Are Right and Wrong Just a Matter of Opinion? – Prof. Steven Jensen
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
Prof. Steven Jensen argues that right and wrong are not just a matter of opinion by defending moral realism over moral relativism, showing that moral truths are grounded in human nature and goals rather than mere subjective attitudes.
This lecture was given on November 13th, 2025, at Fordham University.
For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.
About the Speakers:
Steven J Jensen holds the Bishop Nold Chair in Graduate Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, where he teaches in The Center for Thomistic Studies. His fields of research include bioethics, moral psychology, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, human nature, and natural law.
Keywords: Argument From Disagreement, Flat Earth Example, Human End and Purpose, Moral Objectivity, Moral Realism, Moral Relativism, Rationalization and Desire, Right and Wrong, Thomistic Moral Theory
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast. |
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| 0:21.6 | to mystic institute.org. |
| 0:23.6 | It is very alive, I think, in our culture today, that there's widespread belief that |
| 0:30.6 | there really is no such thing as right and wrong. |
| 0:33.6 | It's a title, the term I'm going to give to it is moral relativism. And it's going |
| 0:42.3 | based upon a distinction between what's in the mind and what's in reality as I have laid out here. |
| 0:52.3 | So if there's a tree out there in reality, and then inside your mind, in a sense there's |
| 0:59.7 | a tree, obviously there isn't literally a tree inside your mind, but there is some likeness, |
| 1:04.8 | some awareness of the reality that's out there. |
| 1:07.7 | So you have these two things, what's in the mind and what's in reality. |
| 1:13.6 | But they don't always correspond. You could have something in the mind, such as a unicorn, |
| 1:19.6 | that doesn't correspond to anything outside there in reality. |
| 1:25.6 | So with this idea in mind, between there are things out there in reality that we can |
| 1:30.7 | know and then things in our mind that don't correspond in reality, we can get a picture |
| 1:36.6 | of what moral relativism claims. |
| 1:39.3 | Moral relativism claims that moral ideas like right and wrong are like the unicorn. |
| 1:46.0 | They're really just in our minds. They're not in reality. |
| 1:50.0 | So an example would be, so the unicorn is not out there in the mind. |
| 1:56.0 | An example would be, so one man kills another man, that's what's going on in reality the person is aware of it |
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