Ethical subjectivism and some subjectivist qualms

Chapter 1 pointed us towards four key initial questions about ethics, and Chapters 2–4 discussed the first three of these. In Chapter 5 we come to the fourth and last of these initial questions: the question of objectivity. That question will remain our focus until the end of Chapter 7.

Socrates poses the question “How should life be lived?”, and urges his hearers to try to answer it. But many today will feel subjectivist qualms about even trying to give an answer. Their response to Socrates' question is something like this: “No one has the right to impose their views about how they think I should live on me. So I can't have the right to do that to anyone else. Who am I to tell other people how they should live?”

This common view at the level of individuals is paralleled by an equally common view at the societal or cultural level: what right has my society to impose its views of how human beings should live together on other societies? The arguments run in close parallel at the two levels. Here I shall talk mainly at the individual level, but it will not be hard to construct the parallel argument at the level of cultures.