Against Relativism

Many intellectuals today embrace a postmodern view of the social construction of ethical values, which reduces to a form of ethical relativism. It is currently fashionable to avoid rights language, reject the central place of individual autonomy, and focus instead on the importance of community, while many people at the interface of ethics, medicine, and the social sciences in the developing world champion autonomy and individual rights in response to past or present authoritarian governments and paternalistic practices of physicians. Macklin advances this debate by examining the evidence and arguments on either side, and by presenting her view that ethical universals do exist but that they are compatible with a variety of culturally relative interpretations.