What was Ruth Benedict's position on cultural relativism?

What was Benedict reacting against in advocating this position?


- Cultural relativism: The view that cultural norms determine what is ethically right and wrong. Ethical subjectivism on a societal or cultural level.
- Ruth Benedict advocated cultural relativism and attempted to apply individual psychological concepts to whole groups. For Benedict, the term morality should be defined as "socially approved customs"â€"nothing more, nothing less. There are no universal values that we can use to evaluate the moral values of any culture; there are only the moral values that each culture creates.
- Benedict (and other social scientists such as Emile Durkheim, Franz Boas, and William Graham Sumner) were reacting to what they perceived to be the cultural imperialism of the Westâ€"the assumption by some that the moral values of Western Europe and America were morally superior to the moral values of more "primitive" cultures.

Philosophy & Belief

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