Roger Scruton: The Problem with Moral Relativism

The popular notion that an individual can only be judged if a person shares his or her background, history, desires, or worldview has led most people to regard any outsider judgment as ‘a sort of impertinence’, philosopher Roger Scruton suggests.

This judgement against judgment isn’t morally neutral though, it is morally neutralizing.

If human beings have a moral nature, which our need for judging plainly entails, the effect of neutralizing morality is of course to suppress extreme expressions. If human nature were naturally good, then the effect might be helpful.  We would take greater delight in truth, beauty, and goodness.

However, given the fact of human sinfulness, the judgment against judgment has just allowed subjective morality to have a sort of objective standing.  And as such, the philosophy of the allegedly non-judgmental libertarian very quickly becomes that of the libertine.