Thoughts on Relativism.

I’ve been doing some thinking about ethics lately, and from there I started considering relativism. Maybe it’s the influence of my Wolterstorff studies showing through, but here is what I came up with about relativism while I was on my tractor this morning.

The thing that gets me about relativism is not simply that it either assumes that other viewpoints and beliefs are equally true as the one that the relativist may be holding. It does that, to whatever degree, I am not sure. While this, according to the wisdom of the world, may be a virtuous position to hold, I am now inclined to disagree (even more so than I have previously been). Relativism, if we look at it from the perspective of those people who are being relativised, and not the relativisee, may seem open-minded and fair. But if we look at the relativisee, I think we can see something different. What we can see is that it lacks commitment. Here’s my argumentation:

In the first place, in order to actually live as an honest relativist, one must regard all opinions, views, beliefs and whatnot as valid and just as tenable as one’s own. To do this, one could take how one feels about, or believes, or however much one is committed to whatever it is that he or she does, and then assume this level of those things about every other person’s opinions, beliefs, etc. Not that you believe them like this, but that you assume that the other person has the same level of belief or commitment as you do. This is all well and good. But when it comes as far as saying, then, that every other person’s beliefs etc. are as true as my own, this is where the lack of commitment comes in.

Let us take, for instance, someone with a certain faith (F1) which involves certain beliefs (B1, 2, 3), and another person who has a different faith (Fa), which involves other beliefs (Ba, b, c). Let us also add to this latter person’s belief system a belief opposite to what the first person believes (~B2).

With this being the case, if the first person was a relativist, he would have to accept the second person’s belief system as equal to his own, including the belief that opposes one of his own beliefs. And in order to do this, he must either lower his beliefs to the status of ‘one among many equally valid belief-systems’, or raise up the other’s belief system to the level of his own. To do either, though, would be to include into his belief system the belief that his beliefs might not be true. In doing this, he would lower the level of commitment that he has in his beliefs, and the question would then be why bother to believe them at all, for if you are not committed to your beliefs as being true, then why bother to believe them at all, if any other beliefs would do just as well?

True commitment with one’s beliefs requires, I would argue, that we not be relativists. If I am truly committed to B2, then I cannot accept ~B2 as equally true, although maybe for different circumstances. If B2 is true, then ~B2 must be false, or vice versa.

This is not to say that there can be no such thing as relativism. I think there are many things which are honestly relative (laws of different countries, customs, etc), but the skill is in determining what can be relative, and what cannot.

This is also not to say that relativism is entirely and wholly wrong. There are some things that relativism can teach (for lack of a better word) the close-minded. Relativism, at least, is open to listening to other view-points, and will seriously consider them. There are many people who are committed to their beliefs who are completely closed off from others, and will not even lend them an ear.

The trick in all of this is, to quote a respectable uncle of mine, is not to be so open-minded your brain falls out.