A relativist is someone who thinks that he can decide morality for himself. The error is thinking this is a matter of degree. It’s not. You either are one or you are not. Oh, sure, most people don’t look like moral anarchists. They only abandon certain parts of morality.
They wouldn’t murder, but they might have premarital sex. They wouldn’t steal, but they might disobey their parents. They don’t realize that there’s no difference between a partial rejection of morality and a total rejection of it. The phrase “just a little disobedience” is absurd because there are only two options: morality and relativism. Morality means following God, a culture, or a philosopher such as Kant. Relativism means doing what morality requires unless I don’t want to.
That’s the key. If I retain the power to decide when to obey or not, my only submission is to myself. So even if I look moral most of the time, I’m really putting on a charade. Thus, it’s simple. There’s no such thing as a little relativism.
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