Overview

Relativism is the philosophical view that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. In epistemology, it suggests that what counts as “true” or “justified” depends on the framework you are using.

Core Idea

The core idea is “true for me, but not for you.” There is no single “God’s eye view” of the world; there are only perspectives.

Formal Definition

Epistemic relativism is the view that:

  1. There are no absolute, universal standards of justification.
  2. A belief can be justified relative to one framework but unjustified relative to another.
  3. There is no neutral way to adjudicate between frameworks.

Intuition

  • Etiquette: Burping after a meal is polite in some cultures (shows appreciation) and rude in others. There is no “objective truth” about whether burping is rude; it’s relative.
  • Science vs. Magic: A relativist might argue that science is one way of knowing (valid in the West), and witchcraft is another (valid in other cultures), and neither is “absolutely” right.

Examples

  • Cultural Relativism: “Truth” is what a culture agrees upon.
  • Historical Relativism: What was “true” for Aristotle is different from what is “true” for us.
  • Postmodernism: Often associated with the idea that “grand narratives” of universal truth are oppressive constructs.

Common Misconceptions

  • Misconception: Relativism means “anything goes.”
    • Correction: Most relativists say you must follow the rules of your framework; you can’t just make things up randomly.
  • Misconception: Relativism is self-refuting (Is the statement “All truth is relative” absolute?).
    • Correction: This is the classic objection. Sophisticated relativists try to avoid this by saying the statement itself is only relatively true.
  • Objectivism/Absolutism: The opposing view that truth is independent of perspective.
  • Pluralism: The view that there can be multiple valid paths or truths (softer than relativism).
  • Perspectivism: Nietzsche’s view that all knowing is from a particular perspective.

Applications

  • Anthropology: Avoiding ethnocentrism by understanding cultures on their own terms.
  • Sociology of Knowledge: Studying how social groups construct their own “truths.”

Criticism and Limitations

  • Self-Refutation: (See above).
  • Moral Paralysis: If everything is relative, we can’t condemn atrocities (like slavery or genocide) as objectively wrong, only as “wrong for us.”
  • Science: It struggles to explain why science seems to converge on universal answers (gravity works the same everywhere).

Further Reading

  • Fear of Knowledge by Paul Boghossian (Critique)
  • Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy by Steven Hales
  • Theaetetus by Plato (Early critique of Protagoras’s relativism)