This essay focuses on relativism as it relates to truth. The central argument is that when you scratch off the surface skin of a “relativist”, then you’ll often find someone who *does* actually believe that certain claims are true — if only in very specific domains. I’ll also be bouncing off the interesting and historical take on relativism offered up by the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto. However, his metaphysically realist stance on — or alternative to — relativism isn’t something readers also need to agree with.
[See my ‘Truth, According to Analytic Philosophers, and as Seen By a Historian’, which also discusses Felipe Fernández-Armesto.]
Is Relativism All About Politics?
The historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto puts a point about relativism that’s rarely put (not by analytic philosophers anyway). Many other people, on the other hand, do realise — and say — that relativism is mainly motivated by the following political view. However, they rarely go into detail about this. Fernández-Armesto does. He writes:
“Truth threatens peace. Those who think they possess it tend to turn into victimizers of the rest, like all the other bullies convinced of the superiority of their own race or class or caste or blood or wisdom.”
Elsewhere in his book Truth: A History, Fernández-Armesto tells us that the French philosopher Michel Foucault believed that truth was “another concept deliberately designed as an instrument of oppression”. Fernández-Armesto also quotes Foucault as saying that the propagation of truth is “a system of exclusion”, a “regime”, an “ensemble of rules”, and a part of “systems of power which produce and sustain it”.
There’s some truth in what both Fernández-Armesto and Foucault say. It articulates what’s behind the upholding of many relativist positions… even when no one classes himself as a “relativist”. After all, it does seem obvious — judging by history and personal encounters — that when people believe they have the Truth, then they often become (to put it mildly) very loud and aggressive. It’s also important for them to spread the Truth and destroy all rivals to it. Thus, they bang the Truth over the heads of those unfortunate enough not to know what it is.
Fernández-Armesto goes into more detail in the following passage:
“Modern (some of them like to be called ‘post-modern’) relativists usually differ from Protagoras by advocating the equality not only of individual accounts of truth but also of those proper to particular peoples, ethnic groups, religions, social classes and other communities.”
If the political motivations for embracing relativism aren’t clear, then Fernández-Armesto finishes off by saying that those who embrace relativism do so because they “desperately need to legitimate multicultural societies”. Moreover, Fernández-Armesto says all that because he believes that relativists
“exempts members of rival sects and cults, for instance, compelled to live together in contiguous communities, from enquiring perilously into each other’s claims”.
Yet there are problems with all the above.
Not everyone who believes that they know the truth (if about a given subject) becomes obstinate and aggressive about it — even if it’s an important or controversial truth. Indeed, they don’t necessarily believe that they have the capitalised Truth at all. They believe, quite simply, that some of the things they believe are… true. (It really is that simple.) That said, such people still realise that they’ve haven’t proved (or demonstrated) that what they uphold is true. Yet they may still strongly believe that it’s true. That modicum of doubt may, or may not, stop such people from becoming loudmouths or what Fernández-Armesto calls “bullies”.
If it’s right to argue that relativism is mainly a political position (i.e., not an epistemological or philosophical one), then some of the points made above and below may fall on deaf ears. Fernández-Armesto has a take on this too. He writes: “Reason is precisely what they reject.” One would presume, then, that if reason is rejected (I personally rarely use the word “reason”) by relativists (although Fernández-Armesto was talking specifically about “deconstructionists”), then argumentation will be rejected too.
This is where pragmatic relativism kicks in. That is, if what matters is what works, what brings about the desired end, what social cause is helped, etc., then “reality” and argument are (almost?) beside the point. Hence, the lack of argumentation when it comes to many — or even most — of those classed as “relativists”. That said, some philosophers, dating back to Protagoras, have argued for relativism (again, even if that precise word was never used). Still, if politics is in the driving seat, then don’t expect much “reason” or argumentation from such relativists.
There Are No Relativists!
What if the “contiguous communities” (referred to by Fernández-Armesto) include Nazis, white supremacists, nationalists, “Zionists”, traditional Christians, members of Reform, the supporters of Trump, etc.? Do relativists believe that we shouldn’t “enquire[ ] into [their] claims” too? Yet they do enquire. That is, most relativists are also on the Left (if not the “Old Left”) or “progressives”. Thus, they most certainly do believe in critical enquiry and, indeed, “their own truths” when it comes to the claims about Nazis, white supremacists, Trump, etc.
Some readers may argue that a person on the Left can’t also be a relativist. They may argue that “relativism is a postmodernist position”. This claim has an element of truth in it. However, when you hear people on the Left speak about cultural matters, or even about truth itself, much of what is said is strongly tinged with relativism… But relativism as it’s only applied to specific domains, as we shall now see.
It’s easy to argue that relativists do actually believe in truths — and even in the Truth. It’s just that it’s strategically wise (philosophically and politically) not to broadcast that. Thus, many philosophers and commentators have provided long lists of beliefs, views and positions that supposed(?) relativists do actually believe are true — without their ever feeling the need to use the words “the Truth” (or even “truth”/”true”).
For example, it is true that racism/fascism/Trumpism/etc. is bad (or “evil”)? Is it true that Elon Musk is in fact a billionaire? Is it true that the European colonisers of North American killed 10 million native Americans?
This brings us to the subject of the American philosopher Richard Rorty (who’ll be tackled in detail later).
Fernández-Armesto makes an interesting point about Rorty’s possible (or supposed) relativism which seems to suggest that it’s not relativism at all. More relevantly, it was Rorty himself who “refute[d] the charge of relativism”. Fernández-Armesto quotes Rorty in the following way:
“‘We western liberal intellectuals should accept [ ] that there are lots of views we simply cannot take seriously [ ] we are just the historical moment that we are.’”
There are two ways of looking at Rorty’s claim above: (1) Rorty was a self-contradictory relativist… even if he refuted the charge of being a relativist. (2) We can take Rorty’s word for it, and say that he wasn’t a relativist at all.
When Rorty claimed that he refuted the charge of relativism that was an interesting and, perhaps, even honest position. That’s said because (as stated) when you scratch the surface skin off of a relativist, then one will often find a non-relativist underneath — one that believes many things to be true about racism, capitalism, Trump, white supremacy, the murder of American Indians, Israel, Zionism, etc.
When you scratch Rorty, on the other hand, you’ll find a person who admitted that “there are lots of views we simply cannot take seriously” — probably racism, white supremacy, Stalinism, and many other views too. Most left-wing and postmodern relativists, however, don’t make such honest and explicit claims. They stick to their (often implicit) relativism regardless, even when they don’t actually use the word “relativist” about themselves. Thus, they get themselves involved in various self-contradictions and, sometimes, deceits too.
More to the point, is the doctrine of relativism itself true?
Rorty on Truth and Justified Belief
The fact that relativists don’t use the actual word “truth” (or “true”) doesn’t make much of a difference here: the believed truth of their beliefs is implicit. And, if minimalism about truth (or the redundancy theory) is also adopted, then relativists don’t even need to use the word “true” (or “truth”). Thus, bizarrely, we can agree with the relativists who believe that the word “truth” is purely and simply “a rhetorical flourish, an accolade we give to utterances we want to dignify”. And, in tandem with the the previous claim about truth “threatening peace”, we can even say that claiming that something is true is a “device to oppress anyone who sees things differently”.
Moreover, on Rorty’s alternative at least, all relativists need to talk about are “justified beliefs”, rather than “true beliefs”.
But all that seems somewhat fake.
Isn’t it all a rather dishonest way of escaping from the word “true” without actually escaping from the (hidden) concept of truth?
Rorty Again
Fernández-Armesto sees Rorty as the “spokesman” of both relativism and the attack on objectivity. He quotes Rorty as saying that
“he would really prefer to drop the term ‘true’ altogether in favour of ‘well-justified’”.
The problem here is that if truth threatens peace, then if beliefs were henceforth deemed to be “well-justified” (rather than “true”), then wouldn’t well-justification begin to threaten peace too? This is especially possible if it’s also believed that “‘truth’ simply means ‘well-justified’”! Thus, the oppressors would simply start to use the locution “well-justified”, rather than “true”. Indeed, we may even get the platonic the Well-Justified popping up in conversations.
As can be seen, “well-justified” is now doing the job of “true” — both philosophically and politically.
Yet Rorty, at least according to Fernández-Armesto, claims that “[h]e has no theory of truth”. Thus, “a fortiori he does not have a relativistic one”…
Hold on a minute!
If this is only about what Rorty claimed about his own position, then perhaps he did have a theory of truth after all (i.e., even though he claimed not to). So, as with Wittgenstein and his supposed rejection of “theory”, Rorty might have had his cake and eat it too.
So Rorty attempted to destroy the notion of truth by finding a substitute for it. Thus, he might have believed that because the truth was destroyed by himself and others, then he simply can’t have a theory of truth. But, again, what if talk of “well-justified beliefs” is simply a surrogate for “true beliefs”? What if Rorty’s neat sidestepping doesn’t really work?
As hinted at, Fernández-Armesto squarely connects Rorty’s notion of “well-justified belief” to relativism. He says it’s a “variety of relativism”. Yet on the surface at least, it doesn’t seem so. After all, the notion of “justified belief” has been common in analytic philosophy for a long time, and it has a lineage which dates back a lot longer than that (e.g., to Socrates). As with relativists who don’t use the word “true” (but still take their own beliefs to be true), so some philosophers upheld the notion of a well-justified belief without using the words “well-justified belief”.
Simply, don’t many people believe that their beliefs are true because they’re well-justified? After all, aren’t there a whole host of beliefs that must be justified in order to acquire the status of truths in the first place? Thus, in that sense, saying that a belief is “well-justified” is just a stand-in for saying it is “true”. So, if that’s the case, then how did Rorty bypass truth at all?
Rorty on Intersubjective Agreement
Rorty talked in terms of both “well-justified belief” and “intersubjective agreement”. Obviously, these two notions are tied together.
Fernández-Armesto classes the word “intersubjectivity” (if not the words “intersubjective agreement”) as a “post-modern weasel word”. More importantly, he claims that Rorty’s position amounts to truth-by-body-count (or, I should say, well-justified-belief-by-body-count). In terms of Rorty’s own obvious bias, it amounts to saying that “50 million western liberal intellectuals can’t be wrong”. But, Fernández-Armesto continues, if you believe that, then why not also believe that “50 million Frenchmen or Nazis or fundamentalists” can’t be wrong? Rorty, of course, might have simply replied by saying that “we are just the historical moment that we are” (which he did say in a slightly different context).
Is it all about body counts?
Fernández-Armesto asks, “[H]ow wide does agreement have to be before an opinion qualifies as objective?” Well, Rorty himself didn’t like the word “objective”… But so what! Perhaps his philosophical alternatives aren’t really alternatives at all. As already stated, the words “well-justified beliefs” are simply a surrogate for the words “true beliefs”. And, now, the words “intersubjective agreement” are a surrogate for “objective agreement”.
In detail. The notion of intersubjective agreement is vital in science. Rorty might have happily noted and admitted that. Indeed, he might have said that this one reason for his general point.
In that case, then, the words “intersubjective agreement” may be a stand-in for the word “objectivity”. Here again, the word “objectivity” (or objectivity itself) hasn’t been bypassed at all.
In addition, when laypersons use terms like “true” and “well-justified belief”, they rarely offer analyses of them. However, if they were pushed to do so, then they may agree that the words “true belief” simply means “well-justified belief”… or that the words “well-justified belief” simply mean “true belief”. Similarly, when pushed to do so, laypersons may claim that the word “objective” means “intersubjectively agreed upon” (perhaps only within specific domains)… or that the words “intersubjectively agreed upon” mean “objective”.
