’s own wife applies to both of us.

 

Taken to the limit, the idea of a different right and wrong for everyone mutates into the idea that right and wrong don’t really exist…..

Budziszewski looks further at this “right-for-me” notion and then writes:

Suppose my unique brain gives me a destructive temper. If my violent urges are uncontrollable, we might say I am not responsible for my actions, but will this make violence right for me? Suppose my unique brain makes food so overpoweringly attractive to me that I suffer a dangerous tendency to eat myself sick. Which is a better description: that I am just “differently hungered,” or that I suffer the misfortune of an urge I should try to resist? Or suppose I am a sociopath who is unable to suffer remorse. Morally indignant at being caught after stealing a car, one young sociopath demanded of the police, “How else was I s’posed to get home, man?” No doubt his brain really did have some special characteristics, but would we say that it was right for him to steal a car, even though not right for you or me?

He wraps up the chapter this way:

We intone the “different for everyone” mantra to defend against some kinds of accusations, but not against others. I am unlikely to trot out the right-for-me excuse to dodge being criticized for robbery, On the other hand, I am very likely to appeal to it because I don’t want to be criticised for unfaithfulness. “Slut shaming” is considered a very bad thing, but no one is criticised for “glutton shaming” – although with the advance of the body positivity movement, perhaps that may change….

 

We don’t do wrong just because we are relativists. We go in for relativism because we do wrong.

In this book Budziszewski carefully explores and assesses the other 29 lunacies. Just as the thinking Christian should not overlook the work of someone as important as C. S. Lewis, so too they should explore the many helpful volumes by Budziszewski.

And if you want to know about the man and his work than can be gleaned from just this article, see this earlier piece of mine: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/08/17/notable-christians-j-budziszewski/

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