1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,840 As we have seen, moral rules are made by your conscience, they are your personal opinions 2 00:00:07,840 --> 00:00:09,440 about what is right or wrong. 3 00:00:09,440 --> 00:00:15,840 If you think about this for a while, you will realize that different people might have different 4 00:00:15,840 --> 00:00:21,760 moralities, because they can have different opinions about what is correct or incorrect. 5 00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:28,360 My morality can be different to your morality, and the morality of a certain country or society 6 00:00:28,360 --> 00:00:32,640 can be very different to the morality of another social group. 7 00:00:32,640 --> 00:00:34,600 Think about slavery, for example. 8 00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:40,800 This is something that today we consider absolutely immoral and unacceptable, but in the past 9 00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:46,600 it was quite normal, because there was slavery during antiquity, and it was a common social 10 00:00:46,600 --> 00:00:48,280 practice. 11 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:50,120 So what happens here? 12 00:00:50,120 --> 00:00:57,760 Is it that they were wrong in the past, they didn't realize that slavery was immoral? 13 00:00:57,760 --> 00:01:04,040 Or is it simply that they had a different morality that for them was right and for us 14 00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:05,040 is immoral? 15 00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:11,080 This is a big question, and there are different ways to answer to this question, different 16 00:01:11,080 --> 00:01:15,760 philosophical points of view about this. 17 00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:21,080 One of them, one of these points of view, is called moral relativism. 18 00:01:21,080 --> 00:01:27,800 According to moral relativism, the rules, the moral rules that we follow are relative. 19 00:01:27,800 --> 00:01:34,000 They depend on the historical moment and the society we live in, because moral rules, for 20 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:36,840 relativists, are learned. 21 00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:42,920 They are the things our parents, our teachers, our friends, our society, tell us that are 22 00:01:42,920 --> 00:01:45,100 correct and incorrect. 23 00:01:45,100 --> 00:01:50,440 So if we grow up in a different society, they will give us different norms, and we will 24 00:01:50,800 --> 00:01:54,880 consider correct or incorrect different things. 25 00:01:54,880 --> 00:01:57,040 Now think about this for a moment. 26 00:01:57,040 --> 00:02:04,640 If relativism is correct, then we have no right to say that slavery is absolutely immoral 27 00:02:04,640 --> 00:02:11,360 and incorrect, because in the past they had a different morality and they saw things otherwise. 28 00:02:11,360 --> 00:02:18,320 We can say, from a relativistic point of view, is that for us morality is incorrect. 29 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:23,120 For ancient Romans, for example, morality was all right. 30 00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:28,520 Now there is a different point of view about this, which is called moral objectivism. 31 00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:34,600 For moral objectivists, morality is objective, it is not subjective. 32 00:02:34,600 --> 00:02:40,000 So this means that morality is something that exists in itself. 33 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:44,280 There are some things that are absolutely right and absolutely wrong. 34 00:02:44,280 --> 00:02:48,640 For example, slavery is absolutely wrong for an objectivist. 35 00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:55,200 The problem is that people in ancient times, like the Romans, didn't know, didn't realize, 36 00:02:55,200 --> 00:03:03,160 they were not aware of the immoral circumstances that appear in slavery. 37 00:03:03,160 --> 00:03:12,200 According to moral objectivism, every human being, by nature, has the possibility to determine 38 00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:15,040 what is right and wrong. 39 00:03:15,040 --> 00:03:21,400 So there are some basic moral rules that are part of our human nature that are not learned. 40 00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:26,280 Of course, many of the things we do and consider correct or incorrect are learned, but for 41 00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:33,000 a moral objectivist, some of them, very basic, are not learned, they are part of our nature. 42 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:40,360 And that's what permits an objectivist to determine that some moral rules should be 43 00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:45,240 valid for everybody, regardless of the time and place we live in.