Relativism

Author and journalist Chris Hedges was on Morning Sedition today. He remarked that totalitarian systems attack any kind of truth discernment with the effect that the masses will be more likely to buy into the mythology that legitimizes the state. He sees the assaults on science by the right in this light.

This led me to think about the right's attacks on cultural relativism, something that had always confused me given that they are otherwise committed to a very postmodern view of the elusiveness of "truth". That is, the right believes that it creates reality and determines what is "true" based on its own shifting requirements. Cultural relativism, however, is a heuristic for discerning sociological truths or "social facts". Insofar as it is possible to do so, it permits social scientists to compare and analyze different cultures dispassionately and without the distortions of value judgements. Accordingly, attacks on cultural relativism may be seen as attacks on attempts to discern sociological truth.

Cultural relativism is a methodological tool, a stance that the social scientist adopts in his work. The adoption of such a stance does not entail adoption of a normative view that all cultural phenomena are, from a moral standpoint, equally valid. I suppose that you could adopt such a stance, but I don't see how you could enact it in your life. At some point as long as you are not in a coma, you will have to express preferences.

To some extent, I adopt a weak form of relativism as a libertarian in that I believe that other folks ought to live more or less as they please free from my meddling. This does not mean that I approve of their choices or even care about them; it just means that I am unwilling to impose my preferences on others. I am not so arrogant that I would presume to know so well how others ought to live that I would be right to compel them to follow my strictures.

Whenever I have heard lay folks using cultural relativism in political discussions, the proponent of relativism is advocating a permissive stance toward some lifestyle choice or behavior. The other side argues against cultural relativism in this context in support of regulating the lifestyle or behavior at issue. Both sides usually accept the premise that the state may and ought to regulate a wide range of preferences and behaviors, and they simply disagree on the particulars. In my view, this is an unfortunate abuse of the concept and an ineffective argument for liberty. What is really being argued is the moral validity of the lifestyle or behavior in question.

This kind of argument plays into the fear of the masses of uncertainty about morals. It allows the right to attack relativism on yet another level aside from its use as a truth finding device. The right appeals to the masses by affirming their need for objective moral truth, and the right governs the masses by determining what that truth is or by coopting popular moral concepts.