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Cultural Relativism Chapter 2 Summary

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Chapter 2 begins with a story of a Persian king named Darius. Darius was profound and amazed at all the different cultures he found in the world during his travels. In his travels, he discovered that different cultures have different moral codes specific to their community. Furthermore, a societal difference that intrigued Darius was the way the Callatians and the Greeks treated the dead. The Callatians, believed in eating the bodies of their dead fathers while on the other hand, the Greeks practiced cremation. Moreover, both societies differ in beliefs but each believes that theirs is correct. In addition, the main point of Cultural Relativism is that an individual's belief should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. Likewise, another example of Cultural Relativism the author talks about are the Eskimos. The Eskimos are widely known for their wide use of infanticide and culture unlike any other. Uniquely, Eskimo's societal norms included: killing …show more content…

In simplicity, the claims say that different societies call for different moral codes, the moral code determines what is right in that society, no standard that can judge a society's code as better than another's, moral code of our society isn't special, and lastly, we should always be tolerant of other cultures. Equally important, the claims may seem correct with one another but they could pose as a problem. For example, the author wrote about how if we followed claim 5, we would be tolerant of Nazi ideals because they are following what they believe to be right and it would be arrogant for us to judge them. In like manner, this ties into the Cultural Differences Argument; which are variations of one fundamental idea. In summary, this argument is not saying Cultural Relativism is false it's just saying that the conclusion doesn't follow the premise so that means the argument is

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