Perhaps it’s not so much the fault of media crassness as of those obsessed with how the media will report them, but certain debates even between people not lacking in common sense now take place with the clash of cudgels, with a lack of finesse, using words as subtly as boulders. A typical example in Italy is the debate between so-called theocons, who accuse secular thinkers of “relativism,” and representatives of secular thought, who accuse their opponents of “fundamentalism.”
What does “relativism” mean in philosophy? That our representations of the world’s complexity are not exhaustive, but are always views from differing perspectives, each of which contain a grain of truth? There have been, and still are, Christian philosophers who support this view. That these representations are not to be judged in terms of truth, but in terms of historical or cultural needs? Richard Rorty supports this in his version of “pragmatism.” The proposition that whatever we know is relative to the way in which the subject knows it? This comes from Kant. That every proposition is true only within a given paradigm? This is called “holism.” That ethical values are relative to cultures? This was discovered in the 1600s. That there are no facts but only interpretations? This is what Nietzsche said. What about the concept that if there’s no God, then all is permissible? That is Dostoyevskian nihilism. What about the theory of relativity? Come on, let’s be serious.
But it ought to be clear that if someone is a relativist in the Kantian sense, he cannot be one in the Dostoyevskian sense. Kant believed in God and duty. Nietzschean relativism has little to do with cultural anthropology, since the former doesn’t believe in facts and the latter doesn’t doubt them. “Holism,” as interpreted by Quine, is firmly anchored in sane empiricism, which places much reliance on the stimuli we receive from the environment, and so forth.
In short, it seems that the term “relativism” can refer to forms of modern thought often in mutual conflict. Sometimes thinkers firmly anchored in a profound realism are regarded as relativists, and “relativism” is used with the polemical ardor with which nineteenth-century Jesuits spoke of “Kantian poison.”
But if all of the above is relativism, then there are only two philosophies that completely withstand this accusation, and they are radical Neo-Thomism and the theory of consciousness in Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. A strange alliance.
2005