Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
You clearly don't understand that anything a majority of a group decides is the norm for that group.
For those cultures, those groups, at those times, those things were true, they were the norms for those groups.
There is no such thing as absolute, objective ethics only what a particular group at a particular time decides by consensus.
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I clearly DO understand what a norm is! My point- just becaause it is a norm doesn't make it right. A hundred years ago, the NY Times referred to black people as "darkies." In 'Gone with the Wind,' Clark Gable called a black girl a "silly darkie." Both cases were okay in that the societal norm was followed. A hundred years before that, it was acceptable to take a black slave and tie him to a tree and whip him if he didn't do the work you wanted. In this case too, no norms were violated. But ethically, was it RIGHT?
And this is where you are wrong- there are indeed objective ethics, moral right and wrong. Ethics by consensus is idiotic. And there are objective standards of aesthetics; just because "everyone thinks it is a good book" doesn't make it a good book.