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Morality And Culture: Are Ethics Culture-dependent?
Godfrey B. TANGWA*
* Ph.D, Associate Professor of Philosophy University of Yaounde 1 P.O. Box 13597, Yaounde, CAMEROON
In this paper, it is my contention that cultural diversity is a value akin to biological diversity. As such, it is desirable or at least unobjectionable for a thousand and one cultural flowers to bloom. Moreover, no culture qua culture is either superior or inferior to any other culture. Moral diversity, however, is not a desirable value and universalizability remains the chief identification mark of a genuine moral imperative. Divergence of moral opinion, both within and between cultures is, nevertheless, a palpable fact. Such divergence in my opinion is attributable to human limitations, ego-centrism and fallibility. Moreover, moral divergence over particular issues in no way cancels the broad moral consensus, evident across all human cultures, over fundamental and general moral imperatives. Genuine moral progress at the global level would, no doubt, seem capable of leading to a narrowing in the gaps of moral divergence, although divergence itself may never completely be eliminated. Ethics, therefore, may tend to be culture-dependent but ought not to be culture-dependent; rather should cultures be ethics-dependent, in the sense that every culture or particular aspects thereof, like all other things human, is justifiable only when not in flagrant violation of morality.Keywords: Morality, Culture, Ethics
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