Moral Progress and Ethical Universals

Abstract

Abstract Debates about the meaning of moral progress and whether human history demonstrates such progress are linked to the controversy surrounding ethical relativism. Earlier in this century, anthropologists who deplored racism in the United States, as evidenced in U.S. immigration laws, sought to combat racism through their anthropological studies. This mixture of antiracist values with cultural relativism has remained a powerful force up to the present day. As noted in Chapter 2, the nineteenth century view of “cultural evolutionism” was a theory describing the progression of human societies in hierarchical stages from “primitive” or “savage” (represented by tribal, nonliterate societies) to a more “progressed” form of culture (represented by Western civilization). Cultural relativism was introduced in part to combat these racist, hierarchical Eurocentric ideas of progress.