Preface

Sometimes I hear discussions about ethics in terms of what is considered “right” and what is not. I am often struck by the certainty with which people claim to know on what grounds something belongs to one of these two categories.

Is ethics relative, dependent on the culture in which one lives, or is it absolute and universal?

In the following essay, I would like to share some reflections on this tension between relative and universal ethics. In doing so, we limit ourselves here to a descriptive approach: we aim to understand how ethics arises and functions, without directly prescribing rules of behavior (prescriptive ethics).

To explore these questions not only in a theoretical but also in a vivid way, a dialogical form has been chosen, in the tradition of the Greek philosophers. In such a form, different perspectives can challenge and deepen one another.

Although the starting point is descriptive, we cannot always avoid touching upon normative implications.

The document can also be found via:

Meditations on the Relativity of Ethics

Albert Prins

Any comments are welcome via aprins@hotmail.com