Relativism and Nihilism

Abstract

In Chapter One I argued that moral judgments involve claims about the correctness of attitudes. In making a favorable (or unfavorable) moral judgment about something one is claiming that it is correct for any rational being (or at least any human being) to have a favorable (or unfavorable) attitude about it. In Chapter Two, we saw reasons for thinking that there are many moral issues (probably the overwhelming majority) concerning which there is no attitude that is correct for all human beings. There is even some chance that there are no moral issues concerning which there is an attitude that is correct in this sense. I thus seem to be committed to the view that most moral questions are such that any moral judgment concerning them is false or mistaken. Moral judgments presuppose that attitudes about things are correct in a sense in which they aren’t. This view might appear to constitute a kind of nihilism or rejection of morality. In this chapter, I want to determine whether or not it is consistent for me to make moral judgments about any of those issues concerning which I believe that there is no objectively correct view or no view that is correct for all human beings. It is clear that my view denies much of what is implicitly claimed in ordinary moral judgments, and therefore it is important to determine which aspects of our ordinary moral perspective I am committed to abandoning and whether the view that I am left with is in any sense a moral one.