Is Morality Relative?

Is Morality Relative?

Thinking about: Your life

William B. Irvine

Oct 08, 2026

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In

my previous post

, I talked about the morality of abortion. My goal wasn’t to take sides in the debate. I simply wanted to point out that a Thinker would be reluctant to make the sort of sweeping generalizations that both pro-choice advocates (“Abortion is

always

morally permissible.”) and pro-life advocates (“Abortion is

never

morally permissible.”) typically make.

Thinkers (people who habitually rely on evidence-based reasoning to reach their conclusions) would make neither claim, maintaining instead that the morality of an abortion depends on its circumstances. They might, for example, argue that abortion is morally permissible in the case of an

ectopic pregnancy

in which, if the fetus isn’t aborted, the mother and the fetus will both die, but if the fetus is aborted, the mother will live. Thinkers might also argue that so-called

partial birth abortions

are morally impermissible. Consider, for example, a case in which a fetus is killed as it is about to emerge from the birth canal, because the mother has changed her mind about having a child and doesn’t want anyone else raising

her

child.

Feelers (people who habitually feel rather than think their way to conclusions) are much more likely than Thinkers to make sweeping generalizations. This is in part because they believe—mistakenly—that consistency requires them to do so, and in part because they don’t want to do the thinking necessary to come up with a nuanced position that allows for special cases.

Feelers also tend to operate under the assumption that morality is relative and therefore that what is moral for one person needn’t be moral for someone else. In other words, they treat moral beliefs in much the same way as they treat ice-cream preferences: “You prefer chocolate, I prefer vanilla, and that’s the end of the discussion.”

In contrast, most Thinkers maintain that absolute moral truths exist—although

they may disagree

about what those truths are. One such truth is that torturing children for fun is morally impermissible. If you believe otherwise, you are simply mistaken, the way you would be if you believed that 2 + 5 = 8 or believed that the moon is made of green cheese. Furthermore, if you act in accordance with the belief that it is morally permissible to torture children for fun, you are a profoundly immoral person. Likewise, a religion or culture that condoned—or even worse, promoted—such behavior would be depraved.

Challenged to defend such claims, a Thinker might invite you to do a thought experiment. Suppose you had the power to create and populate a world, and that you could subsequently dictate the moral principles that governed it—as God did with the Ten Commandments. Suppose, however, that this offer came with a catch: You would subsequently have to inhabit the world you created. More precisely, you would have to live the life of one of the people you created. Furthermore, you could not decide which person it would be. Your “life assignment” would instead be made in a random manner.*

Would your principles permit children to be cruelly tortured for the entertainment of others? Probably not. What, after all, if you ended up being one of those tortured children? Likewise, your principles probably wouldn’t permit slavery, since you might end up living the life of a slave.

Most people don’t engage in evidence-based reasoning—and thought experiments like the one just described—to reach their moral conclusions. They instead outsource their moral thinking, maybe to their religion or their culture. This is unfortunate since, as history repeatedly teaches us, religions and cultures are capable of making egregious moral mistakes that result in large-scale injustice, suffering, and death.

Aren’t morality and religion intertwined, though? Don’t people need an incentive to do the right thing, and doesn’t religion provide such an incentive? Follow God’s commandments, for example, and we will not only avoid burning in hell but might enjoy an eternity spent in heaven. A Thinker might respond to this suggestion by pointing out that it is possible to do the right thing, not because we will be punished for doing otherwise, but simply because

reason tells us that it is the right thing to do.

Indeed, morally exemplary individuals might resolutely do what they take to be the right thing, knowing full well that they will be punished for doing so, perhaps by unscrupulous people.

We can, by the way, distinguish between an act being

morally wrong

and being

sinfu

l. A case can be made that to count as morally wrong, an act must harm other people. Hurt only yourself and you won’t be committing a moral wrong. In contrast, many religions forbid you to commit private acts that have no impact on other people. In those religions, these acts will count as sinful. God doesn’t want you doing them.

Besides distinguishing between morally wrong acts and sinful acts, Thinkers will distinguish between the

morality

of an act and its

legality

. They know that politicians get to decide whether an act is legal. As a result, it is entirely possible for something to be legal (as slavery was in Mississippi in 1840) without being moral, as well as for something to be illegal (as “unnatural intercourse” between consenting adults was in Mississippi before 2003) without being immoral. You can, of course, challenge these specific examples, but not the point they are meant to illustrate—namely, that morality and legality are distinct concepts. Conflate them, and you run the risk of outsourcing your thinking to politicians who in many cases are neither thoughtful nor morally upstanding.

*I did not invent this thought experiment. It is an adaptation of philosopher John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” argument.

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