I hope I’m not repeating someone, but scanning seemed to confirm that the conversation has taken different lines that what I’d like to propose. Forgive me if this is a step backward.
It seems to me that what has been missing here is a definition of the precise line where relative and absolute meet each other. Rather than viewing these as polar opposites, it might be helpful to plot them on a spectrum. If we can hone in on the zero point, this will serve both as a way to distinguish between the two and as a definition for each.
To do this, we also need a y-coordinate. This other spectrum is perspective, the limits of which are the objective and the subjective.
To further define the extremities of these spectrums:
Our X Value (morality) spans from perfect relativism (what is good for the lion is evil for the gazelle and vice versa) to perfect absolutism (murder is evil). In between these endpoints would be all the equivocation and exception and debate that we would tend to proffer, and all the anecdote and parable we would bring up in support of our cases
Our Y Value is the perspective of the person assessing the morality of a given event or circumstance. If they are personally involved, they will tend to have a subjective viewpoint. The further removed from the situation they are, they more tendency they will have toward objectivity. Remember though these are tendencies, not laws. This is what makes relativism and subjectivity fall in line often, but not always, and likewise with absolutism and objectivity.
Now, at all four extremities of our plane we have defined ‘endpoints’, but like any Cartesian plane, we can never ‘reach’ infinity, only approach it. It this way, it is possible to point toward what we mean when we use any of these words (relativism, absolutism, subjective and objective) but none, in themselves, can exist in pure form. Because they lie upon a spectrum which contains their opposite, they will always be in some form of balance with that opposite, even if highly skewed.
Morality is inseparable from perspective. It is beholden to it and altered by it. In fact, I would posit that if you remove perspective from the equation (an endeavor of strictly philosophical purpose) you would thereby also automatically remove morality. A world without perspective is purely amoral.
My particular perspective holds a primacy of moral relativism. No action I take can be wholly positive for all being in the universe. It is impossible to take any action without destroying something (even if you want to say that you destroy molecules that contain energy in their bonds for the sake of firing your muscles, to say this isn’t ‘evil’ means you have assumed that morality ceases to exist at some undefined point, the further you ‘zoom in’ to reality.) I guess then the tinge of absolutism, the balance that my perspective experiences, is in the cosmic recycling inherent in the cyclical nature of destruction and creation (destroying the molecule created motion, presumably benefiting my being overall).
I believe that my moral assessments are largely objective however. This is not contradictory to me. Being able to see good and evil in the same action, being able to take on the perspective of both the lion and the gazelle, is for me an important spiritual goal. In this brand of objectivity (which is maybe more like an agglomeration of all possible relativity perspectives) lies the moral ‘truth’ of any given situation.
, it also depends on many economic and geographical factors.