Relativism, Culture, Religion, and Identity

Abstract

Human beings in many places and at many times have searched for a universal sense of truth, values, ethics, morality, and justice. Rel- ativism is the view that this search is hopeless and futile because the concepts of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, rights and duties, can exist and be valid only within a specific context that defines them and gives them meaning, and consequently they can have no universal valid- ity¹ Relativism rejects any claim of universal human rights based on nat- ural law, and equally rejects any universal process for interpreting treaties that could support universal human rights standards.