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Relativism Vs Absolutism

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Relativism Vs Absolutism
Relativism and absolutism are both equally important approaches when it comes to morality. They are both relevant in that they each follow along with one another in their approaches but both offer different directions and beliefs. Relativism is one of the challenges of morality and reflects upon the existence of morality in relation to culture, society, historical/era and individuals, only representing one of these relations but not the others. Absolutism also believes that morality has relation to culture, society, historical/era and individuals but represents all any any of these relations, not just strictly one. In simpler terms, relativism says that nothing is intrinsically right or wrong while absolutism maintains that some things are …show more content…
Absolutism means that no matter the circumstances that arise, each person is treated the same. This is widely a problem in the legal and justice systems when various crimes are committed but are each committed for their own reason. Let’s say that, for this example these are fake names, that Joe killed someone and Emma killed someone. Joe killed someone because he was drunk and ended up driving himself home even though it is illegal to operate a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. Emma killed someone in self defense while trying to get away from her abusive boyfriend, even though she did not intend to kill him but simply meant to just hurt him enough so she could get away from him and save her own life. Due to absolutism each of these cases would be treated as equally even though Joe both drove while intoxicated and was convicted of manslaughter and Emma was trying to save her own life, with no intention of actually killing her boyfriend. Joe may not have had pure intention of harming anyone either but that is excused because of his judgement being impaired in the first place due to him being intoxicated. Now this could go on and on to make it supported under absolutism but again, this is a less belief because of the difficulty to make these believed as both equal. Another simple reason this belief is less believed in is because absolutism makes life seem ‘black and white,’ which is not true at all because life is way more than ‘black and white’ but is instead ‘colorful’ in every
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