Cross-Cultural Moral Philosophy: Reflections on Thaddeus Metz: “Toward an African Moral Theory”

Abstract

My remarks on Metz\'s project will focus on another angle than the one Metz
uses. I am more interested in thinking about whether and how far ethical standards from different cultures really differ, how to understand those differences,
and how to relate them to what is objectively good, independently of people\'s opinions on the matter. Of course one widely circulating opinion on the topic is that cross-cultural differences somehow demonstrate that there is no such thing as objective good at all – that each culture has its own conception of what is good, right, permitted, forbidden, and so on, and the differences are so wide that anyone at all familiar with this, can no longer take seriously the idea that there could be any “objective” values underlying such
varied systems.

South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (4) 2007: pp. 336-346