“When Darius was king of Persia, he summoned the Greeks who happened to be present at his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in the presence of the Greeks, and through an interpreter, so that they could understand what was said, he asked some Indians, of the tribe called Callatiae, who do in fact eat their parents’ dead bodies, what they would take to burn them [as was the Greek custom]. They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing.”
So who has got it right, the Greeks or the Callatians? We might blanch a little at the prospect of eating our parents, but no more than the Callatians would blanch at burning theirs. In the end we would surely agree with Herodotus, the Greek historian recounting this story, when he approvingly quotes the poet Pindar—“Custom is king of all.” It isn’t a matter of one side being right and the other wrong; there is no “right answer.” Each group has its own code of customs and traditions; each is behaving correctly according to its own code, and it is to this code that each would appeal in defending its respective funeral arrangements.
In this case what is morally right doesn’t appear to be absolute, one way or the other—it is relative to the culture and traditions of the social groups concerned. And there are of course countless other examples of such cultural diversity, both geographical and historical. It is from cases such as these that the relativist argues that in general there are no absolute or universal truths: all moral appraisals and assessments should only be made relative to the social norms of the groups involved.
“What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.”
Alfred North Whitehead, 1941
Vive la différence The relativist’s proposal is in effect that we treat moral judgments as if they were aesthetic ones. In matters of taste, it is generally not appropriate to talk of error: de gustibus non disputandum—“over tastes let there be no dispute.” If you say you like tomatoes and I don’t, we agree to differ: something is right or true for you but not for me. In such cases truth tracks sincerity: if I sincerely say that I like something, I cannot be wrong—it is true (for me). So following this analogy, if we (as a society) approve of capital punishment, it is morally right (for us), and it is not something that we can be wrong about. And just as we would not try to persuade people to stop liking tomatoes or criticize them for doing so, in the moral case persuasion or criticism would be inappropriate. In fact, of course, our moral life is full of argument and censure, and we habitually take strong positions on matters such as capital punishment. We may even take issue with ourselves over time: I can change my mind over a moral question, and we may collectively shift our stance, for example in a matter such as slavery. The out-and-out relativist would have to say that one thing was right for some people but not others, or right for me (or us) at one time but not at another. And in the case of slavery, female circumcision, legal infanticide, etc., this might be a bitter pill for the relativist to swallow.
This failure of relativism to take any serious account of aspects that are so clearly characteristic of our actual moral lives is usually seen as a decisive blow against the thesis, but relativists may try to turn it to their advantage. Perhaps, they would argue, we should not be so judgmental and critical of others. Indeed, the lesson from the Greeks and the Callatians is that we need to be more tolerant of others, more open-minded, more sensitive to other customs and practices. This line of argument has led many to associate relativism with tolerance and open-mindedness, and by contrast nonrelativists are portrayed as being intolerant and impatient of practices other than their own. Taken to an extreme, it leads to a picture of the Western cultural imperialist arrogantly imposing his views on benighted others. But this is a caricature: there is in fact no incompatibility between taking a generally tolerant view of things and yet maintaining that on some matters other people or other cultures have got it wrong. Indeed, a frustration facing the relativist is that it is only the nonrelativist who can hold up tolerance and cultural sensitivity as universal virtues!
Strong or radical relativism—the idea that all claims (moral and everything else) are relative—quickly ties itself in knots. Is the claim that all claims are relative itself relative? Well, it has to be, to avoid self-contradiction; but if it is, it means that my claim that all claims are absolute is true for me. And this kind of incoherence rapidly infects everything else. Relativists can’t say it is always wrong to criticize the cultural arrangements of other societies, as it may be right for me to do so. And they can’t maintain that it is always right to be tolerant and open-minded, as it may be right for some autocrat to stamp out all signs of dissent. In general, relativists cannot, consistently and without hypocrisy, maintain the validity of their own position. The self-refuting nature of full-blown relativism was spotted in its infancy by Plato, who swiftly showed up the inconsistencies in the relativist position adopted by the sophist Protagoras (in the dialogue that bears his name). The lesson of all this is that rational discussion depends on sharing some common ground; we have to agree on something, to have some common truth, in order to communicate meaningfully. But it is precisely this common ground that is denied by radical relativism.
Getting knowledge in perspective The absurdity of full-blown relativism and the perils of its widespread adoption as a political mantra have meant that insights offered by a more temperate form of relativism are sometimes overlooked. The most important lesson of relativism is that knowledge itself is perspectival: our take on the world is always from a certain perspective or point of view; there is no external vantage point from which we can observe the world “as it really is” or “as it is anyway.” This point is often explained in terms of conceptual schemes or frameworks: put simply, we can only get an intellectual grasp on reality from within our own conceptual framework, determined by a complex combination of factors including our culture and history. But the fact that we cannot step back from, or outside of, our particular conceptual scheme and take an objective view of things—a “god’s-eye view”—does not mean that we cannot get to know anything. A perspective has to be a perspective on something, and by sharing and comparing our different perspectives we can hope to bring our various beliefs into relief and to achieve a fuller, rounder, more “stereoscopic” picture of the world. This benign image suggests that progress toward understanding is to be made through collaboration, communication and interchange of ideas and points of view: a very positive legacy of relativism.
“Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of educating is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ‘ego.’”
Pope Benedict XVI, June 2005
Over the last few decades the idea of relativism has gained a political and social significance that has stretched its original meaning to and beyond breaking point. From the idea that there are no absolute truths—“it’s all relative”—it has been inferred that everything is equally valid and hence that “anything goes.” At least, the fact that some such reasoning has taken place is believed by various reactionary forces, including parts of the Catholic Church, which trace moral (and especially sexual) licentiousness and social disintegration to relativistic forces at large in the world. On the other side, some libertarians have been happy enough not to look too closely at the logic and have made the chant “anything goes” their political mantra. So the opposing sides have lined up, joy on one side, horror on the other, with relativism cowering in the middle.
the condensed idea
Is it all relative?
| Timeline | |
|---|---|
| c.440BC | One man’s meat …. |
| AD1739 | Hume’s guillotine The boo/hoorah theory |
| 1781 | The categorical imperative |
| 1962 | Paradigm shifts |