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Relativism is sometimes identified (usually by its critics) as the
thesis that all points of view are equally valid. In ethics, this
amounts to saying that all moralities are equally good; in
epistemology it implies that all beliefs, or belief systems, are
equally true. Critics of relativism typically dismiss such views as
incoherent since they imply the validity even of the view that
relativism is false. They also charge that such views are pernicious
since they undermine the enterprise of trying to improve our ways of
thinking.
Perhaps because relativism is associated with such views, few
philosophers are willing to describe themselves as relativists.
However, most of the leading thinkers who have been accused of
relativism--for example, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Winch, Thomas
Kuhn, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida--do share a
certain common ground which, while recognizably relativistic,
provides a basis for more sophisticated, and perhaps more defensible,
positions.
Although there are many different kinds of relativism, they all
have two features in common.
1) They all assert that one thing (e.g. moral values,
beauty, knowledge, taste, or meaning) is relative to some
particular framework or standpoint (e.g. the individual subject, a
culture, an era, a language, or a conceptual scheme).
2) They all deny that any standpoint is uniquely privileged
over all others.
It is thus possible to classify the different types and sub-types
of relativism in a fairly obvious way. The main genera of relativism
can be distinguished according to the object they seek to relativize.
Thus, forms of moral relativism assert the relativity of moral
values; forms of epistemological relativism assert the relativity of
knowledge. These genera can then be broken down into distinct species
by identifying the framework to which the object in question is being
relativized. For example, moral subjectivism is that species of moral
relativism that relativizes moral value to the individual
subject.
How controversial, and how coherent, these forms of relativism are
will obviously vary according to what is being relativized to what,
and in what manner. In contemporary philosophy, the most widely
discussed forms of relativism are moral
relativism, cognitive
relativism, and aesthetic relativism.
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