Aristotle and Einstein have different views about the universe's size; Torquemada and Richard Dawkins differ on religion; St Theresa of Lisieux and Cora Pearl on sexual morality. Some will think the first in each pairing is wrong and the second right; others will think the opposite. Both sides at least agree that there is a right and wrong in each case. But there are those who think that all of them are right, in their own way. These are the relativists.
Relativists thus deny the existence of objective truth. There is no truth, they say, only truth-for-me; and what is true-for-me can be false-for-you. And this, they say, is just as it should be, because the validity of what we believe is always a function of our standpoint.
Postmodernism finds this view attractive for various reasons, among them the fact that it gives everyone a place in the sun. Members of a stone age community can stand proudly by their beliefs, says the relativist, which are as valid in their own terms as is western science for westerners. This example is extreme; more plausible is the thought that moral and religious commitments can vary across time or cultures, with no independent way of adjudicating them.
The first way to argue against the relativist is to point out that if there is no such thing as truth, except from a given perspective, then one must accept one of the following three assertions: the claim "there is no truth except from a given standpoint" is true only from a given standpoint, or it is self-refuting, or it is a very special kind of truth in being the only one that is true from all standpoints. Each of these makes a nonsense of the original claim, so the relativist position is incoherent.
The second way is to point out that when people assert that their beliefs are true, they typically do not mean "only for me." This phrase applies in cases of taste or preference, and sometimes when there is known to be no way to settle a choice of view. But if I say that camels have humps, I do not mean to imply that it is simultaneously the case that camels have no humps just because someone else believes as much.
The third way is to point out that if relativism is true, enquiry (in science and elsewhere) is pointless, because if there is no objective truth, there is nothing to enquire about. If fairy tales and physics are equally true "in their own ways," one might as well rest content with whatever one currently happens to believe, and seek no further.
Each of these responses to relativism was given by Plato in his Protagoras 2,500 years ago, a fact which attests how hardy a perennial relativism, like most kinds of nonsense, is.
Sent in by John Maguire, Hebden Bridge.
Send your philosophical queries and dilemmas to AC Grayling atquestion@prospect-magazine.co.uk
