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Relatively Speaking
Jan 30th, 2003 | By Simon Blackburn
Category: Articles

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There are philosophers (absolutists) who like to stress truth, objectivity, rationality, and
knowledge. Then there are others (relativists) who like to stress contingency, mutability, culture,
historicity, situatedness. The first group think that the second group have no standards. The
second group are accused of encouraging postmodernism, or the licentious thinking and
bullshitting that goes on in some parts of the humanities. The second group think the first group
are conservative and complacent, and that their words simply mark fetishes.

I like to illustrate the way these groups talk past each other with an anecdote of a friend of mine
(I apologise to readers of my book Being Good, where I also tell this story). He was present at a
high-powered ethics institute which had put on a forum in which representatives of the great
religions held a panel. First the Buddhist talked of the ways to calm, the mastery of desire, the
path of enlightenment. The panellists all said Wow, terrific, if that works for you thats great.
Then the Hindu talked of the cycles of suffering and birth and rebirth, the teachings of Krishna
and the way to release, and they all said Wow, terrific, if that works for you thats great. And so
on, until the Catholic priest talked of the message of Jesus Christ, the promise of salvation and
the way to life eternal, and they all said Wow, terrific, if that works for you thats great. And he
thumped the table and shouted: No! Its not a question of it if works for me! Its the true word of
the living God, and if you dont believe it youre all damned to Hell!

And they all said: Wow, terrific, if that works for you thats great.

The joke here lies in the mismatch between what the priest intends a claim to unique authority
and truth and what he is heard as offering, which is one more saying like all the others. Of
course that person talks of certainty and truth, says the relativist. Thats just his certainty and
truth, made absolute in his eyes, which means no more than: made into a fetish.

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Having said this, the relativist need not attack people for putting words like true on their
doctrines. Of course people do this, because to have a belief and to hold it to be true are the
same thing. In the story the priest will not be the only one who seizes on the word true: a
Buddhist holds Buddhist doctrine to be true, and a Hindu holds Hindu doctrine to be true, just as
inevitably.

So far the absolutists seem to be on the defensive. The relativists mock them for adding nothing
with their big words, or disapprove of them for being insufficiently tolerant of other perspectives
and points of view. And toleration is surely a Good Thing. But is the relativist view really so
attractive?

Suppose I believe that fox-hunting is cruel and should be banned. And then I come across
someone (Genghis, let us call him) who holds that it is not cruel, and should be allowed. We
dispute, and perhaps neither of us can convince the other. Suppose now a relativist (Rosie)
comes in, and mocks our conversation. You absolutists, she says, always banging on as if
there is just one truth. What you dont realize is that there is a plurality of truths. Its true for you
that fox-hunting should be banned but dont forget that its true for Genghis that it should not

How does Rosies contribution help? Indeed, what does it mean? Its true for me that hunting
should be banned just means that I believe that hunting should be banned. And the same thing
said about Genghis just means that he believes the opposite. But we already knew that: thats
why we are in disagreement!

Perhaps Rosie is trying to get us to see that there is no real disagreement. But how can that be
so? I want people to aim at one outcome, that hunting be banned, and Genghis wants another.
At most one of us can succeed, and I want it to be me. Rosie cannot stop us from seeing each
other as opponents.

Perhaps Rosie is trying to get us to respect and tolerate each others point of view. But why
should I respect and tolerate another point of view simply on the grounds that someone else
holds it? I already have my suspicions of Genghis: in my book he is perhaps cruel and
insensitive, so why should his point of view be tolerated? And in any case, I should be
suspicious of any encouragement to toleration here. The whole point of my position is that
hunting should not be tolerated it should be banned. Tolerating Genghiss point of view is too
near to tolerating Genghiss hunting, which I am not going to do.

Rosie seems to be skating on thin ice in another way as well. Suppose she gets ruffled by what I
have just written: Look, she says, you must learn that Genghis is a human being like you;
respect and toleration of his views and his activities are essential. If you did not fetishize
absolute truth you would see that. I on the other hand say toleration of Genghis is just soggy; it
is time to take a stand. If Rosie thumps the table and says that tolerating Genghis is really good,
then isnt she sounding just like the fetishists she mocked? She has taken the fact that there are
no absolute values to justify elevating toleration into an absolute value!

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Rosie has to avoid that contradiction. So perhaps she needs to say that she has her truth
(tolerating Genghis is good) and I have mine (tolerating Genghis is bad) and thats the end of it.
But that sounds like bowing out of the conversation, leaving Genghis and I to go on arguing
exactly as before. In practice, Rosies intervention hasnt helped at all. She hasnt made foxes, or
those who hunt them, look one jot more or less likeable. Her intervention seems just to have
been a distraction.

Perhaps Rosie wanted to stop the conversation: she is like someone asking Will you two just
stop bickering? This can be a good thing to say. Some conversations are pointless. If you and I
are in an art gallery, and I say Rembrandt is better than Vermeer and you say Vermeer is better
than Rembrandt, and we start bickering about it, the best advice may well be that we stop.
Perhaps we can agree to differ, because nothing practical hangs on our different taste. It is not
as if we have enough money to buy just one, and I want it to be one and you want it to be the
other (on the other hand, it does not follow that our conversation is useless. We might be forcing
each other to look closer and see things we would otherwise have missed, or to reconsider what
we find valuable about art in general).

But however it may be in the art gallery, in moral issues we often cannot agree to differ. Agreeing
to differ with Genghis is in effect agreeing to tolerate fox-hunting, and my whole stance was
against that. Moral issues are frequently ones where we want to coordinate, and where we are
finding what to forbid and what to allow. Naturally, the burden falls on those who want to forbid:
in liberal societies, freedom is the default. But this cannot be a carte blanche for any kind of
behaviour, however sickening or distressful or damaging. It is just not true that anything goes. So
conversation has to go on about what to allow and what to forbid. Again, Rosie is not helping:
she seems just to be a distraction.

So why do people like to chip in with remarks like its all relative or I suppose it depends on
your point of view? What you say of course depends on your point of view, and whether another
person agrees with it depends on their point of view. But the phrase is dangerous, and can be
misleading. The spatial metaphor of points of view might be taken to imply that all points of view
are equally valid. After all, there is no one place from which it is right to look at the Eiffel tower,
and indeed no one place that is better than another, except for one purpose or another. But
when it comes to our commitments, we cannot think this. If I believe that O.J. Simpson murdered
his wife, then I cannot at the same time hold that the point of view that he did not, is equally
good. It follows from my belief that anyone who holds he did not murder his wife is wrong. They
may be excusable, but they are out of touch or misled or thinking wishfully. It is only if I do not
hold a belief at all, but am just indulging in an idle play of fancy, that I can admit that an
inconsistent fancy is equally good. If I like fancying Henry VIII to have been a disguised Indian, I
am not in opposition to someone who enjoys fancying him to have been a Chinese. But thats
just the difference between fiction, where the brakes are off, and history, where they are on.

Relativists are more apt to stay away from mundane historical truth. Relativism really grips us
when we are talking of contested moral issues, although it also rears its head when we think of
difficult theoretical issues. In these cases we are more apt to think that there is no fact of the

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matter. Some philosophers think that this is true in such areas, and that our commitments are
better seen as taking up stances or attitudes, rather than believing in strict and literal truths. But
to have a stance is to stand somewhere, and in practical matters just as in history, that means
being set to disagree with those who stand somewhere else.

If relativism, then, is just a distraction, is it a valuable one or a dangerous one? I think it all
depends. Sometimes we need reminding of alternative ways of thinking, alternative practices
and ways of life, from which we can learn and which we have no reason to condemn. We need
to appreciate our differences. Hence, in academic circles, relativism has often been associated
with the expansion of literature and history to include alternatives that went unnoticed in previous
times. That is excellent. But sometimes we need reminding that there is time to draw a line and
take a stand, and that alternative ways of looking at things can be corrupt, ignorant,
superstitious, wishful, out of touch, or plain evil. It is a moral issue, whether we tolerate and learn
or regret and oppose. Rosie the relativist may do well to highlight that decision. But she does not
do well to suggest that it always falls out the one way.

Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge.

This article was originally published in the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal, Think. It has a
web site here.

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