Posted on 11/22/2004 8:11:10 AM PST by AreaMan
Moral Relativists...the Flat Earth Society of Philosophy
Jacques delinda est.
Can someone deconstruct this?
Academia is portrayed as a hotbed of fancy foreign notions, a den of dangerous relativists who can't talk straight, can't think straight - and don't even want to try.Gee... I wonder why that might be?
Relativity was around long before Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. Derrida a Relativist? Surreal.
Yes, I fully agree. They talk nonsense, and many entire fields of study should be ignored and defunded. Let us start with the scab pickers in womens' and ethnic studies.
-ccm
It is unwise to attack cities that have many excellent writers. This is serious business. More serious than some faux monists in the Middle East.
If a philosopher died in a forest and no one understood him, would anyone care?
That's a false characterization. The arguments for moral relativism are actually extremely strong, especially for one of an atheist/objectivist bent, whereby we can supposedly use our reason to derive moral principles by "investigation of the evidence."
The problem is, of course, that all of the evidence we can actually investigate points to the efficacy of various versions of "might makes right." Even if we espouse some set of principles that we deem "absolute," the mere fact of alternate "efficacious systems" renders our principles "relative," despite our wishes to the contrary.
For example, "pure Capitalism" is not "moral" in our usual sense of the term: it's a version of might makes right that uses the same basic principles as the Theory of Evolution, such that "the strong" (in an economic sense) is "the right". Capitalism only becomes "moral" if you paste on other moral principles for which there is no objective evidence, beyond certain utilitarian views -- and once you go utilitarian, you've gone relative.
The reason Moral Relativism pisses people off is that most people "know" that there really are such things as "moral absolutes." But they cannot explain how such absolutes might come to be without reference to something that exists outside of our reason, and what we can observe. At root, it is a religious problem.
I'm not so sure it is. If you automatically assume that "certainties" require questioning, you are bringing an unjustifiable bias to the matter right from the start.
The purpose of academics is to pass on knowledge (to pass it on, you have to have it in the first place) and enlarge bodies of knowledge.
Knowledge is of various kinds, not all of which have equal standing. Meteorology is better at predicting rain than folklore is at preventing it. Both are knowledge but in the "reality-based" world they are not equal. If you question meteorology, you need to question folklore too. One will stand up to the test.
"Well, it is very difficult to summarise Derrida's thought," says Glendinning.
I disagree. "Solipsism" or the more recent "Clintonesque" both describe Derrida's opus succinctly.
The core of Derrida's thought is the idea that truth is relative. This hoary old heresy is as old as thought itself, so Derrida is something of a latecomer here.
Anyone who thinks that truth can be objectively different because it has different observers OR that there is no such thing as "objective" reality is a solipsist. I prefer the word "nutjob".
Relativism often gets confused with Relativity, but the second is a mathematical description of multiply-observed reality (reality is real and single but stranger than you might suppose), the first is a denial that there is a single, objective reality to begin with.
Sounds fair. Consider that just because moral relativism exists that does not imply there is no correct moralism. We might go back to Kantianism and give it another shot.
Half true Hogwash.
The only part that's true is that moral relativists repeatedly engage in self-contradiction, which is why they can't admit to being relativists. Even they know the meaning of hypocrisy.
Cordially,
When Derrida was growing up in Algeria he was for a time without a state, and that right in the town where he had spent his entire life. He was neither this nor that, and above all had no language. Being cut adrift as an involuntary voyage with no point of departure and no destination, but certainly neither deriving nor arriving could have a formative effect of its own.
Looks like one of the lost Marx Brothers...
Yes. His name was Jaco.
Cordially,
"At root, it is a religious problem."
Absolutely. The real case against utilitarianism IMO is that one of our primary requirements as humans is that we need to be something more than utilitarians.
Secular Humanists (at any rate the ones I have discussed this with) have opined that the religious impulse is a result of half-understood complexity in the human animal.
Religious people OTOH will contend that our religious impulse - that is, our requirement and desire for something beyond what is immediately apparent or available in human experience - defines our humanity along with free will. It is imprinted in us, an imprimatur or maker's mark.
Interesting biographical point.
I'm not so sure about that. The problem boils down to that of defining "the highest moral good."
A basic expression of relativism might be along the lines of "whatever works best for me," (or us; or for "society," however defined; or for "the species," again however defined). Alternatively, a relativist approach might be built on "concensus," or "what feels right." Any of these are open to judgement on utilitarian grounds, as some will "work better" than others (the definition of "better" being also open to interpretation).
It's much more difficult for us to say that something "IS right," or "IS wrong," because we have trouble finding real evidence to support the claim. When you look at it, this position logically requires the existence of some supernatural agent, both to define right and wrong, and more importantly, to enforce them.
And this is precisely the point at which relativist philosophy gains traction: as a culture we have lost our certainty in the existence of God, and as such have lost our hold on right and wrong.
Seems like an appropriate time to post...
The Philosophers' Song
by Monty Python
Immanual Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart,
"I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he's pissed
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