this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Not the person to whom you were replying, but I appreciated your comment.
These are really fun philosophical topics, that I've enjoyed talking about in person several times. I don't think that human rights are universal, because I don't personally believe that morality exists external to culture.
This implies that certain cultures' mores are more correct than others', which probably feels right to you because those countries' norms align more closely with yours. I feel the same way, but I don't think it's a FACT.
I absolutely also agree that FGM is bad, but being a human rights violation in Denmark doesn't ipso facto prove that it's true. I.e. in the U.S. it's now illegal for many industries/schools/orgs to promote DEI, but that doesn't mean that other countries should do the same. I'm sure Denmark has some bad takes too, though I don't know the country well enough to think of any.
Just starting an argument online for fun while on the throne, don't take me too seriously, friend!
I was just using human rights ad a shorthand here. You don’t necessarily need to believe in rights per se to believe that morality is more than just a cultural phenomenon.
The biggest problem with the idea that morality is solely a cultural phenomenon is that it leads to some pretty crazy conclusions. To give on example: in the culture of Nazi Germany, they did not think that the holocaust was a bad thing. They actually thought it was a moral good. Is there no sense in which we can day, actually, no, the Nazis were wrong on this one: rounding people up and torturing/killing them en masse is actually wrong, regardless of what your culture says? Similarly with slavery. In the culture of the confederacy, slavery was okay. Is there no sense in which we can say, actually no: a culture in which slavery is okay is a flawed culture; it is better to have a culture that does not promote this sort of thing? If culture is only a product of culture then we cannot actually assert this, just like we cannot say that the Nazis were in the wrong even though, from the point of view of their culture, they were in the right.
As a vegan, I don’t think is the case! I think our cultures norms around animals does not align closely what feels right to me at all. Of all the cultures that have ever existed, the Western treatment of animals is by far the worst. Christian doctrine places animals very low down on the totem pole of moral consideration. Other religions, that have influenced other regions of the world, do not do this. Granted our system of factory farming is being exported to the rest of the world, but there are still some holdouts. For example there some Indigenous or Inuit cultures in rural Canada or Greenland that still partly live their traditional ways of life. I think those cultures are actually better than ours.
I would certainly prefer that the arc of time bend towards people and the environment having more protection/freedom/rights than the other way around, but without an external directive I don't believe that it's meaningful to use labels like "correct" in this context. For your specific examples, I would rather say something like "Nazi Germany and the Confederacy were below the contemporaneous and current commonly-held threshold for human rights." That's a self-important mouthful, which I already regret typing out.
Any evaluation of another culture is necessarily done through the lens of the evaluator's opinions and preferences, which are (by default) a product of their home culture. I hope I'm explaining my view clearly; I certainly am not arguing that those societies were not abominable places to live, led by awful people.
I feel like these two statements are in contradiction? You state that some traditional cultures are better because they align with your beliefs, which was my argument. Again, I'm not saying that those cultures are NOT an improvement over my own in this particular regard, based on my own view of morality, just that my opinion on the subject is my own and not "The Correct Opinion".
Again, I mean absolutely no disrespect and am just trying to stretch my smooth and rarely-used brain a bit. Feel free to simply ignore me.
If moral evaluation of a culture is necessarily done through the lens of that person’s culture, then how can anyone ever critique their own culture? How can a moral progress be possible? If my culture raised me to believe that killing animals is a-okay then how did I ever come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, not a-okay to kill animals? Because, by your view, my critique of this culture would necessarily stem from my culture. But this doesn’t make any sense because this critique directly contradicts what my culture has taught me. How could I critique what a culture teaches people if I myself have been taught those same things? Do you see the problem here?
Cleary it is possible (albeit, often difficult) to evaluate your and other cultures through an independent standpoint, such as through a process of moral reasoning. That is the only way we can explain how cultures can critique themselves and gradually improve.
You are though. You are arguing that your evaluation that these people are awful is something that is only true from your particular cultural standpoint. Someone, from an other culture could say “hey, actually, Hitler was a saint, truly the best of the best” and he would be right from his cultural standpoint. And neither of you would be right or wrong. It would all literally all just be a matter of opinion. I don’t know about you but I think Hitler was a bad guy. And that’s not just a matter of opinion; it’s a fact.
You cannot agree with me on this and also think that morality is just a product of culture. That’s a contradiction.
I was trying to show that the way I evaluate the morality of a culture is not itself a product of my culture. If it was, then I would of course always say my culture is the best. But I don’t. So I must be using some other, culturally independent metrics to make these evaluations (i.e. I must be actually engaged in a process of moral reasoning).
So, I do think some traditional cultures are better, and they do better align with my beliefs. But I came to my beliefs not because my culture told me to but rather through a process of moral reasoning.
It’s easy to think that there is no objective morality when you are not being oppressed or harmed. Sure we, here, in the first world (I assume) can sit in our Ivory Towers and contemplate these issues. But what about the victims of the holocaust? Do you think the would find comfort in the idea that there is no objective right or wrong? I don’t think it would help much. Because the Nazis were not compassionate people, even if they were the good guys according to their own cultural narratives.
Similarly, I don’t think these issues about subjective/objective morality really matter much to the animals in our factory farms; they just want their suffering to stop.
So we might be able to convince ourselves that morality is subjective, because morality is an abstract concept. But pain and suffering, these are not subjective notions. When you are suffering, the suffering is real, it is acute, and it is concrete, and you want it to stop. Suffering is not culturally dependant.
When a being is suffering, the compassionate thing to do is to help alleviate its suffering or better yet to prevent it in the first place. And to cause a being unnecessary suffering is cruel. This is something that is true in any culture, in any time, and in any place.