Introduction
Structure and agency on an individual idea and behavior is one of the fundamental issues in sociology. In this viewpoint “agency” means the capability of a person to do something separately and to formulate their own free choices while “Structure” means that those factors for example like social class, religion, sex, traditions, and ethnicity etc. which look as if to bound or to control the opportunities that a person encompasses (“Pierre Bourdieu”, 2002).
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism is defined as the point or position that dictates that there are no existing absolute moral rights or wrongs as dictated by culture. As a result the correctness of ones action is determined and viewed by the norms in which society accepts them. Depending on the standards sets by our society men’s action will fall to either right or wrong. Proving that through the years, men’s moral have evolved and things such as absolute no longer exist. Since correctness of actions depends on the norms that society requires, ethical relativism allows a wide array and variety of practices, values and cultures. However, it also reduced rights, wrongs and truths as relatives.
Relativism does not allow absolute ethics to exist (Panayot 1989)t. It points out that if majority of the people or a decent number believe that something is right, then it is indeed right. It also states that what may be right for a particular person, may not be right and appropriate to other persons. Since there are no absolute moral truths and ethics that exist, all ethical opinion, lifestyle, points and views are equally right. There are two important classification of ethical relativism: subjective ethical relativism and conventional which is popularly known as cultural ethical relativism. The first kind of relativism defines truth of moral principles to be relative to individuals. According to this kind of relativism, what an individual thinks that is rightfully correct for him is in fact right and no one can contest and tell him indifferently. What is right for someone is completely left for him to decide and he is independent to choose the guiding principles in which he will live his life.
On the other hand, cultural ethical relativism defines truth of moral principles to be relative to culture (Panayot, 1989). This belief states that what is right for someone depends on what culture he is in and belongs. The principles that guide his culture are also the principles that he employs in his daily life. The culture that is being practiced by the society determines the correctness of actions. It serves as the highest authority in which individual beliefs and principles are way inferior.
A prime example of ethical relativism in effect is seen during the early American History. Two hundred years ago, slavery is acceptable to the society. The nation allows the use of slaves. Today however, slavery is prohibited as it is a mean of racial discrimination. Society today dictates that every individual must be equal, thus slavery is unacceptable in our society. Another primary example that can be observed is the practice made by Eskimos. Eskimos have this peculiar and striking practice in which elder members of the clan are allowed to die from hunger and cold. In our case we believe that this is morally wrong. In fact, euthanasia is a hot topic on debate among individuals which is tied with ethics and morality. The Spartans, which are world renowned warriors and soldiers from the history of ancient Greece firmly believe that being a theft is morally and appropriately correct, however from our practices today we know it is wrong. Many cultures and tribes from the past up to the present, had allowed practices and methods in which babies are killed. But since, their culture permits killing of babies, no one is punished for murder. However, our laws today and our civilization would not allow such actions. Another issue that is worth taking is the issue on gender. Some cultures permit homosexual behavior, while others nation condemn it. In Moslem societies, polygamy is allowed to be practiced, however Christian cultures view it as immoral. Thus, right and wrong are dictated by society.
Ethical relativism does support the idea of God, since there is no such thing as absolute set of ethics. Absolute set of ethics can easily be tied up to the existence of God as an absolute divine ruler which tells what is right from wrong. Ethical relativism implies that there is no absolute right and wrong, and no God will determine right and wrong actions. In return the burden of proving if actions are right lies heavily on the shoulder of our society, since our society must determine through integration of observation, logic, emotion, patterns, experience and law the correctness or wrongness of actions.
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is the opposite of objectivism which refers to varying degree on judgment of moral values. Kiekeben argued that the concept of subjectivism gives a “simple, common-sensical” explanation of morality. As human beings, we desire only for things that are good for us and avoid things that can harm us. A person, for example, might say that Stalin is evil, which is an expression of dislike. For an objectivist, this is not true unless Stalin possesses an evil characteristic. However, Kiekeben argued that for a subjectivist it is just an expression, it is not considered necessarily true or false. For him, having different opinions is not a bad thing at all because opinions may be used to influence other people. Kiekeben concluded that being a subjectivist is merely an expression of attitudes and opinions, but studying whether one’s views are factual is meaningless or irrelevant (Kiekeben, 2000).
How is Socrates’ Question from the Euthyphro Interpreted?
Socrates once asked, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is love by the gods?” The question could be like this, “Is an action right because God approves of it, or God approves of it because it is right?” In answering the question, Westacott used the essentialist and relativist approach. In explaining the essentialist view Westacott used the act of hospitality as a reference of essentialist approach. The essence of hospitality is pious itself, pious because of the quality of the act. In Socrates point of view, an action is considered pious as long as it possesses an “essential quality”. In a relativist view, on the other hand, the act became pious because someone labeled it as pious (Westacott, 2003).
The two approaches are confusing, nevertheless, Westacott tried to establish the role of religion on morality. He said, however, that it is only effective to the people with religion or those who believe in God. He mentioned another question: “Do we perceive the world the way we do because that is how the world is, or is the world the way it is because of how we perceive it?’. It is concluded that in answering this and Socrates’ question, the essentialist approach is better used (Westacott, 2003).
Social Contract Theory
Habitus can be known as a structure of dispositions where it needs schemes of awareness, idea, and action. So in order to have an answer in any objective circumstances that may come across, this what they called individual agent develops these kinds of dispositions. In response to the unusual objective circumstances that they come across, an individual agent develops is the one that develops these kinds of dispositions. Thus, Bourdieu have this idea of the need of changing the objective social structures into the subjective, rational understanding of agents (“Pierre Bourdieu”, 2007).
It all means that the main idea in the works of Bourdieu is mostly the habitus, field, and investment (“Structure and Agency”, 2007). The agent in a field where there is a growing set of roles and dealings in a communal area, where a variety of forms of assets such as the reputation or economic resources are at risk. As the agent accommodates to his or her location in the field, the agent internalizes dealings and potential for working in that area.
What Bourdieu want in his work was to reunite agency and structure, as some exterior arrangement are into the habitus while the dealings of the agent focus on the outside interaction that exists between each other into the public relations in the field (“Structure and Agency”, 2007). Hence, the assumption in Bourdieu’s work is for have a discussion so that the concept of externalizing the internal and vice versa can be resolved (“Structure and Agency”, 2007).
Anthony Giddens is a british sociologists who developed “Structuration Theory” in such work as “The Constitution of Society”, which brought him an international fame on the sociological arena (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006).
For Giddens, the theory of structuration is a challenge to resolve speculative dichotomies of social classification such as agency/structure, subjective/objective, and mico/macro perspectives. It aims to evade limits of structural or agent determinism. Thus, the balancing of agency and structure is known to be as the duality of structure which means that the social structures makes social action possible and at the same time that social action creates those very structures (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006). In other words, the people are the one who makes a society, but are at the same time inhibited by it. Action and structure cannot be analyzed individually, because structures are produced, maintained, and can be altered through every dealings, while actions are given evocative figure simply through the setting of structures. And because for Giddens, his theory gives a recursive concept of procedures inhibited and enabled by structures which are formed and reproduced by that certain deed.
Anthony Giddens call Agency as an individual act, because for him, to be an Agent is to be a human, though not all agents are human beings. The agency is very much tied up to social structures so that they can work together and can generate society together. These so-called agents have the information of their people and this common knowledge they have will therefore create what they called structures.
As mentioned earlier, the balancing of agency and structure is known to be as the duality of structure. Here, Giddens departed from the conceptualization of structure as several known or exterior structure because it is known that the rapport linking agency and structure is among the mainly persistent and complex issues to be solved in social premise. These configuration only gives the figure and form to the public existence of everyone but it itself is not the actual design and figure of the structure (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006). Structure simply exists through certain behavior done by individual agents. Likewise, he departed from the initiative that agency is something just restricted within the human being. It does not mean that agency is only for people’s objective in doing things but somewhat to the course or guide of people’s act. So Giddens extremely reformulated the ideas of structure and agency, stressing that action, which has sturdily routinized aspects, is equally accustomed by existing literary structure as well as also makes and remakes those structures all through the ratifying procedure. He recommended that even those structural belongings of the people and social systems are factual; they still don’t have any significant survival. As an alternative, they only vary on the regular action of public imitation. As a result, the essential field of learning in the communal sciences consists of social practices disciplined across space and time (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006).
Egoism
The weak version of ethical egoism takes on the side of the probability of “altruistic behavior”. However, they have specified that although they acknowledge that the person does benevolent actions, nevertheless, they maintain that the action is still in accordance to or made with respect to the individuals’ own interest. One would like to do good because doing good makes him/her feels good. The strong version denies the presence of altruistic behavior. It asserts that in any circumstances, the individual would act in accordance to his/her self-interest despite the fact that it is in the form of benevolence. (Lander University, 2006)
Thus, as presented above, ethical egoism differs from psychological egoism in the sense that ethical egoist incorporates morality as a basis for human actions. It expresses the human self-interest in the sense of the goodness or the rightness of the act. Psychological egoism, do not try to tell us what we should do, but instead states that whatever actions that we have is basically an expression of our self-interest, the individual does not need to be moral.
In ethical egoism, the motivation lies on the person’s desires to do or aspire for something good or right. This is applicable when one is acting in able to help other people because it is in his nature to do so, as explained by David Hume. On the other hand, in psychological egoism, the motivation rest on the person’s or individual’s preference for self-interest. Psychologically egoistic behavior can best be interpreted when the individual is doing something in exchange of something that would benefit or would be in reference to his/her personal interest. Largely, those actions that are psychologically egoistic are selfish acts while those that fall under the ethical egoist are actions from self-interest. (Mosley, 2006)
Selfishness is manifested through personal advantages, mostly sacrificing others in favor of one’s own self. Self-interest is promoting one’s interest either for the benefit of himself or of other people as well. Self-interest differs from selfishness in the sense that self-interest does not necessarily points toward selfishness because certain actions that would benefit one or would comprise self-interest may actually be altruistic actions. There are instances wherein you have to be helpful to other people in order for you to proceed towards your egoistic goals. Also there are some actions whether it is for oneself or for the sake of others that are not relevant basis in suggesting that it is selfish act or a self-interested act. For instance there were actions such as eating or drinking that can be classified as either a form of selfishness or a form of self-interest. As presented, the major key in understanding the points and relevance of each position lies on the individuals understanding of the term selfishness and acting for or out of self-interest. (Mosley, 2003)
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