"Relativism: So What?": So What?

[koganbot]

I keep telling myself I'm going to write a series of lj posts called "Relativism: So What?" but I keep putting off beginning this. I think a major reason for my block is that, though I can lay out the "intellectual" issues surrounding "relativism," my true goal is to get at "what are people's underlying reasons for thinking there's an issue here?" or to put it better, "people wouldn't bring up the issue of 'relativism' if they didn't think they were taking care of something by doing so, so how do I get them to think and talk about what it is that they think they need to take care of?" A subsidiary question might be, "Frank Kogan thinks he's taking care of something when he tries to get people to think and talk about what they think they're trying to take care of when they raise the issue of 'relativism,' so what is it that Frank Kogan thinks he's trying to take care of when he does this?"

Anyhow, four questions:
(1) What do you mean by "relativism," when you use the word (assuming you use the word)?
(2) Does the issue of relativism matter to you? If so, why does it matter?
(3) What do you think other people mean when they use the word "relativism"?
(4) What do you think they think is at stake?

Don't let your answers by overconstrained by the questions. I want to hear your ideas before giving mine.

By the way, someone on my flist (though I'm not on his) used the term the other day, clearly believed that "relativism" was a potent force in the world.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Had a conversation about the myth of "moral relativism" with someone after a (kind of dumb) commencement speech I just sat through that was saying, in essence, that there are THREE TYPES of readers: (1) those who read "naively," not taking into consideration social context (e.g. _____ is writing within a racist society and reflects its values), (2) those who read "in the know" and ONLY see the social context without recognizing the artistry etc. of the work (e.g. "OMG ____ reflects the values of a racist society [shutdown]!!!!"), and (3) truly critical readers (the readers at University X) that achieve a "second naivete" and recognize the value system without throwing out the possibility of artistry, validity, value, etc. in a problematic work.

This was stupid for fairly obvious reasons, the main one being that if we grant that there are hypothetically readers that fall into category (1) and (2), we DON'T need to suggest that this is some sort of "norm" of reading and we definitely don't need to condescendingly assert that University X has some sort of unique ability to create such an obvious model of critical thinker.

Anyway, I linger on the construction of the strawmen in this debate because she used the framework to justify what she called a "moral relativism" in students of hers (who had yet to become TRULY CRITICAL Type 3 readers, of course) who claimed that if they saw a violent cultural norm happening in front of them (the practice of a group of people ritualistically killing a widow after the death of her husband) they wouldn't stop it because it "wasn't for them to judge."

What she isn't thinking about is that she's given them an extreme hypothetical that they likely had no context for judging whatsoever AND were probably giving (vaguely) a response that seemed to "fit the teacher," even though in this case it DIDN'T fit the teacher. I find it difficult to believe that these students were all expressing something as specific as an ideology, or ideological tendency, that we can call "moral relativism." More likely, they were, with no little uncertainty, revealing their discomfort with their (now public) ignorance of a foreign culture. If you asked them "is murder wrong," I imagine most of them would say "yes." Then you could muck 'em up with something like "is ritualistic killing murder," and, having never actually experienced or had any knowledge of anything like a ritualistic killing, watch them not know exactly what to say. But this would probably be because it was considered to be outside the SCOPE of their judgment, not because "everything is relative." They would feel "unqualified" to respond. (That's my hunch for a more positive version of "relativism" anyway that isn't just constructing a strawman; i.e. this woman's students and their responses were presumably all real.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

That is "that isn't for me to say" might be closer to "I have no reference in the world I'm familiar with that tells me how to respond to what you're asking me" than "all cultures are entitled to do whatever they've already been doing."

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

see, here's a re-emergence of my "structure-buttressing myth": "pay attention student of the university of X: if you respect our powers, we will enhance yours" -- i agree with dave this is a silly just-so-story, but getting outside it, into the business of a general justification of the particulars higher ed (non-practical departments especially) is to risk stirring up a whole whirlwind of political arguments and currents WHICH UNIVERSITY X MIGHT NOT SURVIVE (or more pertinently may not survive in a shape which the commencement-speech (straw?)lady gets to give commencement speeches...)

so what we're talking about is a ritual invocation to stave off a particular cluster of demons -- and as dave says, the accusation of "moral relativism" isn't the identification of an ideology so much as a mediterreanean peasant's flashed finger-symbol, fingers as twinhorns meaning "avert the bad luck"