Ethics

Mill seems to think that the same action could be a right action in one set of circumstances and wrong in another. Would his theory be considered relativistic ?

Comments

We might hold that the moral status of a given action-type depends upon the circumstances in which it occurs. So, knocking your opponent over might be entirely permissible on the football field, but not in a presidential debate. Some have held that lying is permissible in some circumstances (the "white lie") but not in others. This doctrine is "relativistic" in the sense that the status of an action-type is held to be "relative to" the different circumstances in which it occurs. But this is not the sense people have in mind when they talk of moral relativism. That view generally allows that the moral status of a particular, datable action-token (or an action-type in which all morally relevant contingent circumstances are specified) might depend upon the views of the individual evaluating that action, or upon the contingent norms of her culture. (Moral relativism takes a variety of forms.) As a moral relativist, I might say that infidelity--even a particular act of infidelity--is wrong for me, but permissible for you, or for someone from your culture. And this doesn't follow from the first doctrine.

Many people (including myself, and I had thought Mill) hold the first doctrine but reject moral relativism for a variety of reasons. Although knocking over your opponent might be permissible in some circumstances while not in others, it would have been absolutely ("non-relativistically") wrong for one candidate to have knocked over the other in the last series of presidential debates--much as we might have wished this.

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