What the hell has happened to me?

How does one explain to oneself, to justify even, — on occasion being called a “moral relativist” ?  The term is not meant as a complement.  It’s a near epithet, a label of derision…  Of course the speaker means that I come across, am perceived as one without a settled moral standard, a person whose values shift with the blowing wind.

And yet, unaccountably perhaps, I am comfortable with those aspects of life which I value deeply, that are dear to me…  I do not feel a “relativist”, that is as one adrift, with no compass heading,..

I make no attempt to conceal the absence of a creed, without a bedrock, something believed to be universally and eternally true.  Some of the current possibilities:  America as the exceptional nation with a manifest destiny; Jesus is God, that is, the originator and consummation of Being; and the one which most tempts me to unconditional belief — that Homo Sapiens inherently have sacred status.

We are cautious,
we modern men, about ultimate convictions.

Our mistrust lies in wait
for the enchantments and deceptions of the conscience
that are involved in every strong faith,
every unconditional Yes and No.

How is this to be explained?

Perhaps what is to be found here
is largely-the care of the “burned child,”
of the disappointed idealist;

but there is also another,
superior component: the jubilant curiosity
of one who formerly stood in his comer
and was driven to despair by his corner,
and now delights and luxuriates in the opposite of a corner,
in the boundless, in what is “free as such.”

Thus an almost
Epicurean bent for knowledge
develops that will not easily let go
of the questionable character of things;
also an aversion
to big moral words and gestures;
a taste that rejects all crude, four-square opposites
and is proudly conscious
of its practice in having reservations.

For this constitutes our pride,
this slight tightening of the reins
as our urge for certainty races ahead,
this self-control of the rider during his wildest rides;
for we still ride mad and fiery horses,

and when we hesitate
it is least of all danger
that makes us
hesitate.

excerpt The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 375 by Friedrich Nietzsche