‘Well,’ you may say, ‘It may make no sense to think that “all truth is rela- tive” when we are talking about questions of fact. But surely when we are talking about values or morality, everyone has different opinions, and it’s simply not possible to say that one person’s opinions are correct and another person’s opinions are wrong. So in the area of values or morality, it is true to say that “all truth is relative”’.
If you think like this, you’ve already fallen into the second trap that I want to urge you to avoid: the trap of moral relativism. Let’s try and get you out of the trap by considering a concrete example. In his great novel The
Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky set out a number of documented
instances of cruelty to children that occurred a couple of centuries ago in Russia. This is the last one:
There was a general at the beginning of the century, a general with high connections and a very wealthy landowner . . . He had hun- dreds of dogs in his kennels and nearly a hundred handlers . . . [O]ne day a house-serf, a little boy, only eight years old, threw a stone while he was playing and hurt the paw of the general’s favourite hound. ‘Why is my favourite dog limping?’ It was reported to him that this boy had . . . hurt her paw. ‘So it was you,’ the general looked the boy up and down. ‘Take him!’ They took him, took him from his mother, and locked him up for the night. In the morning at dawn, the general rode out in full dress for the hunt . . . surrounded by . . . dogs, handlers, huntsmen, all on horseback. The house-serfs are gathered for their edification, the guilty boy’s mother in front of them all. The boy is led out of the lockup . . . The general orders them to undress the boy; the child is stripped naked, he shivers, he’s crazy with fear, he doesn’t dare make a peep . . . ‘Drive him!’ the
PART 2 PREPARING TO STUDY LAW
general commands. The huntsmen shout, ‘Run, run!’ The boy runs . . . ‘[Get] him!’ screams the general and looses the whole pack of wolfhounds on him. He hunted him down before his mother’s eyes, and the dogs tore the child to pieces . . .
A true story. So what do you think? Was it morally wrong for the general to do what he did? I hope you will say, ‘Yes it was – and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong.’ If you do, then you have to concede that moral rela- tivism is incorrect: it is possible to say that someone’s values or opinions on matters of morality are wrong.
Now if you’re anything like the students I see when I interview them for places at my college, you’ll probably say, ‘Well, it’s my personal opinion that it was wrong for the general to do what he did and if I could have stopped him I would have. At the same time, I recognise that other peo- ple might think it was okay for the general to do what he did – and if they do, I can’t say they’re incorrect. They’re entitled to their opinion.’ But if you say this, then you are contradicting yourself. If you genuinely think, ‘It was wrong for the general to do what he did,’ then you must also think that the statement, ‘It was okay for the general to do what he did,’ is incorr-
ect. But if you do think that statement is incorrect, then you must think
that you, me or anyone else would be making a mistake if we said that, ‘It was okay for the general to do what he did.’
The truth is that moral relativism cannot be seriously defended. It’s an affectation, adopted out of a laudable desire not to be offensive or cruel by telling other people that what they are doing is bad or morally wrong. Indeed, it’s a self-refuting affectation because the people who adopt it would be the first to insist that it is morally wrong to be offensive or cruel to other people – and that anyone who thinks differently is simply wrong. If you’ve adopted this affectation, I want you to get rid of it straightaway. Instead of saying: ‘Well, it’s my personal opinion that it’s wrong to do x, but others could well take a different view,’ start saying: ‘It is wrong to do
x – and these are the reasons why it’s wrong to do x.’ Instead of saying:
‘Well, it’s my personal opinion that it’s better to do x than y, but if some- one else took a different view I couldn’t say they were wrong,’ start saying:
LETTER 8 FOUR TRAPS TO AVOID
‘It’s better to do x than y – and here are the reasons why it would be wrong to think that it’s better to do y than x.’ Instead of saying, ‘It’s very difficult to say whether it would be a bad thing if x happened – on balance I think it would be, but other people could take a different view,’ start saying: ‘It would be a bad thing if x happened – and here’s why the arguments for thinking that it would be a bad thing if x happened outweigh the argu- ments for thinking that it would be a good thing if x happened.’
The reason why I am urging you to do this is that you’ll often be asked as a law student to evaluate a particular area of the law – to say whether you think it is in need of reform. Now, you’ll find it very hard to say whether you think a particular area of the law is in need of reform if you are unwilling to make value judgements. For example, you could argue that a particular area of the law is in need of reform because that area of the law treats peo- ple who do x in exactly the same way as it does people who do y, but it shouldn’t do this because it is worse for someone to do x than it is for someone to do y. But arguing like this involves making a value judgement – that it’s worse to do x than y. A moral relativist won’t be willing to make a value judgement like this and so a moral relativist won’t be able to criticise the law for treating people who do x and people who do y in exactly the same way. The best a moral relativist will be able to say is that, ‘In my per- sonal opinion, it’s worse for someone to do x than it is for someone to do y. So in my view, the law is in need of reform because it treats people who do
x in the same way as it treats people who do y. But it’s possible for other
people to take a different view, and if their view prevails then obviously the law should stay the way it is now.’ This is a really terrible argument – in fact it’s not an argument at all – and will be rewarded with a really bad mark.
So if you’ve got into the habit of thinking like a moral relativist, get out of it as soon as possible.