Relatively Important Post
Not my words.
Relativism is powerful in Western life, evidenced in many areas -- from the decline in the study of history and English literature, through to the triumph of subjective values and conscience over moral truth and the downgrading of heterosexual marriage.
One reason for optimism is that no one believes, deep down, in relativism. People may express their scepticism about truth and morality in lecture rooms or in print, but afterwards they will go on to sip a cappuccino, pay the mortgage, drive home on the left side of the road, and presumably avoid acts of murder and cannibalism throughout their evening. People, unless insane, do not live as relativists. They care about truth and follow clear cut rules.
Nothing matters more than truth to our country. Differences about important issues such as war, slavery, abortion, euthanasia are different claims to moral truth, not merely competing preferences. Some who have never been deprived of truth can give it up too easily, perhaps using talk of relativism or secularism to camouflage their actual commitment to money, success, possessions, power. But these are ambiguous goods: they can be misused and are rarely distributed fairly.
It is getting to the truth about things and having the integrity to live by that truth that is the ideal we should pass to the next generation. By comparison, relativism is bankrupt: it offers no future because it is not liveable; and where it is a camouflage, what it camouflages is generally rotten and often shaped by greed.
--Cardinal George Pell
I've been struck in recent years at how poor the quality of debate has become in my country and around the world. I feel that this contemptible philosophy of relativism is mostly to blame. To lay claim to any sort of moral truth is seen as backwards, an anachronism. The current vogue is to merely "present one's opinion" and if someone should take issue with that then run to the safety of the lamest of rebuttals. How can any serious thinker allow for the existence of relativism in matters of morality or even politics? How can anyone who claims to be open-minded steadfastly refuse to change their mind on the subject of Absolute Truth?
Comments
Sometimes you find that you are living by a certain rule not because you think it is right, but because you have always done things that way. Maybe it was right and the best way to do things in the beginning, but as your life changes sometimes the rules need to change along with you.
Perhaps they follow the rules because they want to. Life is easier if you follow the rules. It certainly helps to keep you out of prison. It's easier to fit into society and develop interpersonal relationships if you follow the rules. Even if the rules happen to be amoral.
It is quite possible to be open minded about the life styles of others and still have a strict code of conduct for your own life. People do it every day.
Using such absolutes as "never" will get you into trouble. It only takes one example to falsify the statement.
It is a paradox. However, there is a difference between entertaining the possibility of being wrong and insisting that one is correct.
Ever study quantum mechanics? Schroedinger's cat comes to mind as an experiment in which both "truth values" are applicable before measurement (after measurement, only one is applicable, but which one cannot be determined before making the measurement).
On a more human note, can someone be both male and female? In about 1 birth out of every 10,000 the answer is yes. For nearly every aspect of human endeavor, the gray areas far outnumber the black and white ones.
The absolute truth is that there are some things that are relative, some things that are absolute, and some things that are just too damn weird to classify.
John
You ask that like someone else might ask, "Ever played baseball?" I used to watch Quantum Leap, if that helps.
If morality is absolute, then the results of immorality should be absolute as well. However, in mumbledy-some years of studying morals, I have only found two that are absolute - and they don't explicitly appear in any religious tome. One could argue that the absolute results are either ineffable or reserved for an afterlife, but that then begs the question of proof [1].
John
[1] Yes, I know; the answer to that is that moral are about belief, not proof. But that shifts them right out of the real of absolutes and right back into relativism because belief is relative.
[2] With appropriate allowances for social interactions; a male will get very different responses than a female will in most social situations, and race, ethnicity, background, and so forth further complicate matters as these are free variables in the social equation. (See, for example All Our Kin or Time and the Highland Maya.)
John - I believe you are making Scio's point for him.
Is the sight of a naked woman obscene? What about a naked goat? Can one eat meat on a Friday? Can one eat people, ever? What is incest and does it matter?
If you are a relativist, there is no definitive answer to any of these questions. For those who believe in moral absolutes, there is always a definitive answer to all these types of questions.
Additionally, as Scio quoted Cardinal Pell, "People may express their skepticism about truth and morality in lecture rooms or in print, but afterwards they will go on to sip a cappuccino, pay the mortgage, drive home on the left side of the road, and presumably avoid acts of murder and cannibalism throughout their evening. People, unless insane, do not live as relativists."
Although you promote relativism in your on-line posts, I'll bet you never murder anyone or eat your own children ever in your lifetime.
And "absolutist" as well, I suppose. Ask any Southern Baptist today if slavery is wrong and they will (more likely than not) say it is; but that wasn't always the case. And yet, they say that the moral laws are eternal and unchanging.
If they only drive on the left where everyone else does, and only avoid cannibalism (even symbolic cannibalism) where everyone else does, but drive on the right in other places and indulge in cannibalism where everyone else does, then they do live their lives as relativists.
Count Ugolino
(er, I meant: John)