[quote]lixy wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
…
You have no clue what relativism is. Read up:
[/quote]
hah! And you, my good man, obviously have no clue about how hotly contested this term is.
Sorry, Lixy, the wikipedia entry you provided is bogus & one-sided. It is long on Richard Rorty type fluffery, and gives short (re: nearly non-existent) shrift to the far profounder criticisms of both the term itself, and the “theorists” (usually not formal philosophers) who wield the term like a cudgel in American universities.
No formal philosopher would take the definitions provided therein seriously. There is a broad and deep literature establishing the incoherence of relativism as you/Wikki have defined it. Just for example: relativism cannot be the opposite of absolutism because relativism contains an absolutist claim: that “all truth is relative.” No serious philosopher would deny this. This (that “relativism contains its own thinly veiled absolutism”) is precisely why Pope Benedict refers to “the dictatorship of relativism.”
Now, before you go find a response to my example: I am entirely aware of (and can faithfully reproduce) what those responses are. I am not a philosopher (thank god!) However, I am sorry to admit that I spent an entire semester in a small, graduate level seminar on “relativism vs. objectivity.” Anyone who fairly assesses all the arguments, and counter arguments, and so on, will find that relativism is an incoherent philosophical term that ultimately falls apart under real scrutiny.
But, you see, the problem is, it’s an awfully useful (because uniquely powerful, see below) term for certain types of people, which explains its staying power. You are probably aware, for example, of how deeply the term is connected with deconstruction theory and linguistic/literary theories. At any rate, “relativism,” both in and outside the American university, is a faux philosophical term that is wielded as a pseudo-intellectual defense against reasoned arguments.
For example: don’t like the views of your opponent in a debate? Dismiss your interlocutor with “it’s all relative.” Don’t agree with them? “It’s all relative.” Losing an argument? “It’s all relative.” Over your head intellectually? “It’s all relative.” And so, discussions and debates are terminated, intellectual inquiry is smothered, communication is squelched, with a single, all-purpose, pseudo-intellectual mind widget: relativism.
Now, you might ask yourself, as formal philosophers tirelessly do: if, indeed, “it’s all relative,” and if we can establish no shared, universal values & meanings, what is the point of discussing anything? After all, what is there to discuss? One can go even deeper on this same point, and ask: absent shared, universal values and meanings, how we are even able to communicate at all? And so on…until we all slip comfortably numb into our solipsistic little worlds, repeating the banal mantra to ourselves, “it’s all relative” - a situation with which Rorty, bizarrely enough, is perfectly fine. “Relativism,” Lixy, is the (absolute) queen of the weasel words.
At bottom, the relativist argument is a power grab. It is a meaningless term, a cipher, a nothing, which covers up it’s own, virulent form of absolutism. It is a power grab because it doesn’t allow for, cannot even theoretically postulate the existence of, reasoned discussion, especially about itself. It is a power grab because beneath the smiley face, and the rising pitch on terminals to make assertions sound like queries, and the egalitarian rhetoric, is the assertion of unexamined (how can they be examined, “it’s all relative”!) social and political agendas. Think smiley face with a fucking Hitler mustache and you’re pretty close to understanding the fascist nature of “Relativism.”
Let me take all this a step further: to deny the universal status of any and all truth statements is to deny the existence of truth. What is so hard about this to understand? I’ll say it again, relativism is merely an updated nihilism.