Contingency

Some thoughts after reading A Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche...
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Good and evil are mere placeholders that are objectively true in definition: they are propositions logically dependent on each other - what is good is not evil, and what is evil is not good. The definition of good and evil are thus immutable in that they simply denote a relation between acts on a scale from good to evil. This is simple enough to grasp, but the problem comes after.

"What is good?" "What is evil?" The content which occupies the placeholders of good and evil, that which gives any sense at all to the term "good" and "evil", are not located at all in any "external realm" where we can find objective truths about morality. We do not need to posit an unchanging immutable moral truth to talk about morality meaningfully. Rather, I believe that moral "facts" are located within a social and historical contingency. It is not any supernatural entity or objective truth that bestows upon good and evil their meanings, but rather the power structures, the interactions and relationships within the society, of the day which in turn decides the social norms. A society's zeitgeist, the collective feelings towards an act, decides whether it is good or evil.

Yet, "Killing is Wrong!" seems so attractive as an objectively "true" moral statement, doesn't it? I believe this does not mean that killing is an absolute evil. After all, killing was part and parcel of almost every civilization before the modern times. It is wrong now because we are evaluating acts from the vantage point of our moral paradigm. In a society where eating excessively is wrong, any act of binge-eating will seem intuitively wrong as well.

This does not mean we slip into relativism at all. Because these "facts" are essentially social norms and paradigms into which we are born, we take these "facts" as though they are true. They are given the aura and appearance of Truth, though I think the term "social truth" is more apt. That is, these facts are "real" and socially true within any social paradigm. We can argue about morality as though there exist moral "facts". In the grand picture, however, morality is ultimately socially contingent.