Cognition: Thinking Language Intelligence

Absolutism versus Relativism

There are philosophers ('absolutists') who like to stress truth, objectivity, rationality, and knowledge. Then there are others ('relativists') who like to stress contingency, mutability, culture, historicity, situatedness. The first group believes the second group has no standards. The second group is accused of encouraging 'postmodernism', or the licentious thinking and bullshitting that goes on in some parts of the humanities. The second group believes the first group is conservative and complacent, and that their words simply mark fetishes.

I like to illustrate the way these groups talk past each other with an anecdote of a friend of mine. He was present at a high-powered ethics institute which had put on a forum in which representatives of the great religions held a panel.

Buddhist: ...talked of the ways to calm, the mastery of desire, the path of enlightenment.
Panellists: Wow, terrific, if that works for you that's great.

Hindu: ...talked of the cycles of suffering and birth and rebirth, the teachings of Krishna and the way to release
Panellists: Wow, terrific, if that works for you that's great.

And so on from other religions until...

Catholic priest: ...talked of the message of Jesus Christ, the promise of salvation and the way to life eternal.

Panellists: Wow, terrific, if that works for you that's great.
Catholic priest: ...thumped the table and shouted: 'No! It's not a question of it if works for me! It's the true word of the living God, and if you don't believe it you're all damned to Hell!'

Panellists: Wow, terrific, if that works for you that's great.

The joke here lies in the mismatch between what the priest intends - a claim to unique authority and truth - and what he is heard as offering, which is one more saying like all the others. Of course that person talks of certainty and truth, says the relativist. That's just his certainty and truth, made absolute in his eyes, which means no more than: made into a fetish.

To have a belief and to hold it to be true are the same thing and this is no less true for the relativist.

The relativists mock the absolutists for adding nothing with their big words, or disapprove of them for being insufficiently tolerant of other perspectives and points of view. And toleration is surely a Good Thing. But is the relativist view really so attractive?

Suppose I believe that fox-hunting is cruel and should be banned. And then I come across someone (Genghis, let us call him) who holds that it is not cruel, and should be allowed. We dispute, and perhaps neither of us can convince the other. Suppose now a relativist (Rosie) comes in, and mocks our conversation. 'You absolutists', she says, 'always banging on as if there is just one truth. What you don't realize is that there is a plurality of truths. It's true for you that fox-hunting should be banned - but don't forget that it's true for Genghis that it should not'

How does Rosie's contribution help? Indeed, what does it mean? 'It's true for me that hunting should be banned' just means that I believe that hunting should be banned. And the same thing said about Genghis just means that he believes the opposite. But we already knew that: that's why we are in disagreement!

Perhaps Rosie is trying to get us to see that there is no real disagreement. But how can that be so? I want people to aim at one outcome, that hunting be banned, and Genghis wants another. At most one of us can succeed, and I want it to be me. Rosie cannot stop us from seeing each other as opponents.

Perhaps Rosie is trying to get us to respect and tolerate each other's point of view. But why should I respect and tolerate another point of view simply on the grounds that someone else holds it? I already have my suspicions of Genghis: in my book he is perhaps cruel and insensitive, so why should his point of view be 'tolerated'? And in any case, I should be suspicious of any encouragement to toleration here. The whole point of my position is that hunting should not be tolerated - it should be banned. Tolerating Genghis's point of view is too near to tolerating Genghis's hunting, which I am not going to do.

Rosie seems to be skating on thin ice in another way as well. Suppose she gets ruffled by what I have just written: 'Look', she says, 'you must learn that Genghis is a human being like you; respect and toleration of his views and his activities are essential. If you did not fetishize absolute truth you would see that'. I on the other hand say 'toleration of Genghis is just soggy; it is time to take a stand'. If Rosie thumps the table and says that tolerating Genghis is really good, then isn't she sounding just like the fetishists she mocked? She has taken the fact that there are no absolute values to justify elevating toleration into an absolute value! (fallacy of self-exclusion)

In practice, Rosie's intervention hasn't helped at all. Her intervention seems just to have been a distraction.

In moral issues we often cannot agree to differ. Agreeing to differ with Genghis is in effect agreeing to tolerate fox-hunting, and my stance was against that. Moral issues are frequently ones where we want to coordinate, and where we are finding what to forbid and what to allow. Naturally, the burden falls on those who want to forbid: in liberal societies, freedom is the default.

So why do people like to chip in with remarks like 'it's all relative' or 'I suppose it depends on your point of view'? What you say of course depends on your point of view, and whether another person agrees with it depends on their point of view. (tautology - circular reasoning) If I believe O.J. Simpson murdered his wife, then I cannot at the same time hold that the point of view that he did not, is equally good. It follows from my belief that anyone who holds he did not murder his wife is wrong.

If relativism, then, is just a distraction, is it valuable or dangerous or unimportant?

Sometimes we need reminding of alternative ways of thinking, alternative practices and ways of life, from which we can learn and which we have no reason to condemn. In academic circles relativism has often been associated with the expansion of literature and history to include alternatives that went unnoticed in previous times. That is excellent. But sometimes we need reminding that there is time to draw a line and take a stand, and that alternative ways of looking at things can be corrupt, ignorant, superstitious, wishful, out of touch, or plain evil. It is a moral issue, whether we tolerate and learn or regret and oppose.

(heavily edited) Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge.

This article was originally published in the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal, Think.