Relativism and Subjectivism

The common association of 'relativism' with 'permissiveness' usually confuses Relativism and Subjectivism.  For unlike the latter, the former is not based on whim, e. g. a food being healthful on bio-chemical grounds, rather than attracting on the basis of aroma.  A similar, though more subtle, confusion underlies most complaints against 'cultural relativism'.  In some cases, the complaints are merely expressions of bigotry, e. g. Eurocentric, but, in others, e. g. ascriptions of objectivity to assertions of the superiority of Beethoven or Shakespeare, there is some basis.  However, as is well covered by Kant, at issue is a dialectic of Taste, namely, how Aesthetic evaluation is even possible, but, again, the conflict is between Objectivity and Subjectivity, not between Objectivity and Relativity.  Instead, the Moral Relativism of Spinoza is based on the factual repudiation of the basis of Moral Absolutism, sometimes aka Manicheanism--the discovery that the human species is not at the center of the universe, and, hence, that what is Good or Evil for it is not as such in itself.  Accordingly, what is beneficial or harmful to humans is still objectively so, but, outside of the Theology that refuses to accept the repudiation of the thesis that the Universe is the setting of a drama of which humans are the protagonists, such Goodness or Evil is not a characteristic that is independent of its effects on humans.