Bertsch

of Relativism
The landscape of bioethics—in particular the “bedside”
practices of clinical ethics and research procedures—is informed
by the intellectual and ideological orientations of the
analytic philosophers who were key figures in shaping the
development of the field. Much work in bioethics reinforces
and sustains an Enlightenment preoccupation with the
primacy of the individual, “rational” man. Although theoretically
it need not, the field’s emphasis on rational decision
making and individual autonomy often diminishes the
importance of the social realm in ethical analysis. Culture,
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like emotion, may be viewed as something tangential to the
core human, something that might be stripped away to
reveal a rational “universal” being underneath. And many
bioethics procedures seem roulette  designed with that rational man
in mind. Once practices such as advance care planning or
informed consent are enshrined in law and regulation, it
becomes increasingly difficult to tailor those procedures to
fit local conditions, even though exactly that sort of tailoring
may be required to fully observe an ethical principle such as
respect for persons. This silencing of culture is confusing to
most anthropologists, while the anthropologists’ “failure” to
appreciate the preeminence of universal ethical norms may
lead philosophers to the false conclusion that all anthropologists
are naïve relativists.
Identifying, defining, and evaluating the nature of
morality has been difficult to achieve as a common area of
inquiry for bioethicists and anthropologists. While there is
general agreement among the disciplines that the forms and
practices of morality are inherently social, the consensus
ends there. As Hoffmaster observes, “According to the
prevailing positivist approach in Anglo-American philosophy,
morality consists of rules and principles, which because
they are normative, can be articulated and defended only on
the basis of rational arguments directed at what ought to be
the case” (1990, p. 242). The potential for a meaningful
dialogue with anthropologists and other empirical social
scientists—who, according to the tenants of moral philosophy,
work only at the level of “descriptive” ethics—is
thwarted given the normative and metaethical focus of
moral philosophy.