relativism

Philosopher

2022

We explain what relativism is, its origin and characteristics. In addition, cognitive, moral, cultural and linguistic relativism.

Relativism proposes that the context determines the truth of some situations.

What is relativism?

In general, relativism is called to the consideration that what is true and what is false, what is good and what is bad, and the procedures through which we justify these categories, always depend on a set of conventions and therefore can only be determined paying attention to your context.

In other words, according to the point of view of relativism, the properties that we give to some things or situations are not intrinsic, proper and universal, but are determined by the way in which we approach them, and therefore can vary.

There are those who accuse relativism of proposing that everything in life is equally valid and that nothing can be affirmed because everything "is relative." This is a very common accusation among the detractors of this point of view, which however is not exactly what relativism proposes.

In this sense, relativism and objectivism are opposite positions around the society and to human aspects: the first proposes that the contextual framework determines the truth in some situations, while the second proposes that the truth it is always an identifiable thing, regardless of who thinks it or in what situation.

Relativism is not a doctrine unique but exists in various forms depending on the area of ​​knowledge to which one refers. However, its roots come from the Greek Antiquity, especially from the school of the sophists who inhabited Athens in the 5th century BC. C., and against whom many of the great Greek philosophers wrote: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

General characteristics of relativism

Broadly speaking, relativism is characterized by the following:

  • He rejects the idea that the truth is only one and objective, preferring to understand it from its determining context. From there, he also questions other metaphysical concepts, such as good and bad, for example.
  • The fact of admitting that everyone can have an opinion on a specific matter is not relativism, but rather the fact of considering that no opinion is "true" in itself, but depends on the context in which it is stated.
  • Fundamentally, three categories are recognized within relativism: cognitive, moral and cultural.
  • You can be relativistic only in some aspects of the reality and objectivist in others, without implying a contradiction.

Relativism and subjectivism

Relativism and subjectivism may seem similar models of thought, since both distrust the existence of an objective and knowable truth for the human being.

However, relativism proposes that the truth of an issue depends on its contextual framework, both internal and external to the individual. On the contrary, subjectivism makes the truth depend on the psychic individuality, that is, on the personal constitution of the individual, subjective, that is, on what the subject knows and therefore can judge.

Cognitive relativism

We speak of cognitive relativism to refer in general to all possible systems of thought in which the existence of a universal truth, valid in all possible cases, is not contemplated, but rather they look for it in the contextual conditions in which it appears.

Thus, its fundamental premise is the impossibility for the human being to formulate universally valid truths, since each affirmation that he makes will always depend on a set of structures conditioning factors.

This distinction is important because it arises based on the knowledge human (the cognitive). It allows, for example, the development of educational models that do not contemplate a single way of teaching and learning, but that promote the learning in its various possibilities, that is, to relativize it.

Moral relativism

Relativism moralOn the other hand, he is not interested in human knowledge but in his ability to distinguish good from evil, and he suggests something similar: that the very ideas of good and bad depend on the framework in which they are inserted.

Consequently, it is not possible to think in terms of an absolute and universal good, or an absolute and universal evil, because, among other things, what is good for someone can be bad for others, or it can be bad in the long run, and vice versa.

Moral relativism, however, does not propose that these categories be forgotten or surpassed, but rather that we overcome the claim to make them universal. It aims to be able to formulate an ethical code that judges situations in their context.

It is thus, after all, that the Justice it can arise: to move within the general coordinates of the good and the bad of a society at a given time, to judge the context in which the events occurred. That is why there is a moral relativism, but not an ethical relativism.

Cultural relativism

Also called “culturalism”, cultural relativism denies the existence of universal moral, ethical or social values, and proposes that these can only be understood within the framework that a culture determined. So all cultures have equally valid manifestations, each in its own context.

Thus, relativism is opposed to ethnocentrism, that is, to the consideration that the precepts of a culture are considered universal and logically imposed on others, or that other nations, by differing in moral or social matters, are considered barbaric, savage or even lack of culture.

This is what happened, for example, with the anthropology at the beginning, he considered non-industrialized cultures as closer to the savage and therefore less morally and intellectually elevated.

Linguistic relativism

This is the name given to a set of linguistic hypotheses on the impact of the mother tongue on the psyche and on learning, understood within a cultural frame of reference.

This means that, according to linguistic relativism, two people endowed with two radically different languages ​​will conceptualize reality and think, deep down, in very different ways from each other, without any of them being considered "correct" or "true".

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