The Challenge of Relativism: Its Nature and Limits

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THE CHALLENGE OF RELATIVISM

Continuum Studies in British Philosophy Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA Continuum Studies in British Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the field of philosophical research. Applying Wittgenstein - Rupert Read Berkeley and Irish Philosophy - David Berman Berkeley's Philosophy of Spirit - Talia Bettcher Bertrand Russell, Language and Linguistic Theory - Keith Green BertrandRusseWs Ethics - Michael K. Potter Boyle on Fire - William Eaton The Coherence ofHobbes's Leviathan - Eric Brandon Doint Austin Justice - Wilfrid Rumble The Early Wittgenstein on Religion - J. Mark Lazenby F.P. Ramsey, edited by Maria J. Frapolli Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge - Dennis Desroches Hume's Social Philosophy - Christopher Finlay Hume's Theory of Causation - Angela Coventry Idealist Political Philosophy - Colin Tyler Iris Murdoch's Ethics - Megan La very John Stuart Mill's Political Philosophy - John Fitzpatrick Matthew Tindal, Freethinker - Stephen Lalor The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer - Michael Taylor Popper, Objectivity and the Growth of Knowledge - John H. Sceski Rethinking Mill's Ethics - Colin Heydt Russell's Theory of Perception - SajahanMiah Russell and Wittgenstein on the Nature of Judgement - Rosalind Carey Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Natural Philosophy - Stephen J. Finn Thomas Reid's Ethics — William C. Davis Wittgenstein andGadamer — Chris Lawn Wittgenstein and the Theory of Perception - Justin Good Wittgenstein at his Word — Duncan Richter Wittgenstein on Ethical Inquiry — Jeremy Wisnewski Wittgenstein's Religious Point of View - Tim Labron

THE CHALLENGE OF RELATIVISM Its Nature and Limits

PATRICK J. J. PHILLIPS

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Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Patrick J.J. Phillips 2007 First published 2007 Paperback edition first published 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-8264-9795-6 ISBN:PB: 978-1-4411-7885-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk

An open mind is all very well in its own way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or it may befound a little drafty. Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh

This book is dedicated to Hilary Phillips

Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

1

The Grounds of Relativism: A Plethora of Opinion The Roots of Relativism The Nay-Sayers Please Define Your Terms Will the Real Relativist Please Stand Up? Relativism and the Postmodern Conclusion

5 5 13 16 18 22 25

2

The Branches of Relativism: Classical to Modern Classical Relativism Do Incoherence Arguments Beg the Question? Can the Relativist Defend Relativism Non-Relativistically? Modern Relativism Framework Relativism Relativism and Anti-Realism Does Realism Require a "God's-Eye View"? "Western" Logic Conclusion

27 27 29 31 32 35 37 42 44 47

3

A Root of Relativism: Wittgenstein and Scepticism Was Wittgenstein a Relativist? Language Games I Style and Method Language Games II Scepticism and Relativism Grammatical Relativism Conclusion

49 50 51 55 62 65 72 75

viii

Contents

4

A Root of Relativism: Winch and Culture Understanding Explaining Systemization Relativism Relativism as Tolerance I Conclusion

77 84 86 89 93 98 100

5

The Pluralist Tree: Rorty, Relativism, Diversity and Tolerance The Linguistic Turn Rorty's Critique of Representationalism Rorty and the Influence of Wittgenstein Is Rorty a Relativist? Is Rorty's Relativism Coherent? Relativism as Tolerance II Relativism as Tolerance III. Carl Schmitt: Relativist Relativism and Deliberation: A Case Study Teflon vs. Ruthless Liberalism

102 102 107 112 115 122 125 130 134 136

Conclusion

140

Bibliography

144

Index

153

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Lorraine Code FRS, for all her help, support and encouragement during the time I have spent thinking and writing on the topic of relativism. My debt to Professor Code in this relation is enormous. I would also like to recognize the intellectual debt owed to Professor Cheryl Misak at the University of Toronto, especially for her identification and provision of materials relating to the topic of relativism. I would also like to thank Professor R.F. Atkinson of Exeter University for his encouragement. Lastly, I would like to thank Wing See Suen, LL.B., for her kindness and generosity of spirit which has made the, often fraught, process of writing easier to bear.

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Introduction

The question of whether relativism is a coherent philosophical doctrine has been a perennial one in philosophy since the time of Plato, who writes of Protagoras' attempt at formulating a relativistic doctrine to the effect that a proposition p can at the same time be true for one person and false for another and that both are right from their respective standpoints. Relativism raises questions concerning the nature of knowledge and/or truth, i.e. whether or not knowledge is essentially subjective. Is knowledge relative to personal conviction, to time, to place, to historical epoch, to language, to conceptual framework, to a society, culture or ethnicity? (Siegel 1987, xiii). The ideas expressed in this book are negative in the following sense. I do not attempt to refute relativism by establishing the absolute nature of truth, or by founding knowledge on a secure and indubitable basis. Rather, I try to get to the bottom of the question concerning relativism's "evergreen" appeal. How can relativism be neatly dispensed with in college and university first-year classrooms around the globe as "self-refuting" or "incoherent" and yet continue to be rehearsed and applied in fields as wide-ranging as Philosophy of Religion, Business Ethics, Cultural Studies, Bio-Ethics and the Philosophy of Education? Furthermore, what are the sources that feed into relativism in the contemporary moment and what can be identified to account for relativism's pervasive attractiveness as an "epistemology of choice"? Most importantly, how efficacious is the application of relativism to the pressing problems of cross-cultural understanding and conflict resolution? In other words, a study of relativism affords a welcome opportunity to map connections between epistemology and the effects of epistemology on politics and the moral sphere, connections that are often not recognized as genuine in philosophy. Although this book often discusses "cultural relativism", the book does not constitute a comparative empirical study of cultures foreign to the English-speaking western world. The cultural relativism that I investigate in chapters two, three and four flows from the pens of western writers. It is important to recognize that the definition of "relativism" is itself a contested issue and relativism as it appears in contemporary writings is an amorphous

9

The Challenge of Relativism

concept about which a variety of opinions is held. Far from being an intellectual position for which arguments are made available, relativism is often viewed as a feature of the received knowledge of the twenty-first century, while any challenge to relativism's intellectual hegemony is portrayed as both reactionary and/or morally suspect. I attempt a survey of the conditions under which relativism has achieved this peculiar and influential status in chapter one. Moreover, relativism should not be seen as merely a "contemporary" doctrine. Thus, I also attempt to comment on relativism's philosophical roots in the work of Greek, Enlightenment and PostEnlightenment thinkers. Relativism within academia is highly influential (all that a theory can be within such a body). But as a starting point, an assumption, in social and political contexts it must, I will argue, be recognized not only as highly influential, but as a highly influential form of scepticism. Relativism as scepticism is different from its classical counterpart in that it is influential, not only as an item of intellectual commerce, but in terms of its effects in social and political contexts. Unlike classical scepticism which was, almost wholly, a mostly harmless and "highbrow" scratching post of theologians, professors and gentlemen of means, the new scepticism (relativism) not only enjoys a wide-ranging currency but also, as I will argue later in the book, has pernicious characteristics, especially when employed as an "epistemology of choice" to promote cross-cultural tolerance and understanding. The analogies between classical scepticism and relativism are legion and hopefully will become clearer to the reader throughout the book. However, I outline some of the main points of contact below. Classical Greek and seventeenth-century scepticism disavows any claim to knowledge as being veridical. Modern relativism posits knowledge as local, bounded, culturally relative and limited. Classical scepticism in its most extreme forms denies that any knowledge is possible at all. Modern relativism embraces the claim that what we call knowledge is not a representation of the world, a mirror, but merely a narrative, a discourse, a practice. Classical scepticism in its Greek roots is an acknowledgment of the strong hubris of man (see Francks 2003); his ego often driving him to believe himself capable of standing in God-like judgement over creation (classical scepticism being an intellectual salve to this tendency). Similarly, modern relativism is often cast as a reminder that knowledge is relative to culture, to gender or ethnicity and therefore to stand in judgement over that which is "other" is an epistemic, if not moral, crime. Lastly, classical scepticism suggests that the very uncertainty of knowledge not only humbles us, but renders us more open to the claims and practices of others. For like the role of the classical sceptic relativism also suggests that the realization that

Introduction

3

knowledge is contingent and historically and culturally bounded within a framework leads us to tolerate the claims and practices of others who may be differently situated (after all, those claims and practices must be "as correct" or "as right" as our own). And to do other is a will to power or expression of the ego and all the intellectual fascism that entails. As stated above, such points of analogy are recurrent themes throughout the book. What follows then is a survey of the relativist phenomenon over a range of historical periods and disciplinary categories. With the exception of the final chapter and my discussion of the problem of deliberation (POD) and its relation to liberalism, I rehearse the arguments of others throughout. I therefore make no claims to philosophical originality in terms of the arguments surveyed, only in the re-application of the arguments of others to new ends. I realized straightaway that, in writing on the topic, it would be unfeasible to document (exhaustively) the rise from classical formulations of relativism to its contemporary forms in the space afforded by one book. For the sake of clarity and focus, I have chosen a strong and influential thread in the larger rope that is relativism's biography, a thread that has done much to promote relativism as an epistemological theory in western thought. By tracing such a thread, I believed I would be better positioned to discuss the attraction of relativism in moral and political theory and its application in the wider contemporary social context. The thread I have opted to focus on is the relativistic legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein through those heavily influenced by his work, particularly Peter Winch and Richard Rorty. This focus suggests itself for several reasons. The first is the move away from the classical or individualistic statements of relativism that hold that all knowledge is relative to the individual to communal-based models that hold that knowledge is relative to the community that produces it. The work of Wittgenstein suggests itself in so much as it is emblematic in its move away from the "contents of individual consciousness" or "immediate experience" as the departure point for philosophical investigation to the logic of meaning as enshrined in 'social practice and praxis' (Hacker 1996). Indeed the trajectory of Wittgenstein's philosophical development from the Tractatus to the Investigations confirms this move. As such, Wittgenstein's work and its influence provides a ready-made context for the discussion of the development from the classical individualistic form of relativism to the contemporary communal forms. As already mentioned, I will also argue that relativism finds its partial root in scepticism concerning the ability to make veridical knowledge claims or to efficaciously discriminate between competing knowledge claims. Wittgenstein's last work, On Certainty, addresses philosophical scepticism

4


directly and will be a useful juncture for discussing the close ties between relativism and scepticism. Wittgenstein also discusses directly the problem of deliberation (POD) in his treatment of inter-cultural understanding. His paper "Remarks on Frazer's The Golden Bough" is superb ground for the discussion of the relativity of knowledge and truth and the fallout of such questions in relation to the moral and political problems of tolerance, diversity and inter-cultural understanding. Lastly, Wittgenstein's mature philosophy has served as a prime mover in regard to a cornucopia of disciples, followers and admirers many of whom I will document here and several of whom have interpreted Wittgenstein as promoting relativism or have developed Wittgenstein's philosophy on relativistic lines. Accordingly I dedicate a chapter to Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism, a chapter to Winch's "Wittgensteinian" wrestling with the problem of deliberation and a chapter to Rorty's "Wittgenstein inspired" account of the promotion of tolerance and understanding. Relativism, both in its historical and contemporary manifestation, raises questions for the logician, the philosopher, the anthropologist, the social theorist and the politician. How and in what ways is scepticism related to relativism? To what degree is relativism coherent? What is the nature of relativism's appeal? What are the roots of relativism and how are they related to the tree of pluralism? To what degree, if at all, is relativism a useful deliberative tool in political and moral analysis? Does relativism help us with the problem of deliberation, i.e. does relativism aid in making sense of and/or resolving cultural clash? It is to these questions and the identification, investigation and critical assessment of relativism as an intellectual position and an epistemology of choice that this book is dedicated.

Chapter One

The Grounds of Relativism: A Plethora of Opinion

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim. Lord Macaulay

The Roots of Relativism One might believe it "possible to move freely from one context, epoch, culture, language or personal point of view to another, taking our beliefs, customs and moral principles with us quite unchanged. One might also think that one could bring these beliefs and principles to bear upon the beliefs, customs and moral principles of any other culture and its linguistic milieu. Furthermore, one might think that one could come to an unambiguous understanding of the beliefs of others, that one could adopt the practices and customs of a foreign culture, and could assess objectively the valuation criteria of other moral and epistemic orders by the standards of one's own community or culture'' (Krausz and Harre 1996, 135). Such possibilities are now and have been, for many years, strongly denied. As Allan Bloom infamously comments in The Closing of the American Mind (1987, 12): "almost every student entering university believes . . . that truth is relative"; that is to say, that questions of truth or falsehood (or right or wrong) are in some form relative and that such questions are always internal to some specific individual. Bloom's observation might be viewed as prophetic inasmuch as the assumption of relativism is currently even more promiscuous, the boundary of the legitimacy of any given statement no longer being the amorphous boundary of the individual, but often the boundary line of "group", "culture", "religion", "ethnicity" or "methodology" or "gender". Any given statement must, therefore, be judged, as Christopher Norris puts it, "in accordance with their own immanent criteria". As Norris remarks, any dissenting critique that does not accept this received relativistic ontology can be viewed as an " 'enlightened' . .. appeal to dogmatic (quasi-universal) standards of justice and truth" (Norris 1996, 15),

6


and therefore any remark that is seen as making such an appeal must be viewed as at best naive and at worst suspect or imperialistic. Friedel Weinert puts the point strongly: "the modern age is marked by the renunciation of the possibility of the one true ontological statement about the world. The modern age has abandoned the search for truth and has opened the door to relativism" (Weinert 1984, 376). If he is right, this move need not be viewed as wholly negative. Ernest Beckner, for example, in his article "The Truth About Truth", views relativism as a cause for celebration, an event that marks an emancipation from the Enlightenment chimera of the fruitless search for the one absolute and incontrovertible truth: "future historians will record it as one of the great, liberating breakthroughs of all time, and it happened in ours" (quoted in Anderson 1995, 17). The "breakthrough" is the identification of a truth and this truth, the truth of relativism, will open up new vistas of self-understanding, which in turn will clear the way for the understanding and tolerance of others and other cultures. Philosophy is no longer engaged in the futile attempt to find the "absolute truth"; with this realization, modern philosophy has ceased to "chase its own tail". The appeal of relativism then is widespread, as Robert Nola remarks: "Long an outcast from philosophy, relativism has, for most of this century found a home in the doctrines of most (but not all) sociologists of science, several historians of science and a handful of philosophers of science" (Nola 2003, 96). Nola's statement is perhaps too conservative, for relativism has also found a home in disciplines as diverse as politics, bio-ethics, gender studies and aesthetics. Why does relativism appear so attractive and draw adherents from so many mainstream disciplines? It will be worthwhile to pause at this juncture in order to offer a sample of some of the reasons that attest to the appeal of relativism and form the social, intellectual and historical conditions under which relativism continues to flourish. First, when confronted with the diversity and heterogeneous nature of human cultures, both of the groups that reside within a culture and the relations of that culture to others, it is tempting to view the unanimity of truth or the establishment of an objective view of the world as an impossible dream. That is, because there are so many differing and irreconcilable views, approaches and assumptions, all of which are sincerely held and regarded as veridical by those who hold and profess them, the achievement of truth is both elusive and daunting. As anthropologist William Graham Sumner argues in his book Folkways: "Every attempt to win an outside standpoint from which to reduce the whole to an absolute philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is delusion" (Sumner 1987, 21). Relativism has also been viewed as emancipatory

The Grounds of Relativism

1

in a slightly different way in that it frees the thinker from the view that knowledge must necessarily be founded on a foundational, immutable and absolute epistemological principle. As Paul Feyerabend famously puts it: The idea of a fixed method or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please either their instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, "objectivity", "truth", it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes. (Feyerabend 1987, 21) Over time, as the vistas of the Northern countries have been exposed to different cultures and different societal systems, the very existence of this vast cornucopia of viewpoints, beliefs and moralities has suggested to many that there cannot be one overarching or universal truth, but only many different perspectives and approaches. Indeed to believe otherwise is to be viewed as reactionary and retrograde. As Paul O'Grady identifies it: In so far as there are many different societies, many different points of view, there is no single defining view that fixes truth about any of these issues. Attempts to do so are often branded as cultural or intellectual imperialism - typically the imperialism of western middle-class men. Those who endorse such a critique typically view philosophy itself as inextricably tied up with these imperialistic tendencies and strike out in a different direction. (O'Grady 2002, 12) The anthropological struggle with imperialism will be taken up in more detail in a discussion of the work of Peter Winch. William J. Wainright in his article "Does Disagreement Imply Relativism?", comments: "it is a truism that one's own confidence in one's own opinions and assumptions is often shaken when one finds informed, sensitive and intelligent people who fail to share them. One's doubts are likely to deepen when one finds that one's intellectual adversaries are not convinced by the arguments one introduces to establish the superiority of one's own insights" (Wainright 1986, 10). Such a sentiment is taken further in True For You, But Not For Me, where Paul Coplan characterizes it in the following way: "If people have significant, almost irreconcilable differences in vital things such as religion, morality, politics, and philosophy, doesn't it seem rash or even arrogant to say one perspective is true and all others are partly

8


or wholly wrong? The sensible conclusion to draw, allegedly, is that relativism must be true" (Coplan 1998, 32). Note how such statements move from a descriptive thesis (from the recognition that there is a large and varied difference of opinion) to a prescriptive thesis (that relativism ought to be acknowledged as true). Such a move is a form of genetic fallacy. For to understand how a particular strand of knowledge has developed is not to fully account for the veracity of that knowledge. As such, this move alone (from the descriptive to the prescriptive) affords insufficient grounds to establish relativism. However, such a brief survey does begin to explain how, when people are faced with a multitude of varying opinions, principles, views and assumptions, relativism (the view that all positions are correct for those that hold them) becomes an attractive position, i.e. it allows for all competing knowledge claims to be accounted for without the always challenging and often torturous process of epistemological and political investigation and assessment. To offer a further representative sampling, Robert Kirk in his book Relativism and Reality: A Contemporary Introduction comments: Relativism is weirdly seductive. In some moments we know perfectly well that the world doesn't depend on us. Yet we - some of us anyway are easily excited by statements like "even reality is relative." Perhaps we get intoxicated by the suggestion that we have the power to construct our own reality. Certainly the ways we think about the world depend on us: on our capacities, interests, values, temperaments, points of view. The world really does strike different people in different ways. (Kirk 1999, 167) In Mind, Language and Society, John R. Searle in his critique of relativism takes seriously the sentiment that "we have the power to construct our own reality". For Searle, it is the denial of realism (i.e. that there is a reality, separate from our minds, which we can know and represent correctly, or incorrectly, by our concepts and language) that signals a move towards a relativistic, constructionist position. Of this move, he has the following to say: "I have to confess, however, that I think there is a much more persistent appeal in all forms of anti-realism, and this has become obvious in the twentieth century: it satisfies a basic urge to power. It just seems too disgusting, somehow, that we should have to be at the mercy of the 'real world.' It seems too awful that our representations should be answerable to anything but us" (Searle 1998, 34). He concludes as follows: "If the real world is just an invention - a social construct designed to oppress marginalized elements of society - then let us get rid of the real world and construct the world we want. That, I think, is the real driving psychological force behind anti-realism at the end of the twentieth century" (36).


9

Harry G. Frankfurt, in his colloquially titled book On Bullshit, identifies a social trend that gives ground to relativistic thinking by virtue of its rejection of realism, that is: . . . a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the idea of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns towards trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself. (Frankfurt 2005, 65) Identifying a different set of conditions under which relativism can thrive, Francis Fukuyama casts relativism as a reaction against the imperial and colonial ideologies of the last two centuries. In his book The End of History, he writes: . . . cultural relativism (a European invention) has seemed plausible to our century because for the first time Europe found itself forced to confront non-European cultures in a serious way through the experience of colonialism and de-colonialism. Many of the developments of the past century - the decline of the moral self-confidence of European civilization, the rise of the Third World, and the emergence of new ideologies tended to reinforce the belief in relativism. (Fukuyama 1992, xi) In the post-colonial experience, the appeal of relativism is strong also for writers who perceive an opportunity to employ cultural relativism as a basis to underpin a principle of tolerance. In his book Rationality, Bryan R. Wilson identifies the "ghost of Levy-Bruhl", an anthropologist who "sought to distinguish modern man's logicality from the 'pre-logical' mentality of primitive man" as the "thing to be exorcised" (Wilson 1970, 38). Geoffrey Harrison argues from relativistic premises to the conclusion that people should not interfere with the practices of ethnic and minority groups, nor should they attempt to "civilize" native peoples by bringing them into the mainstream view of modern society. And as M. Herskovits puts it: "Ethnocentrism is rationalized and made the basis of programmes of action detrimental to the well being of other peoples. Relativism is, for many, an attractive position as it seems to expunge the notion that one way of thinking, one doctrine or one culture is intrinsically superior to another in some absolute or universal sense" (Herskovits 1972, 13). In these ways,

10


relativism is seen to bring with it a form of understanding that promotes tolerance. For Herskovits, "That a larger measure of tolerance is needed in this conflict-torn world needs no arguing." Relativism is advantageous, according to Herskovits, in that "in practice, the philosophy of relativism is the philosophy of tolerance" (1972, 15). That is, the belief that no one way of thinking, no one culture, is superior to or better than any other would lead to a greater level of acceptance of practices different from our own, a notion of central importance and one that I will return to later. Relativism did emerge early in western thought in a dialogue of Plato (The Protagoras - a book that will be examined below in some detail for its relativistic contributions) and arguments of the relativistic pedigree came to the fore in the seventeenth century. John Locke (1690) famously employed the notion of cultural relativity to deny the existence of innate ideas, i.e. the notion that we are all born with certain ideas regardless of our experience and development. Locke here proposes an early version of the nature versus nurture debate, coming down heavily, on this occasion, on the nurture side. As explorers from Europe ventured into previously uncharted areas outside of the continent, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) meditated on the implications of cultural difference when he stated "three degrees of latitude reverse the whole of jurisprudence, a meridian decides about truth". Later, Condillac, in his book Traite des sensations, identified what he believed to be the subjectivity of knowledge and its close connection with opinion rather than universal truth when he stated: "Ideas in no way allow us to know beings as they actually are; they merely depict them in terms of their relationship with us; and this alone is enough to prove the vanity of the efforts of those philosophers who pretend to penetrate the nature of things." The subjectivity and seeming cultural contingency of knowledge invoked by these writers was not viewed as necessarily a bad or harmful phenomenon and tolerance was a purported benefit of relativistic conceptions of knowledge. Moreover, Greek sceptics had argued 1600 years before Pascal that scepticism (a rejection of the notion of certainty concerning knowledge) was, in fact, a valuable thing (see Francks 2005). For the Greek sceptics, the basic idea was: all bad things come from the holding of opinions. Bearing this in mind, consider the following examples: 1) War and conflict: How could war and conflict ever get started if no one believed anything? To obviate the very possibility of war by virtue of the fact that no certainties exist to fight over is, so the sceptic would have it, a positive thing. 2) Disappointment: Disappointment, as an individual experiences it, flows out of some belief or expectation being proven to be false. So, for one to have no expectations or beliefs is to avoid disappointment and the avoidance of disappointment is, again, a positive thing. Indeed, the overarching message of the Greek sceptics in


11

this relation was that the suspension of judgement (epoche) would lead to peace of mind (ataraxia). Similarly, the Libertins Erudits of the Renaissance period followed suit and denied all learning on sceptical grounds for very similar motives (Francks 2005). Interestingly, these observations, as we shall see, find their echo in contemporary and postmodern writings on the topic of relativism. As I have suggested, the roots of relativistic thinking have a long and distinguished pedigree. However, relativism itself did not begin to become as strongly influential as it is today until the nineteenth century. Patrick Gardiner, in his article "German Philosophy and the Rise of Relativism", pointed out that modern relativism has two principal roots: in Immanuel Kant's Copernican revolution that insists upon the human contribution to knowledge (Critique of Pure Reason), and injohann Gottfried Herder's recognition of the "irreducibility" of cultures and the diversity of human nature formed and shaped by those cultures (Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind). Immanuel Kant's "Copernican revolution" in philosophy involved the radical idea that it was the individual who shaped reality through the nature of their own perception of it. Kant achieved this masterful metaphysic through his opposition of the phenomenal character of reality, that which was negotiated through the categories of one's own perception, and the noumenal reality, or reality as it was in-itself without the (unavoidably) distorting "lens" that our perceptions brought to it (Salmon 2006). This idea of Kant's was not only radical in its scope and execution but also because it unseated the too comfortable notion, both inside and outside of philosophy, that reality was, simply, just something "there", something found and immutable. After Kant, no philosopher could speak on the nature of reality without giving consideration to what degree reality was shaped and dictated by one's perceptions of it (Salmon 2006). Although Kant's observations are logical rather than psychological in character, from such meditations it was but a small step to consider, not only how the perceptual apparatus of the perceiver shaped reality, but also how the biography of the perceiver might play a role in what constituted reality and, by further implication, how contextual, social and cultural factors affected the "construction" of the individual's conception of "the real" (Salmon 2006). It is this move from individual to communal and social focus that has been a major contributor to the rise of modern forms of relativism and will be a topic I will return to throughout. As Kant provided fertile ground for the roots of relativistic thinking to take hold, so did Herder. But Herder's emphasis was different. Herder's focus was on culture rather than on the individual. Herder can be viewed

12


as reacting against the Enlightenment idea of a single, universal human nature and a single vision of "how the mind works" (Salmon 2006). His work, in part, is a rejection of the notion of inevitable development of all societies through identical fixed stages culminating in an ideal state. Such a vision of "inevitable" social evolution as determinate, positive progress was widespread during the growing pains of the new science of anthropology and is to be found encapsulated extremely well in the work of Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte insisted that the development of mankind was on a determinate historical track. Societies developed through identifiable stages from one end of the track, superstition, to progress along to the other end of the track, sophistication. The sophisticated "ideal state" often being identified (Eurocentrically) as that which found expression in the majority of Northern countries. Comte's work provides a theoretical basis under which it was possible to identify non-western cultures as holding a position on the historical track that was "underdeveloped" or "uncivilized" or even "backward" or "degenerate" when compared to the "progressive" cultures of Europe. Herder's vision is radically different from that found in Comte's writing as Herder emphasizes differences among societies and holds that each society is to be understood in terms of its own values, beliefs and ideals, rather than by viewing societies foreign to our own as struggling from primitivism to "progress", becoming replicas of our own Northern societies. This approach proved fruitful in that it stressed difference over similarity. It led to new insight and understanding as the anthropologist moved away from the view that all "alien" cultures must (in a metaphysical sense) conform to a preordained pattern of historical development. Herder was also quick to point out that it would be fallacious to judge societies foreign to our own by attempting to adopt some standpoint which transcends all societies and allows them to be measured by a single standard (Salmon 2006). For Herder, we come to realize that other societies have their own values and ideals - including their own moral codes - which are just as valid for them as ours are for us and which we are not in a position to condemn in any absolute sense (Salmon 2006). As a result, the moral notions, edicts or imperatives of an "alien" culture are to be regarded as "right" for them. It is because of these sentiments, concerning the central role that the individual plays in the shaping of his/her own perception of "the real" and the requirement for contextual understanding and the necessary limitations on cross-cultural judgement, that both Kant and Herder can be seen as precursors of the serious consideration of cultural and moral relativism which was not only a prominent part of anthropology in the first part of the twentieth


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century, but which, as I will argue, continues to grow to become heavily influential in the twenty-first century.

The Nay-Sayers Although the relativist vision is a popular one, it is not without its dissenters. Thomas Nagel (1997) comments that to accept relativistic tendencies uncritically merely because they are "fashion" or "the order of the day" is a symptom of the degeneration of analytic thought. Ernest Gellner is more forceful in his condemnation of this popular academic trend: Relativism . . . is objectionable because it leads to cognitive nihilism, which is simply false, and also because it possibly misrepresents the way in which we actually understand societies and cultures. It denies or obscures tremendous differences in cognition and technical power, differences that are crucial for the understanding of current developments of human society. A vision that obscures which matters most cannot be sound. (Gellner 1992, 109) In Nagel's book The Last Word, he comments that the growing popularity of the philosophy of relativism runs concurrently with "a growth in the already extreme laziness of contemporary culture and the collapse of serious argument throughout the lower reaches of the humanities and the social sciences" (Nagel 1997, 10). Although I have attempted to demonstrate the popular appeal of relativism, the viewing of relativism as an instigator of tolerance is itself by no means universal. For example in his article on race relations, sociologist Orlando Patterson says of relativism as a principle of tolerance: "True enough [relativism] is often associated with a liberal tolerant attitude. But it is doubtful whether the association is in any way causal . . . Relativism, in fact, can be associated just as easily with a reactionary view of the world, and can easily be used to rationalize inaction, complacency and even the wildest forms of oppression" (Patterson 1973-74, 126). Such a sentiment is echoed by I.C. Jarvie when he states: "relativism trades on a weakness of the received epistemology. But it may be sufficient for de-romanticizing relativism to show that nothing exciting follows from it. If one believes liberalism follows from it one is mistaken. What follows from it is impotence and appeasement" (Jarvie 1995,51). A detailed discussion of the relationship between relativism and tolerance will be taken up in the final chapter. Nevertheless, it will be useful to illustrate the nature of the relationship here. Relativism is often purported to reveal a truth that all cultures, all practices and all methodologies are true

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by virtue of their contextualization. No one culture, practice, etc. can imperialize (in any legitimate sense) its views over another. As will be seen, many have concluded that relativism leads to tolerance and understanding. However, with such a claim in mind a counter-relativist critique is carried out by Reza Afshari in his book, Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism. Afshari shows the "irrelevance" of cultural relativism by illustrating how despite its metaphysical assertions, piously proclaiming moral superiority, and its cultural claims to exceptionality, the Islamic Republic of Iran behaved remarkably similarly to other authoritarian states, not only in the use of repressive means to secure the end of state security, but also in its denials of human rights violations. In this way, the appeal of relativism as an epistemological underpinning for a principle of tolerance is rendered questionable. Moreover, Afshari points to another danger that the appeal to cultural relativism brings with it: "by presenting the problem as theoretical, the cultural relativist approach may weaken the existing accountability" (Afshari 2001, 45). That is, the pro-relativist, by concentrating his or her analysis on the subjectivity of cross-cultural moral judgement, may weaken appeals to pre-existing human rights that have been established after great effort and at great cost. Ruth Macklin, in Against Relativism: Cultural Diversity and the Searchfor Ethical Universals in Medicine (1999), raises questions about the efficacy of cultural relativism as a rallying point for the causes of tolerance and diversity in health care. Macklin holds, I believe correctly, that it is sometimes difficult to determine whether the relativist rejection of the veracity and therefore the legitimacy of cross-cultural judgements stems from "a postmodern challenge to ethical universality or from a concern for politically oppressed minorities" (1999, 7). She notes that an appeal to relativism is also invoked when those outside a culture "seek to bring about changes in internal customs or traditions" of another culture and points out that "such actions were common among European colonial powers and the Christian missionaries who saw themselves as undertaking the 'white man's burden.' These efforts eventually fell into disrepute as benighted attempts to 'civilize the natives'" (25). Given the tarnished history of cross-cultural judgement and interference in the social and religious practices of native people, it is not surprising that today cross-cultural judgement invites extreme suspicion. Macklin criticizes cross-cultural judgement as: "a new form of cultural imperialism not as an ethical version of'neocolonialism'" (26). Cultural relativism may seem attractive because it seemingly undercuts the view that cross-cultural judgements are in any way legitimate. As an epistemological theory, it finds a political use inasmuch as it protects underdeveloped countries from the potential privations visited upon them by the


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imperialism of the cross-cultural judgements of the west. Although it is attractive in theory, "cultural relativism as politics" has its drawbacks. Macklin recounts the following story: I participated in a meeting in Chile in which a young woman told a story that shocked my Western (or "Northern", to use the currently preferred term) ethical sensibilities. The majority of Chileans are of European origin, but there remain a few scattered indigenous groups outside the large cities. One such group continues to practice a traditional ritual in which newborn infants are sacrificed. (6) In reaction to this practice, the government of Chile forbade the sacrifices by law and succeeded in bringing them to a halt. However, soon thereafter the area where the indigenous group dwelt was affected by a severe drought which caused the group great hardship. According to Macklin, the group "contended that the gods were punishing them for their failure to carry on the ritual sacrifices required by their religion and blamed the state for its prohibition of human sacrifice" (7). Many people in Chile spoke up and condemned the government for what they perceived as the illegitimate imposition of power and authority over a weaker indigenous group. Macklin counters that the group was doing something ethically unacceptable by killing babies and that "there was no scientific validity to their belief that human sacrifice could prevent drought or that to resume the sacrifice would end the drought" (8). However, as Macklin attests in her book, the reaction to her view was not a positive one: "The woman who told me [of the situation] scorned my ethical concerns and considered me an unenlightened victim of narrow Western (Northern) scientific and ethical dogmatism" (8). The woman's response to Macklin was: "that is their belief; the belief in modern science is your belief. Both are simply beliefs" (8). For Macklin, underpinning the cultural relativist position is epistemological relativism: "the view that systems of belief about the natural world differ from one culture to another and so, too, do the ways ofjustifying beliefs about 'matters of fact.' No one belief system can be held to be more valid than the next. Beliefs based on modern science are no more true than beliefs based on myth or superstition" (8). It is because relativism carries with it such epistemological implications that Harvey Siegel describes relativism as "the radical and potentially destructive doctrine that it is perceived by its critics to be" (Siegel 1987, 3). However, running in concert with such disquietudes of the nay-sayers is the view that relativism itself is unworthy of sustained investigation. The view is that relativism (in any of its formulations) notoriously contradicts itself; that is to say, it "dissolves" logically the moment it is

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formulated, and in this sense, in Sir Karl Popper's phrase, it is merely a "verbal spook" (1994, 393). In his book Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery, Christopher Herbert identifies the tension between relativism's reputation as self-refuting "spook" and its widespread appeal and application. He asks: "How can one make intelligible the seeming disparity between, on the one hand, the narrowly technical philosopheme, the axiom of Protagoras, on which relativistic thinking is founded and, on the other, the vast elaboration it has received in moral discourse?" (Herbert 1999, 4). As I am at pains to point out in this book, the answer to the puzzle as to why relativism finds such broad application in so many different contexts lies, in part, in the amorphous and diverse nature of the concept of relativism and also in the ways in which it has been construed and applied as a political instrument. The puzzling and sometimes amorphous nature of relativism was identified as early as 1971 by P.H. Nowell-Smith when he made the following perspicacious observation: Many social scientists call themselves "cultural relativists" and take the doctrine for granted; yet, because it is seldom set out in detail, still less defended by argument, it is difficult to discover precisely what the doctrine is, or even what sort of doctrine it is - an empirical thesis, a conceptual analysis of such terms as "culture", "mores", "value" and "duty", or a set of injunctions and prohibitions that we are asked to accept on moral or on methodological grounds. (1971, 12) The intellectually frustrating and miasmal character that Nowell-Smith identifies surrounding writings on relativism (either intentional or otherwise) continues into contemporary philosophical debate. It should be noted that the notion of cultural relativism has become more, rather than less, amorphous in the 36 years since this remark was framed, and yet relativism has become more widespread and has been much discussed in relation to the work of the "postmodern" and "post-colonial" movements. Cultural relativism has developed to the degree that it has occupied to a much greater extent Nowell-Smith's characterization inasmuch as it "seems to be more of an atmosphere than a doctrine" (1971, 18).

Please Define Your Terms As I have tried to indicate thus far, identifying the conditions under which relativism thrives as an amalgam of epistemological, moral and political


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elements poses problems to the would-be investigator. However, two further exegetical problems must be raised: the problem of definition and the problem of identification. The first problem resides in the fact that there exists no agreement amongst proponents (or critics) of relativism as to exactly what relativism should be understood to be. This problem can be construed as an irony or a subtle truth or both concerning the very nature of the relativists' claims. Thus, an investigation of the doctrine of relativism is beset with difficulties of the definitional kind. Some definitions of "relativism" are vague to the point of being opaque. Others seem so "weak" as to render questionable whether they qualify as relativism as classically understood or rather as a doctrine less philosophically problematic. Michael Krausz, editor of the volume Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation, states in his introduction that relativism is a doctrine holding that "cognitive, moral or aesthetic claims involving such values as truth, meaningfulness, rightness, reasonableness, appropriateness, aptness or the like are relative to the contexts in which they appear" (1989, 1). But does this capture the essential problematic of relativism? For at the heart of the debate over relativism is a problem, a problem that cashes out with reference to the scope and legitimacy of our cognitive and moral assertions. For example, if relativism is correct, then the legitimacy of cognitive and moral assertions outside the sphere of one's own culture is rendered at best problematic and at worst impossible (that is to say, without grounds). To claim that such difficulties of deliberation are non-problems for the simple reason that cross-cultural judgement need never be exercisedis, surely, no more than an avoidance of the continually growing and pressing phenomenon. Even those who propound relativism as a principle of tolerance are hard pressed to accept cultural practices universally; consider, for example the highly contentious issue of the morality (or immorality) of female circumcision, or the cutting off of hands as a punitive measure for the crime of petty theft. To back-track, the Krausz definition of relativism seems to be unedifying or beside the (philosophical) point. For both the epistemologist and the moral philosopher would be unlikely to dispute such a benevolent contextualization thesis. Both the relativist and the anti-relativist would be hard pressed to deny that knowledge claims are made in a context of some description. What is interesting about relativism is not that all claims, epistemic, moral or otherwise, appear within a cultural background or context; but that what makes such claims correct or true is a function of the context within which they appear, which, intuitively at least, seems both inconsistent and unsupportable. Krausz also states that "relativism denies the validity of grounding pertinent claims in a-historical, a-cultural, or absolutist terms" (1996, 2). However, apart from the religious fundamentalists who circumvent such

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philosophical engagement altogether, who today would ground claims in such terms? Krausz goes on to inform us that relativism is the claim that "standards are formulable only internal to conceptual frameworks" (1996, 2). But as Donald Davidson has claimed in his paper "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (in Davidson 1984), it is by no means clear that a relativist or anti-relativist would deny such a claim about standards - much less that such a claim is definitive of, or leads necessarily to, a relativist position; yet Krausz acknowledges that "the range of positions characterizable as relativistic is varied and heterogeneous, so careful discussion of its versions resists refutation en block" (1996, 2). Echoing Putnam's observation that incoherence arguments simpliciter will not be enough (and to stop at these would, as I have argued elsewhere, "miss the target" [Phillips 1997]), I want to suggest that the correct method to the approach of relativism is a piecemeal approach, investigating both its coherence and its appeal as an epistemology of choice for the prolongation of tolerance and diversity. A relativism that suggests itself as a suitable focus is cultural relativism. Therefore I will attempt to take up one thread of the relativism debate by tracing the genesis of cultural relativism through the influence of the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the work of Peter Winch and Richard Rorty. In doing so, I hope to trace the genesis of relativism in one historical strand of philosophical inquiry and identify the strengths and weaknesses of the relativist position both in terms of internal coherence as well as the purported advantages the position brings to the values of tolerance and diversity.

Will the Real Relativist Please Stand Up? The second problem facing any investigation of relativism is closely related to the problem of definition. This is the problem of identification. Just as there is no agreement as to what exactly constitutes relativism, there is also no agreement on who, exactly, are the relativist theorists. Indeed, many of the writers who are identified as relativists go to elaborate lengths to avoid the label. In his book, Christopher Herbert describes "the spectacle of writers widely described as relativists or crypto-relativists rushing to denounce their own theories and to disavow publicly 'the great bugaboo' [relativism]" (Herbert 1999, 2). As he puts it, "Relativity, for all its alleged successes, has largely become the philosophy that dare not speak its name" (3). Richard Rorty, regarded by many as the present-day arch-relativist, remarks in his essay "Pragmatism": " 'Relativism' is the view that every


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belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic, is as good as any other . . . If there were any relativists, they would of course be easy to refute. One would merely use some variant of the self-referential arguments Socrates used against Protagoras" (Rorty 1998, 56). W.V.O. Quine (1969) and Paul Feyerabend (1987) both provide examples of retreat and disavowal. For example, in "Nature as a Work of Art", the relativist Feyerabend announces: "It is important not to fall into the trap of relativism." Clifford Geertz, who acknowledges that relativism is the constitutive principle of his own discipline, anthropology, states that "relativism . . . serves these days largely as a specter to scare us away from certain ways of thinking" (2000, 45). Nevertheless, he avoids a statement of his position that would place him firmly in the relativist camp, opting instead for his exquisitely hedged "antianti-relativism". Another example of this phenomenon is to be found within the pages of Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity, where he identifies relativism as the view that there are no objective values (over and above that of a particular culture and historical epoch). He roundly denounces this relativistic view, while at the same time adopting a "pluralism" that Popper and others would view as an extreme form of relativism. How is this so? In his book of 1991, Berlin rejects the ideology based on "faith in Universal, objective truth in matters of conduct" (a recipe for totalitarian tyranny) for a view of life "as affording a plurality of values, equally genuine, equally ultimate, above all equally objective; incapable, therefore of being ordered in a timeless hierarchy, or judged in terms of some absolute standard" thereby leaving the door open to accusations that come stomping through it. Accusations that "a plurality of values" all of which are "equally genuine" and incapable of being "judged in terms of an absolute standard" constitute the makings not only of a relativistic theory of ethics, but of a relativistic theory of knowledge as well (Berlin 1991, 45). However, it is T.S. Kuhn who is cited as the prime example of this form of relativistic "double think". Kuhn's work, while not explicitly relativist, contains a characterization of both knowledge and truth that lends itself to relativistic interpretation. It does so by suggesting, iconoclastically, that science, the methodology which is often presented as providing the very canon of truth and certainty, is both context dependent and historically contingent. Kuhn is famous for his assertion that the practice of normal science is constituted by "paradigms", by which he means: "accepted examples of actual science . . . which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together . . . provide models from which spring particular traditions of scientific research" (Kuhn 1970, 36). Normal science then becomes a matter of working within the boundaries of the governing paradigm, disclosing its

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possibilities and thereby its limitations. As normal science proceeds and problem-solving activities are carried out, anomalies begin to emerge situations in which the dominant paradigm does not work as it is supposed to work. Historically, circumstances have arisen, circumstances which the currently accepted paradigm cannot explain or make intelligible. According to Kuhn, this "stressing" of the paradigm continues to mount until its practitioners begin to doubt the paradigm itself and as a result, a crisis develops. Eventually, competing paradigms emerge, and a scientific revolution (38) occurs in which a new paradigm unseats the older established one. It is the process of scientific revolution that is highly contentious due to the questions it raises concerning the nature of scientific reasoning and rationality itself. The new paradigm that replaces the old during a scientific revolution is for Kuhn "incommensurable" with the old paradigm, for the new paradigm "necessitates a redefinition" (57) of the old. Since the evaluation of paradigms is internal to paradigms, it therefore follows that the change from an old paradigm to a new one cannot (logically) come about by appealing to some mutual or neutral criterion or method of paradigm selection. The most contentious aspect of Kuhn's account of scientific revolution is the claim that the replacement process is not facilitated by the verification/falsification process taken from "normal" science before the revolution, where certain data might be seen to falsify or verify claims within one paradigm or the other. Facts do not speak for themselves. That is to say, since the new paradigm is incommensurable with the old, embracing the new paradigm cannot be (according to Kuhn) a gradual, logical or "scientific" process based upon evidence or strictly formal reasoning. The paradigm shift is a "sudden and unstructured event" and the adoption of a new paradigm is akin to a "conversion experience", which often occurs in "defiance of the evidence", and moreover can "only be made on faith" (167). In summary, Kuhn observes: If two men disagree, for example, about the relative fruitfulness of their theories, or if they agree about that but disagree about the relative importance and fruitfulness of, say, scope in reaching a choice, neither can be convicted of a mistake. Nor is either being unscientific. There is no neutral algorithm for theory choice, no systematic decision procedure which, properly applied, must lead the individual in the group to the same decision. (59) Such observations have been influential in spawning various relativistic readings of Kuhn's work. The idea that a paradigm of normal science is a community-based, self-perpetuating and internally driven method


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of assessment and analysis, which cannot be neutrally judged but only replaced, has been re-applied promiscuously in many different contexts throughout the humanities. Larry Laudan, in Progress and its Problems, interprets Kuhn's position as both sceptical and relativistic since he understands Kuhn as claiming that "choices between competing scientific theories . . . must be irrational" (Laudan 1977, 106). Similar interpretations of the Kuhnian position, such as that of Feyerabend (1987), have led some thinkers to regard science as just another ideology - like that of religion or magic. Such a reading may be said to result in what Robert Baum has called "intellectual anarchism" (Baum 1987) or the end of the reign of reason. Stuart Sim is quite explicit on the matter. In Irony and Crisis: A Critical History of Postmodern Culture, Sim characterizes Kuhn as "postmodern" by stating: "Kuhn helps us to provide the basis for a postmodern philosophy of science with his relativist orientation" (Sim 2002, 154). It can be argued that given Kuhn's account of the epistemological force of paradigms, coupled with the incommensurability that he claims to exist between competing paradigms, and given that no neutral paradigm or criterion of assessment is available, relativism is born. Each paradigm is self-perpetuating in the generation of meaning and criteria of assessment, and no migration or comparison of meaning or criteria is possible between paradigms. Meaning, truth and knowledge are relative to the specific paradigm. Where relativists such as Kuhn err is in confusing ontological with epistemological questions in their historical analysis (see Norris 1991). Specifically, Kuhn incorrectly takes the sheer variety of truth claims put forward (and in many cases, later abandoned) through the history of science as evidence that there is no truth to be had other than the paradigmgoverned internalist perspective on truth and adequate explanation. The "paradigm governed" or "internalist" position can be characterized in the following way: to use an (often borrowed) statement from Wittgenstein, "The limits of my language are the limits of my world" (Tractatus Logic o-Philosophicus}', (for "world" read "episteme", "discourse", "conceptual scheme", "framework" or in this case "paradigm". But such a position is tenable only if ontological questions such as "what things exist?" and "what are the real attributes, structures, generative mechanisms, causal dispositions, etc?" are synonymous with epistemological questions such as "how does knowledge come about?" and "according to what criteria?" Roy Bhaskar, in Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, points out that by confusing these questions, the relativist deprives criticism of any effective purchase on the way in which science has actually developed, "amounting as it does to a species of cognitive scepticism devoid of critical content and

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lacking any basis for informed evaluative judgement" (Bhaskar 1986, 79). Thus, such a conception denies the relativist any critique of the potential science may have to be harnessed for the communal good. Therefore, in trying to understand the change and evolution of scientific knowledge, a form of relativism is tacitly and often uncritically assumed. Kuhn denies that his writings lead to relativistic conclusions. In his postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn attempts to avoid relativistic conclusions being drawn from his book by developing a metaphor of a tree (1970, 101). He describes the progress of science as analogous to a tree that grows many different branches, each branch representing a different paradigm. This metaphor neatly sidesteps the detailed objections of his detractors. By moving the description of paradigm change to the level of metaphor, a meta-narrative is generated within which particular and detailed objections cannot easily find purchase. Moreover, the notion of the holistic continuity of science over time is retained in the image of the tree (and its growth). However, this metaphor is unsatisfying at many levels. For instance, why he would use the image of a tree something continuous from root to leaf - is puzzling when one recalls that Kuhn's initial project was to de-stabilize just such an image: the image of a continually growing body of scientific knowledge. In other words, this "holistic" metaphor of "growth towards the light" cannot be cashed out in terms that accommodate the qualitatively disparate paradigms that occupy the historical spaces of which Kuhn treats, without at the same time becoming inherently relativistic in a way that Kuhn did not devise.

Relativism and the Postmodern No investigation of the roots of contemporary relativism would be complete without considering the implications of postmodernism. Relativism is often viewed as intimately intertwined with postmodernism, a diverse and heterogeneous intellectual movement which often champions itself as a critique of "Enlightenment" or "modern" thinking. Derrida proceeds from the assumption that the epistemological project of the Enlightenment to provide indubitable knowledge is a failed one. To view the contemporary landscape clearly is to see that our beliefs are selective linguistic constructs. Such constructs have often been misappropriated into the epistemology of the society, group or culture that trades in them as political certainties. The inescapable and often detrimental result of such a misappropriation has been to marginalize and hurt that which is inferred to be "the other". One does not have to look far to find examples


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that speak to Derrida's point. The example, already cited, that the Northern countries' notion of the "ideal state" is not one of contingency or pragmatic convenience, but one misappropriated as an unassailable truth and identifier of "healthy" progress from savagery to civilization. Such a misappropriation issues a licence to powerful, industrial and technological based societies to intervene with less powerful societies with all the standard deliberative mechanisms of imperialism and colonialism, history being replete with individual examples (Norris 1996, 1997). Indeed, a central tenet of Derridean writing is that Northern, post-Enlightenment societies' quest for the holy grail, that is, the notion of transcendental "reason" as a source of wisdom, produces in turn something very different from the declared benefits of such a quest (benefits being such things as truth, brotherhood and a societal Utopia). As the Derridean points out, the actual, material and societal consequences of such a quest has, more often than not, been the creation of an "efficient evil" (Norris 1997). Jacques Lacan and Jean-Francois Lyotard both interrogate the notion that the epistemological product of the Northern, post-Enlightenment culture is in any way "objective", "absolute" or "eternal". Lacan argues that the traditional notion of "self" (as in "myself") as a natural kind, something "of nature" or "to be discovered", is illusory. The concepts of "identity" and "selfhood" are, for Lacan, to be apprehended as essentially linguistic rather than wholly primal or natural. Lacan's argument can be briefly surveyed as follows: since language, as a structure and index of meaning is logically primary to the Homo Sapiens who learns to speak and navigate it, what we as individuals take as "identity" or "self" is wholly constructed by language and the organic, social and historical contexts within which the language has its home. The concept of "identity" or "self is not something natural but rather is constructed'by social and cultural forces. Appeals to the notion of a universal reason to cut through the miasmal mist of historical accident and contextual contingency are impotent, as Lyotard makes similar claims for reason as Lacan did for language. Lacan holds that "reason" as the engine of our deliberations is neither "found" or "discovered" as a natural object, nor is it a "transcendental" or metaphysical absolute. Rather, "reason" is a linguistic construct and as such has a contingent genesis and biography within which culture it finds its home. In her article "The End of Innocence", Jane Flax characterizes the postmodern project in the following way: "Postmodernists attack the 'metaphysics of presence' and the Western philosopher's self understanding in a number of ways. They question the philosophies of mind, truth, language, and the Real which underlie and ground any such transcendental or foundational claims" (Flax 1999, 452). She observes further:

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The Challenge of Relativism Truth for postmodernists is an effect of discourse. Each discourse has its own set of procedures that govern the production of what is to count as a meaningful or truthful statement.. . The rules of a discourse enable us to make certain sorts of statements and to make truth claims, but the same rules force us to remain within the system and to make only those statements that conform to these rules. A discourse as a whole cannot be true or false because truth is always contextual and rule dependent. Discourses are local, heterogeneous, and often incommensurable. No discourse independent or transcendental rules exist that could govern all discourses or a choice between them. Truth claims are in principle "un-decidable" outside of, or between, discourses. This does not mean that there is no truth but rather that truth is discourse dependent. (453)

Flax holds that postmodernism runs counter to the Enlightenment projects of the search for "ultimate" truth and knowledge. Rather, for the postmodernist: All knowledge construction is fictive and non-representational. As a product of the human mind, knowledge has no necessary relation to Truth and the Real. Philosophers create stories about these concepts and their own activities. Their stories are no more true, foundational or truth-adjudicating than any others. There is no way to test whether one story is closer to truth than any other because there is no standpoint or mind unenmeshed in its own language or story. (454) Flax's statements amount to a political or methodological announcement rather than to a sustained argument. Moreover, such statements seem to imply an (unanalysed) implicit relativistic tendency in the arguments that truth is purely a function of rule-governed discourse, that the practice of western philosophy is one discourse among many, that no one "discourse" is more or less correct than any other, and that there can be no adjudication between discourses by traditional philosophical methods. The consequences of these positions for relativism will be examined in subsequent chapters. However, it is important to note that many "postmodern" philosophers, an example being Richard Rorty, although identifying themselves with the spirit of the postmodern movement, deny that they are "relativists". Jane Flax is no exception and counters the relativist charge against postmodernism as follows: Postmodernism is not a form of relativism because relativism only takes on meaning as the partner of its binary opposite — universalism.


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Relativists assume the lack of an absolute standard is significant; "everything is relative" because there is no one thing to measure all claims by. If the hankering for an absolute standard were absent, "relativism" would lose its meaning and force. (457) I argue in chapters three and four that the charge of relativism that is often levelled against some versions of postmodernism thinking is in fact veridical. Moreover, I argue that to claim that relativism is only problematic if one tacitly accepts the notion of a "god's-eye view" as essential to relativism's purported opposite, philosophical realism, is misguided. In chapter two, I argue that relativism, in some of its formulations, is internally incoherent regardless of the "binary opposite" (Flax) that it supposedly mirrors. I also attempt to demonstrate that arguments of the same pedigree as Flax's (i.e. that an attack on relativism must be and is prefaced with an acceptance - tacit or otherwise - of the possibility of a "god's-eye view") are in fact an inverse formulation of the straw-person fallacy. More precisely, pro-relativist arguments often trade on the notion that a god's-eye view is something Enlightenment thinking fails to provide. They claim that relativism is not only the only logical option (a false dichotomy) but that no possible refutation of relativism is workable without an appeal to a god's-eye view. I demonstrate that such a defensive argumentative strategy is false, in consideration ofjohn Searle's critique of anti-realism and in my critique of relativistic readings of the notion of the Wittgensteinian "language game" as "discourse", and that a "postmodern" positioning can be defended against the damaging charge of relativism only by denying the possibility of an appeal to a "god's-eye view". As I will argue, the postmodernist, although proving a support for relativism, denies a "god's-eye view", and furnishes a defence against the charge of relativism which cannot be sustained.

Conclusion The ecology of relativism is a complicated one. Along such lines, Mark O'krent makes the following observation: Recently there has been a revival of philosophic interest in and discussion of "relativism" . . . debates concerning relativism, however, tend to have an odd air of unreality. It is odd that just about no one wants to be identified as a relativist. There is a tendency to use "relativist" as an epithet of abuse. But if relativism is universally acknowledged to be refuted, or even self-refuting, then why is there so much discussion of it? (O'krent 1988,66)

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My own discussion has thus far raised several questions. Is relativism, classical or otherwise, self-refuting and/or incoherent? What does modern relativism look like over and above the cursory overview already provided? If relativism is an amalgam of different positions, including political and moral dimensions, a purely logical analysis may not suffice to explain its "evergreen" status both in and outside philosophy. In this case, what is the nature of relativism and how, exactly, is it arrived at? How can one explain its continuing and widespread appeal and influence? Is relativism at minimum politically useful as an epistemology of choice and as such a rallying point for both understanding diversity and promoting tolerance? In order to address such questions, I will, in the following chapters, address these issues in the order that I have stated them. In chapter two, I examine the classical statement of relativism and arguments for and against relativism. I also consider the applicability of classical arguments against modern and contemporary formulations of relativism. I argue that a case can be made for taking classical (or Protagorean) relativism to be definitional, for the reason that those who profess relativism attempt to avoid the incoherence and self-refutation criticisms levelled at the classical model, or at the very least, attempt to demonstrate disanalogies between their position and that of the classical relativist. In chapter three, I examine the mature work of Ludwig Wittgenstein who, though not a self-professed relativist, is often characterized as propounding a relativistic philosophy. Through such a focus, I comment on the way in which Wittgenstein, an overtly non-relativist philosopher, can be identified as a relativist. I demonstrate how relativism can be generated as a byproduct of a philosophical inquiry, in this case, the attempt of Wittgenstein's to dismiss the case of the philosophical sceptic and the move from the individual to the communal as the departure point for philosophical engagement. I then turn in chapters four and five to an account of how, under the influence of Wittgenstein, a full-blown relativism crystallizes in the writings of Peter Winch on cultural anthropology and, in the present-day philosophical sphere, in the writings of Richard Rorty. I identify both Winch and Rorty as relativists but, similarly to Wittgenstein, relativists "by accident". In chapter four I illustrate the draw of relativism through the virtue it (seemingly) encompasses in the political arena as a criterion for inter-cultural tolerance. I argue that in the post-colonial era, relativism, first in anthropology and later in philosophy and politics, has been and continues to be forwarded as an epistemological underpinning for inter-cultural understanding, tolerance and emancipation. In chapter five, through the discussion of examples, I examine this latter claim in detail. I investigate the claim that relativism is useful as an epistemological underpinning for inter-cultural understanding and tolerance.

Chapter Two

The Branches of Relativism: Classical to Modern

Stetpro ratione voluntas

"Let my will stand as reason"

Classical Relativism Any discussion of relativism can be understood as the philosophical occasion where knowledge attempts to talk of itself. Such occasions have a long and worthy pedigree, one that reaches back as far as Classical Greece. Classical relativism is propounded by Protagoras in Plato's Theaetetus. It is here that Protagoras claims that "man is the measure of all things", and that any given thing "is to me such as it appears to me, and is to you such as appears to you" (Theaetetus, 152a). Protagoras thereby relativizes all perceptual knowledge claims to the position of the individual observer. Socrates summarizes Protagoras' relativism as the view that "what is true to anyone is true to him for whom it seems so" (170a). We are presented here with a form of relativism that revolves around the individual - standards of truth and correctness are internal to and dependent upon the individual perceiver or knower - is true (for me) if it so seems, false (for me) if it so seems. It must be explained at this juncture (as it will become important to my investigations of relativism that hinge upon community-based models) that Protagoras is denying that there could be any standard or criterion higher than the individual by which claims to truth and knowledge could be adjudicated. In the Theaetetus, Protagoras is involved in what Harvey Siegel (1987, 23) describes as a project of "overhauling and testing one another's notions and opinions"; that is, what in present-day epistemology might comfortably be described as the task of assessing the warrant and justification of another person's knowledge claims. Yet, Protagoras' relativist thesis denies the possibility of this very project. For, if his thesis is right, then there is no likelihood of any knowledge claim failing a test of adequacy or being unjustified or unwarranted, precisely because the rival claims "of each and every one are right". Therefore, if Protagoras' thesis is right, it cannot be

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right, for it denies the very notion of rightness. Protagorean relativism is therefore self-defeating - if it is right, it cannot be right, it merely yields incoherence (Siegel 1987, 4). A second charge of incoherence arises out of the Protagorean view that it is not only perceptual claims that are individually true for those who hold them, but all beliefs (not merely perceptual ones) are true for those who believe them, and concomitantly that no sincerely held belief is false. Socrates argues that this aspect of Protagoras' relativistic view cannot be correct and is in fact also self-defeating. Socrates' argument trades upon the phenomenon of conflicting beliefs and holds that if the relativist thesis is true, then some beliefs will be false. But, as I will show, such a logical result runs contrary to the relativist's thesis. Suppose A believes/?, and B believes -p. Then/? is true for ^4, according to Protagoras, yet false for B. Now suppose that/? is a statement expressing Protagorean relativism. Then Protagorean relativism is false for all those who do not believe it; it is false for everyone if no one believes it; and it is true only to the extent that some number of people (perhaps only Protagoras himself) believes it. As Siegel has identified the problem, Protagoras is caught between the horns of a dilemma: "Supposing that not even he (i.e. Protagoras) believed in man being the measure and the world in general did not believe it either - as in fact it doesn't - then this Truth which he wrote would not be true for anyone" (1987, 9). Accordingly, "If, on the other hand, he did believe it, but the mass of mankind does not agree with him, then, you see, it is more false than true by just so much as the unbelievers outnumber the believers" (10). Therefore, according to Siegel, Protagoras' position is weak and vulnerable to the criticisms levelled against the primitive notion of truth as consensus. But Protagoras' position is tenuous for other reasons. As Siegel has identified, to yield to the position held by his relativist opponents (and given the nature of the relativistic doctrine), his opponents7 view that he is wrong is itself right: that is to say "Protagoras, for his part, admitting as he does that everybody's opinion is true, must acknowledge the truth of his opponents' belief about his own belief, where they think he is wrong" (15). Socrates argues that Protagoras would be forced to acknowledge his own belief to be false, if he admits that the belief of those who think him wrong is true, for he "admits that this opinion of theirs is as true as any other" (Siegel 1987, 16). So as Socrates argues, Protagoras is bound by the logical structure of his own relativistic doctrine to grant the truth of his opponents' beliefs, even when they believe that Protagorean relativism is false. And since their opinion must be true according to Protagorean doctrine, and their opinion is that the doctrine is false, then that doctrine must be false. As a result, Protagorean relativism is shown to be self-defeating in a second way. If beliefs

The Branches of Relativism

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conflict, and the doctrine holds that all beliefs are true for those who hold them, then some beliefs cannot be true purely on the "ground" that some one person does not believe a sub-set of beliefs to be true. In particular, and most importantly, if beliefs conflict with the truth of Protagorean relativism, then the Protagorean relativist must acknowledge the truth of the belief that the doctrine is false. Therefore, if relativism is true, then as long as there is anyone who holds that it is false, it is false (Siegel 1987, 4-6). Hence, the relativistic doctrine, at least in this guise, cannot make its case and is selfdefeating and incoherent. Thus far, we have seen two arguments for the incoherence of classical relativism. The first argument concludes that such relativism is incoherent because, if it is right, its rightness cannot be established for it undermines the very notion of rightness - so, if it is right, it cannot be right. The second argument concludes that Protagorean relativism is incoherent because, if it is true, then it is false so long as at least one person is of the opinion that it is false, for the Protagorean relativist is bound by his or her position to regard all beliefs as true, including the beliefs that the relativist doctrine is false. The self-refutation doctrine and the arguments that are employed on its behalf persist in the writings of contemporary philosophers, including James F. Harris (1992) and Christopher Norris (1997).

Do Incoherence Arguments Beg the Question? One contemporary writer who has attempted to defend relativism from the incoherence charge is Harold I. Brown. Brown has argued that the incoherence argument levelled at the relativist begs the question by assuming an absolutist conception of knowledge or truth. Brown writes: . . . this argument has no force against any consistent relativism, even the extreme relativism of Protagoras. Its apparent cogency derives from a tacit acceptance of the absolutist assumption that we are justified in making a knowledge claim only if it is based on an unquestionable foundation. Given this assumption, once we admit the possibility of knowledge claims contrary to but as well founded as our own, our knowledge claims become illegitimate. But the acceptability of this thesis is the central issue in dispute between relativism and absolutism. (1977, iv) Is Brown correct in this observation? He correctly identifies one of the roots of the relativist debate (I return to this topic in chapter four) namely the notion of "justification" in relation to any epistemic schema. This notion is worrisome to philosophers who tacitly accept that if a suitable

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"absolutist justification" for our knowledge claims remains unavailable, then epistemic salvation or damnation resides with some version of relativism (Siegel 1987, 9-10). However, to return to the problem at hand, is Brown's characterization of relativism and its attendant problems correct? I will argue that it is only partly so. Although Brown identifies "justification" as a prime mover in the debate on relativism, his observation as described is highly general and conflates absolutism and foundationalism. For if relativism is the view that knowledge and truth are relative to individuals and there are no criteria or standards by which claims put forth by rival claimants can be neutrally, objectively or fairly judged, then the absolutism which Brown identifies amounts to the opposite view, namely that such claims can be evaluated in a non-question-begging way, and that objective evaluation of rival claims is possible. But absolutism so constructed is not tantamount to foundationalism, that is, to the thesis put forward by the logical positivists and others which states that "knowledge requires an indubitable foundation and that knowledge is developed by building on that foundation" (Ayer 1959, 13). One can hold that knowledge is absolute in the sense that claims to knowledge can be fairly, non-question-beggingly assessed without holding further that knowledge requires an indubitable foundation (Siegel 1987). If Brown conflates absolutism with foundationalism, in a similar move he also conflates relativism with fallibilism. He states: "The main thesis of relativist epistemology is that knowledge can be constructed on a fallible foundation. Relativism affirms my right to hold my own presuppositions in spite of their fallibility, to proceed on the basis of these presuppositions, and to reject competing presuppositions as false" (1977, iv). But these "rights" are affirmed, not by relativism, but by fallibilism (the view that knowledge proceeds through the process of error and correction). That is to say, one need not be a relativist to affirm the first two "rights" mentioned by Brown. Moreover, as I have argued, it is not clear that the relativist can consistently affirm the third right (i.e. to reject competing propositions as false) (Siegel 1987). Relativism's commitment to the claim that there are no neutral standards whatsoever aligns it, not with fallibilism but, as I will argue in chapter four in assessing the political dimension of relativism, with arbitrariness. It is this arbitrariness which makes relativism the radical and potentially destructive doctrine that its critics perceive it to be. In any case, many other possibilities exist that are not discounted by the path which the would-be relativist opts to take (Siegel 1987). To take one example, one can consistently espouse a fallibilist absolutism - that is, one can consistently hold that knowledge is fallible, and not certain or indubitable, and also that claims to knowledge can be neutrally and objectively


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evaluated and assessed. This is the reason why Brown's characterization of relativism, and ultimately its defence, is impoverished and unsatisfactory.

Can the Relativist Defend Relativism Non-Relativistically? In extending the scope of the incoherence and self-refuting arguments against relativism to its modern manifestations, it is necessary to ask whether Socrates himself begs the question in his discussion of Protagoras in the Theaetetus. For if any argument against the modern forms of relativism finds its ancestry in Socrates, then any circularity at the source could be damaging to the investigation of the modern forms of relativism. Commentators (see Siegel 1987, Harris 1992) have argued that Socrates himself begs the question by dropping the relativizing "for . . ." (i.e. "true for the individual perceiver") when discussing truth, thus collapsing the Protagorean notion of relative truth into the absolutist one. For example, Jack Meiland writes, "Plato's own attempt, in the Theaetetus, to show Protagorean relativism to be self-refuting appears to be radically defective due to Plato's dropping of the relativistic qualifier (the 'for me' in 'true for me') at crucial points" (Krausz and Meiland 1986, 67). James Jordan also argues that, "Protagoras would doubtless reply, and rightly, that this leaves him untouched, that in fact it begs the question . . . 'For' . . . is an addendum whose power Socrates has misjudged, if, indeed he has not entirely overlooked it" (Jordan 1971, 45). It is undeniable that Socrates drops the qualifier "for . . ." in several passages in his response to Protagoras. The crucial question is, to what extent does this deletion obviate his criticisms of Protagorean relativism? (Siegel 1987). I am proposing that even if the arguments in the Theaetetus became inconclusive because of the "dropping of the relativistic qualifier", reconstructions of such arguments can be made to go through. Arguments forwarded earlier identified that relativism cannot coherently be stated relativistically: to argue that relativism is true only for the relativist is to fail to join in any disagreement with the opponent of relativism. That is, it fails to establish the truth of the relativist's claim universally. But to defend or assert relativism non-relativistically is to acknowledge the cognitive force, criteria or principles of reasoning by which the relativistic thesis can itself be assessed, and this acknowledgment amounts to a rejection of any version of relativism. Such a move rejects the force of the very criteria or principles which, purportedly, are being defended (Siegel 1987). Therefore, the Protagorean relativist (either classical or modern) cannot coherently defend or assert relativism either relatively or non-relatively. Also, as the argument for

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incoherence shows, if the relativist defends relativism relativistically, then he or she must (logically) recognize the equal cognitive legitimacy of absolutism and the standards by which absolutism is - relatively - established as superior to relativism in its own sphere. However, this is also to recognize the non-superiority of relativism and the arbitrariness of his or her commitment to it. If the relativist defends relativism non-relativistically, he or she gives up the very doctrine he or she wishes to defend. By contrast, the incoherence and self-refutation arguments proceed without a commitment to absolute truth. Such arguments play a philosophically negative role in the sense I defined earlier. What they do achieve is to render problematic for the relativist whatever conception of truth he or she adopts, and in doing so, they demonstrate that arguments of this form do not beg the question against the relativist (see Siegel 1987).

Modern Relativism Up to this point I have assessed the classical, or Protagorean, formulation of relativism under two criticisms, namely incoherence and self-refutation. Yet it might be objected that "classical" relativism of the type I have outlined is especially, or rather exclusively, vulnerable to these charges of incoherence and/or self-refutation, whereas modern formulations that do not rely on the individual as the epistemic arbiter of knowledge claims will be immune to such criticisms. I will now consider this objection. One way to understand "modern relativism" is the view that all knowledge claims have their source, not at the level of the opinion or perception of a given individual, but at the level of communal criteria. As Berger and Luckmann have put it: "The world of everyday life is not only taken for granted as reality by the ordinary members of society in the subjectively meaningful conduct of their lives. It is a world that originates in their thoughts and actions, and is maintained as real by these" (1967, 114). Thatis, an individual knows, claims or judges against a background or within a "framework" of criteria. These criteria either make up, or are produced by, the culture, conceptual scheme or "style of reasoning" to which any individual is subject (Siegel 1987; Norris 1997). The details of "cultural relativism" so construed form the basis of my discussion in chapter three and I investigate the notion of a "framework" in chapter two. However, as a prelude to these investigations, it will be useful to establish a formulation of relativism in its "modern" manifestation and investigate whether the incoherence and undermining objections levelled at the classical model apply equally to the modern.


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Harvey Siegel suggests a way in which modern relativism can be formulated without doing violence either to Protagoras' understanding of relativism, or to more recent defenders of a relativistic doctrine. He gives the following definition: For any knowledge claim p, p can be evaluated (assessed, established, etc.) only according to (with reference to) one or another set of background principles and standards of evaluation si .. . sn; and, given a different set (or sets) of background principles and standards s' 1 . . . s'n, there is no neutral set (that is, neutral with respect to the two (or more) alternative sets) evaluating p with respect to truth or rational justification, p's truth and rational justifiability are relative to the standards used in evaluating a knowledge claim. (1987, 20) Notice that the classical, Protagorean relativist will assent to this formulation as it captures the intuition that knowledge and truth are relative to each individual thinker: if p is true or a genuine item of knowledge according to my (individual) standard, then it is true for me, and there is no external standard by which my individual judgements and standards may themselves be neutrally evaluated by a third party. Although this formulation of relativism is more general than the classical version, it retains the core of the classical doctrine. For this kind of modern position, the source of relativism flows not from individual opinion or perception, but from standards in a wider sense, such as standards of a framework, a conceptual scheme, a paradigm, or most importantly in this relation, a culture. I have in mind here a plethora of modern formulations, not exhausted by, but including those of Thomas Kuhn (1970), Peter Winch (1967), Barry Barnes and David Bloor (1982). Such modern formulations are no less problematic than their classical counterparts. For example, if modern relativism itself is evaluated differently according to two different sets of principles and standards - that is, if p is true according to si ... sN, but false according to si7 ... sN7, there is no way to evaluate these conflicting evaluations; p is true relative to si . . . sN and false relative to si 7 . . . sN 7 . Since there is no neutral way of evaluating the rival sets of standards, there is no neutral way of evaluating conflicting evaluations of p. Indeed, such evaluations can only be carried out relative to one or another set of principles and criteria of evaluation and thus are incommensurable. But is the modern formulation resistant to the Socratic counterarguments of incoherence and self-refutation? Following Siegel (1987),

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I believe that the same kind of objections levelled against the classical relativist can also be levelled against this modern counterpart. If modern relativism is true, then as modern relativism states, it is itself relative to alternative and equally legitimate sets of background principles and standards of evaluation of the same logical type. Since these alternative sets will imply differing evaluations of modern relativism, and since there is no way neutrally to pick one evaluation over and against any others, it follows that, if modern relativism is true, then its truth will vary according to the principles and criteria by which it is evaluated. Most importantly in this relation, if according to some set of standards si . . . sN modern relativism is judged to be false, then, if modern relativism is true (at least according to that set of standards si ... sN), it is false. This of course is the same objection as the one that Socrates levels against Protagoras. As I and others have argued, Protagoras is bound by his own principles to recognize the falsity of Protagorean relativism, so long as someone is of the opinion that it is false. In this way, modern relativism, although different in species from classical accounts, is not different in character and is self-refuting on similar grounds of self-reference (Siegel 1987). The second charge Socrates makes against Protagoras is that his relativist doctrine is incoherent: that if it is right, it undermines the very notion of rightness and therefore it cannot be right. As I have also argued, "tightness" is intelligible only when it is understood non-relativistically. Again, the modern formulation of relativism is open to the very same objection. Assuming that modern relativism is a rationally justifiable position, there must be good reasons for holding it to be correct. But good reasons cannot be locally specific, biased, non-neutral or idiosyncratic if they are to serve the purpose for which they are intended within the relativist/non-relativist debate. For modern relativism to be rationally justifiable, there must be some nonrelative, neutral (with respect to the presuppositions of the non-relativist) framework or ground from which we can make that judgement. Therefore, modern relativism that denies the possibility of such a framework is false. In other words, if modern relativism is to be rationally justifiable, it must have a non-relativist ground, the possibility of which it denies. As a result, if modern relativism is true, it is not rationally justifiable, since if it is true there can be no neutral ground from which to assess the rational justifiability of any claim, including the principal claim of modern relativism itself. Worse still, if modern relativism is true (and rationally justifiable), then it is false, for its rational defence requires the non-relativistic ground which modern relativism itself denies. Thus, modern relativism is neither justifiable nor false; both its assertion and denial are incoherent.


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Framework Relativism The defining feature of a modern relativistic doctrine of the type I have just discussed is its reliance on standards which are contextualized within, or form part of, a "framework". The notion of a framework often finds its expression in the notions of "a culture", or rather, the relevant framework or "conceptual scheme" operating within a culture (see Davidson 1984, Quine 1969). In this section, I will focus on the question as to what extent (if at all) the notion of a "framework" lends support to the doctrine of modern relativism. To take one pertinent example of relativism of the "framework" pedigree, Friedel Weinert claims that: . . . the standards available to assess the value of activity under review are, in some sense, internal to a given framework of reference which cannot, by the act of assessment, be transcended. Thus relativism implies the existence of some kind of framework be it social, epistemological or linguistic within which activities or entities can (comfortably) be judged rational, moral or beautiful but which, at the same time, constitute boundaries beyond which the assessments cannot extend without clashing with standards derived from different frameworks. (1984, 377) Karl Popper, in his classic paper "The Myth of the Framework: In Defense of Science and Rationality", defines modern relativism as the claim that: "truth is relative to our intellectual background or framework: that it may change from one framework to another" (1994, 56), and Jack Meiland and Michael Krausz write: In one of its most common forms, cognitive relativism holds that truth and knowledge are relative, not to individual persons or whole societies, but instead to factors variously called conceptual schemes, conceptual frameworks, linguistic frameworks, forms of life, modes of discourse, systems of thought, Weltanschauungen, disciplinary matrices, paradigms, constellations of absolute propositions, points of view, perspectives or worlds. What counts as truth and knowledge is thought to depend on which conceptual scheme or point of view is being employed rather than being determinable in a way that transcends all schemes or points of view. (Krausz and Meiland 1986, vii) Although the definitions of these terms are often vague and amorphous, central to any "framework relativism" is the notion that epistemic judgements

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are in some sense bound, or limited by, the framework in such a way that epistemic agents are "bound" within it (Siegel 1987). That is to say, epistemic agents within a given framework cannot transcend or escape from some sort of fundamental restraints which sharply limit the possible range of claims or standards which they (the agents) are able to regard as true or justified. The picture is a spatial one of an epistemic or cognitive locale, the outer limit of which is a boundary beyond which defensible judgements cannot be made. There is an arbitrariness or in-principle-unjustifiedness about the particular features of the given boundary of framework relativism. Indeed, this is the heart of "framework relativism"; for one epistemic agent might judge a particular knowledge claim in terms of the criteria operative within the framework she moves in, but such an agent cannot non-question-beggingly judge the criteria of the framework to be in any sense epistemologically or cognitively superior to those provided by alternative frameworks. To do so would require the agent to transcend the particular framework in order to compare it neutrally with the possible alternative frameworks - and this, according to the picture provided by the framework relativist is precisely what cannot be done (Siegel 1987). It is impossible by virtue of the fact that the limit or boundary of the framework within which an agent is located (according to the relativist) is co-extensive with the point of scheme transcendence. This "limit" or "boundary" forms the logical "vanishing point". Judgements only "make sense" as operations of the criteria dictated by the framework, for it is these criteria that render knowledge claims meaningful (or meaningless). As a result, an agent can perfectly well judge from within his or her own framework, utilizing criteria internal to that framework, but he or she cannot meaningfully question the framework or the very criteria it employs, for these are necessary conditions for the judgements to be made at all. Nor can the agent assess claims made within other frameworks. As Siegel has pointed out, the force of the "framework relativist's" picture is that we, as epistemic agents, are "trapped within our conceptual schemes or frameworks" and that "we cannot escape, transcend, or get 'outside' them in order to fairly, neutrally, or non-question-beggingly question or assess them" (1987, vi). Central to the relativist's view is the notion that no one framework has any form of epistemic authority over any other. All are equally valid according to their own (internal) criteria of validity. There cannot exist a framework-independent vantage point from which to criticize or judge alternative frameworks. Indeed, framework relativism itself remains open to a logical "reductio" objection. Consider an analogous argument W.V.O. Quine levels at cultural relativism: "Truth, says the cultural relativist, is culture bound. But if it were, then he, within his own culture,


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ought to see his own culture-bound truth as absolute. He cannot proclaim cultural relativism without rising above it, and he cannot rise above it without giving it up" (1969, 54). When characterized in this fashion, the selfdefeating rationale of the framework relativist can be seen in the following way. If framework relativism is right (or true, or correct, or epistemically correct), then no transcendence of the framework is possible. But if no transcendence of the framework is possible, then neither is a non-questionbegging evaluation of the framework relativist thesis (or the framework from which it stems). As a result, it is impossible to defend framework relativism as right, for the very notion of rightness is given up by the framework relativist. Thus, framework relativism cannot be right. For rightness (or epistemic correctness) presupposes neutral criteria or a neutral "framework" from which rival frameworks, and the claim that framework relativism is right, can be judged. But this is precisely what the framework relativist denies. Thus, by taking the framework relativist's argumentative route, we reach the conclusion that framework relativism is self-defeating (Siegell987). A corollary to this argument may be added, one that borrows from the anti-relativist arguments that I levelled against the classical relativist at the beginning of this chapter. It will be remembered that for the framework relativist's argument to go through, he or she must defend framework relativism non-relativistically; to fail to do so would be to fail to join issue with the non-relativist. But to defend framework relativism nonrelativistically, i.e. according to my framework, framework relativism is true (epistemically correct, warranted, etc.), is to fail to defend it, since the non-relativist is appropriately unimpressed with such framework-bound claims. But to defend framework relativism non-relativistically is to give it up, since to defend it in this way is to acknowledge the legitimacy of framework-neutral criteria of assessment of claims, which is precisely what the framework relativist must deny. Thus, framework relativism, along with classical relativism, is self-defeating in as much as the defence of framework relativism ensures its defeat (see Siegel 1987).

Relativism and Anti-Realism In his book Mind, Language and Society (1998), John Searle provides four different anti-relativist arguments. Searle is an avowed realist but his antirelativist arguments are negative inasmuch as they do not require the support of his full-blown realist philosophy. Rather, such arguments trade

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on the weakness of the relativist position. As such, these arguments are relevant to the general form of this book and it will be useful to rehearse them here. As we have seen, relativism is a position that claims we have no means of coping with the real world except from a particular perspective, a particular framework or a particular culture. There is no unmediated access to reality and there is no reality independent of stances, aspects or points of view. If there is no unmediated access to reality then, as the argument goes, there is really no point in talking about reality independent of stances, aspects or points of view. The target of Searle's arguments is set out in Brian Fay's Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science (1996). Fay characterizes relativism as the following: Perspectivism is the dominant epistemological mode of contemporary intellectual life. Perspectivism is the view that all knowledge is essentially perspectival in character; that is, knowledge claims and their assessment always take place within a framework that provides the conceptual resources in and through which the world is described and explained. According to perspectivism, no one ever views reality directly as it is in itself; rather, they approach it from their own slant with their own assumptions and preconceptions. (1996, hi) This erroneous characterization is similar to the relativism under discussion to the point that one is often confused with the other. Although perspectivism is often confused with relativism, there is in fact no such thing. Indeed, although perpectivism may be of interest to artists and to personal psychologists who wish to explore the nature and ramifications of perspective, perspectivism, as Searle points out, is not in itself an attack on realism. Perpectivism suggests that in order to know reality, one has to know it from a point of view, but such a suggestion is philosophically trivial. However, there is an underlying assumption in Fay's argument that to "know reality" one must know it from no point of view and Searle views this as an unjustified assumption. He writes: I directly see the chair in front of me, but of course I see it from a point of view. I know it directly from a perspective. Insofar as it is even intelligible to talk of "reality directly as it is in itself," I know it directly as it is in itself when I know there is a chair over there because I see it. (Searle 1998, 36) Questions of perspective do not inform the realist/anti-realist debate and issues of perspectivism are not directly related to the question at hand.


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As Searle correctly points out, perpectivism so defined is not inconsistent with either realism or non-relativistic objectivity which says that we have direct perceptual access to the real world. Brian Fay furthers his claim for perspectivism, arguing that it is impossible to have knowledge of so-called independently existing facts. He outlines his position as follows: Note here that it is never the phenomena themselves which are facts, but phenomena under a particular description. Facts are linguistically meaningful entities which select out from the stream of events what happened or what exists. But this means that in order for there to be facts at all there must be a vocabulary in terms of which they can be described. Without a prior vocabulary which it describes or brings to a situation, there would be no facts whatsoever. Put succinctly: facts are rooted in conceptual schemes. (Fay 1996, 45) Here, Fay conflates a schema for representing the facts with the facts themselves and he draws no distinction between what we talk about and how we talk about it. Fay's overall position in this regard is vulnerable to the anti-relativist arguments I have already levelled against "framework" or cultural relativism earlier in this chapter. However, Searle's counter to Fay's position is of a different species and worth considering here. As Searle puts it: "It is true that we need a vocabulary to describe or state the facts." However, "from the fact that I must have a vocabulary in order to state the facts, or a language in order to identify and describe the facts, it simply does not follow that the facts that I am describing or identifying have no independent existence" (1998, 47). Searle employs the example of the Atlantic Ocean to illustrate his point. He points out that the fact that there is salt water in the Atlantic Ocean is a fact that existed long before there was anyone to identify the stuff in it as water, or to identify one of its chemical components as salt. Granted, to make such identifications a language is required. But what follows from this? Does it follow that before language came into being none of these facts obtained? No such conclusion follows. As Searle correctly identifies: "Fay's argument as presented is a fallacy. It is a use-mention fallacy to suppose that the linguistic and conceptual nature of the identification of a fact requires that the fact identified be itself linguistic in nature" (1998, 51). In other words, facts are conditions that make statements true, but they are not to be identified with their linguistic descriptions. It is, of course, true that linguistic usage has a conventional element. We invent words to state facts, make discriminations and name things, but it does not follow that we invent the facts or the things.

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Searle stresses, correctly, the intimate logical connection between antirealism and relativism. According to Searle, for the anti-realist: "There is nothing inevitable about the concepts we have for describing reality . . . so the anti-realist argues, the relativity of our concepts, if properly understood, shows that external realism is false because we have no access to external reality except through our concepts" (1998, 55). The relativist holds that different conceptual schemes give different conceptions of reality, and these conceptions may be inconsistent with one another. For example (following an example of Searle's), if I am asked "How many objects are in this room?", I may count the various items of furniture and assorted bric-abrac. But if we imagine the same question asked under another conceptual scheme, one that does not distinguish between the elements of a set of furniture, but treats the furniture set as one entity, there will be a different answer to the same question ("how many objects are in the room?"). Let us say that according to the first "framework" of description, there are seven. According to the second, there are three. So how many objects are there really? The anti-realist and the relativist will say that there is no definitive answer to this question. For there is no fact of the matter except relative to a framework, and therefore, there is no real world except relative to a framework (see Searle 1998, 56. Also Putnam 1992). Searle is correct to view this argument as weak. He can accept that there are seven objects in the room as counted by one framework of description, and three according to another. Each gives an alternate (and true) description of the one world, using a different system of counting. As Searle puts it: "The appearance of a problem derives entirely from the apparent inconsistency in saying there is only one object and yet there are seven objects . . . but once you understand the nature of the claims there is no inconsistency whatever" (1998, 57). They are both consistent and both true. Searle furnishes the following personal information to illustrate his point: "I weigh 160 in pounds and 72 in kilograms. So what do I weigh really? The answer is, both 160 and 72 depending on which system of measurement we are using" (59). But, it might be objected, what if we take two conceptions of the world, each of which proposes to tell us something about the world, but which are not consistent with one another. Will such an example furnish the argument that the anti-realist/relativist requires? A classical example is considered by Searle in his treatment of the move from the idea that the earth is at the centre of our planetary system to the view that the sun is at the centre, i.e. the move from the geocentric to the heliocentric theory. The anti-realist/ relativist will claim that we did not discover that the Ptolemaic, geocentric system was false and the heliocentric was true by an appeal to an externally


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existing reality. Rather, we abandoned the first because the second was simpler and enabled us to make better predictions about "eclipses, parallax and the like" (60). As Searle characterizes it: "We did not discover an absolute truth; rather we adopted a different way of talking, for essentially practical purposes" (61). This is for the reason that both theories, according to the anti-realist/relativist, are "under-determined" by the evidence (see Kuhn 1970). One could hold either theory consistently with all the available evidence. The anti-realist suggests that the facts of scientific discovery in this relation prove relativism. For the history of such "discoveries" demonstrates that if truth is supposed to name a relation of correspondence to a mind-independent reality, then "there is no such thing as truth because there is no such reality and hence no relation of correspondence" (Searle 1998, 25). Searle claims that this argument fails to achieve its goal. For unless we assume that there are mind-independent objects such as the earth and the sun, we do not understand the import of the argument between the two respective systems, i.e. what is at issue in the debate on whether the former goes around the latter or vice-versa. As Searle comments: "The shift from geocentric to heliocentric theory does not show that there is no independent existing reality: on the contrary, the whole debate is only intelligible to us on the assumption that there is such a reality" (25). Simplicity and better predictions (the two mainstays of the anti-realist/relativist) are relevant only because we think of them as getting to the truth about the real world. Searle comments: "If you think there is no real world, then you might as well say what you like for aesthetic or other reasons. Why prefer simplicity unless you prefer it for aesthetic reasons?" (26). The connection between anti-realism and relativism is not limited to the so-called "analytic tradition". Christopher Norris in his book Reclaiming Truth identifies Michel Foucault as an "extreme anti-realist" (1996, 169). In The Order of Things, Foucault concocts a Chinese encyclopedia entry wherein animals are classified as follows: "(a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camel hair brush, (1) etcetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies" (Foucault 1973, 116). This passage is intended to draw to our attention to the arbitrary and shifting nature of definitions and representations: it is an index of the culture-bound and parochial character of the concepts and categories that a language user employs. There is no universal "that" but only the representations which we create and within which meaning has life. As Searle has argued, the claim that a system of representation is needed before anything can be identified or said is in itself a philosophically

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trivial thesis in terms of the investigation of relativism. But such a claim is compatible with realism and therefore drawing attention to the fact that, at minimum, a system of representation is required before any statement about reality can be made, does not forward the debate in this relation. In The Order of Things however, Foucault suggests such examples as the encyclopedic entry to challenge our naturalized habit of mind and demonstrate something philosophically radical. That is, he is supposing that all our "representations", i.e. all our concepts, categories and ontological commitments and so forth, are fictive constructions flowing out of a particular culturally arbitrary discourse. As Christopher Norris suggests, "this is exactly the premise that underwrites Foucault's entire project, from his early structuralist-inspired 'archaeology' of knowledge to the Nietzschean-genealogical approach that characterized his post-1970 works" (1996, 81). This premise requires Foucault to account for this seemingly relativistic position. However, Foucault's argument is weak on two grounds, the first of which Searle has identified in a different context: i) It passes from the particular to the general. Although it may be true that our representations allow of a free and sometimes playful dimension (how would verbal humour be possible without it?), it does not follow that all our "representations" are merely arbitrary fictions that do not describe an independently existing reality; and ii) Foucault's anti-realist/relativist position can be seen as a reductio ad absurdum. But, as Norris argues, locating truth in propositions about things (anti-realism) instead of the things themselves, has the consequence that "truth is holistically relativized (relativism) to whatever form of culture-bound representations that happen to enjoy that title" (Norris 1997, 83). So, to argue for such a position would result in Foucault's own project being undermined. In this way, to identify and critically comment on " The Order of Things" is a doomed enterprise. As Norris puts it: "For on his account there cannot exist any 'things' - any extra discursive objects, entities, kinds or categories of thing - whose various 'orderings' by language would render his thesis intelligible" (1997, 170). That there is nothing "outside" language (a suggestion that is antithetical to common sense) not only leads to relativism, but also undermines the possibility of adducing support in the defence of such a relativistic position.

Does Realism Require a "God's-Eye View"? I have already raised the objection that a critique of anti-realism is effective if and only if one accepts the notion of a "god's-eye view". Such was the


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criticism of anti-relativist arguments made by Jane Flax. As this objection is prominent in the literature surrounding the realist/relativist debate, it is worth pausing to consider it here. In chapter one, I indicated that Flax denies that positions such as postmodernism are forms of relativism because relativism itself only makes sense when considered as a binary opposite to "a god's-eye view". According to Flax, once this binary opposition is recognized as a chimera, the charge of "relativism" collapses as logically vacuous and irrelevant. One weakness of this argumentative gambit is that "god's-eye view" is a vague notion. What is it and how ought it to be characterized? For example, is a "god's-eye view" rather like a "bird's-eye view" only from a much higher perspective and from a being of spectacular visual acuity? The metaphor is certainly vulnerable to spoof. Also, the permutations for the interpretation of the "god's-eye view" metaphor are legion. However, for the sake of the discussion I will accept, without argument, that the kernel of the metaphor conveys the idea that it is practically impossible for any human being to achieve the omniscience which the anti-realist believes the realist's argument requires. This would amount to a "god's-eye view", i.e. an epistemic agent who knows all perspectives and all vistas, but more than this, knows everything all at once. What is of importance in this connection is to point out that to accept the kernel of the metaphor of the "god's-eye view" does not guarantee the success of arguments of the type produced by Flax. Robert Kirk in Relativism and Reality argues for a realist position, but claims that the whole idea of "inspecting bits of the world" (1999, 139) only appears intelligible insofar as it involves something like ordinary perception. For any observer will always have some point of view and some position in space and time. This is itself not problematic, for realism does not have the character of a "god's-eye point of view" in the manner which Flax suggests. It might be objected that the notion of a "god's-eye view" does not require that any single observer ought to be able to find out everything at once but only "for any given truth, a suitably equipped observer could discover it'' (Kirk 1999, 138). But to what does this statement amount? In this form, it amounts to nothing more than an extremely roundabout way of expressing the assumption that "every truth is in principle discoverable". This again is perfectly compatible with realism, for an objection can be made that truth can, in principle, be discovered under the realist theory. Moreover, the formulation that "every truth is in principle discoverable" does not forward the relativist's claim because it is equally compatible with realism. In this context, no support for the Flaxian counter-argument against the claim that relativism is incoherent obtains.

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Interestingly, some writers claim that realism obviates the very possibility of a "god's-eye view". Kirk, for example, asks us to consider the statement: "all mice are mortal". He writes: There can be no sort of "inspection" capable of assuring the observer that it is true. Nor will it help us to imagine the observer moving about in space or time. Observing many dead mice at one place leaves open the possibility of a mouse surviving somewhere else. Realism leaves open the possibility of a mouse surviving somewhere else. (1999, iv) Thus, far from implying the possibility of a "god's-eye view", realism rules out such a possibility. To the obvious objection that, in this case, realism implies both the possibility and the impossibility of a "god's-eye view" (therefore produces a contradiction), Kirk has the following to say: "we have been given no reasons to accept the crucial claim that realism implies a 'god's-eye view' is possible" (1999, vii). It is indeed the case that Flax's argument offers no account of the supposed logical implication of a "god'seye view" from the realist position other than the bald statement from Flax that one implies the other or that a "god's-eye view" is tacitly present in the realist position. Although it has not been my goal to defend or argue for the realist position (something outside the scope of this book), this section provides reasons as to why there is no necessary connection between realism and the "god's-eye view". This demonstration is sufficient to deflect the counter-claim by Flax and others, that relativism is a position that poses no incoherence or self-refuting difficulties once the dichotomy of the binary opposition between a "god's-eye view" and relativism, using the vocabulary of postmodernism, is "exploded" or "problematized".

"Western" Logic? It might be objected that the analysis carried out in this chapter is myopic. For the critical analysis employed to "refute" relativism is not itself a-temporal, a-historical or a-cultural. Rather, it is a critical analysis that finds its genesis in the works of Plato and Aristotle. As such, the analysis is culturally specific to the history of philosophy as it has been practised in the west. As such, philosophical analysis is a cultural phenomenon with a limited application. For what has, thus far, been employed to critique relativism is an example of "western logic", an approach that is the product of western culture and is often appealed to in that culture as an arbiter of what is coherent or rational. But, it might be objected, who is to say that "western logic"


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is applicable outside the confines of that culture and if one does so, why is it to be regarded as legitimate? In other words, why is relativism refuted by western logic? Why should cultural relativism be refuted by a particular cultural bias, i.e. western logic? Such an argument is advanced by David K. Clark in The Pantheism of Alan Watts where he describes Alan Watts' attempt to reconcile Christianity and Buddhism. Watts was of the opinion that Christianity, while having much to recommend it, was "incorrigibly theistic" and "invincibly selfrighteous" (Clark 1978, 104). Watts proposes that "logic" is one cultural artifact among many and should not be regarded as something that "binds" or governs reality. Therefore, he believes that the two religions can be reconciled despite their metaphysical and moral differences. To his dissenters, he claimed that he had adopted a different system of logic, "eastern logic", of a type which he describes as an absorbent "both/and" kind, rather than that of "western logic" of the "either/or" kind. In this way, Watts argues for the reconciliation of Christianity and Buddhism by contending that no system of logic is superior to another. In other words, your logic may suit you, but don't think mine is illegitimate for that reason (see alsoCoplan 1998). Several things can be said of Watts' theological project that will shed light on the question of the legitimacy of the so-called "western logic". First, Watts' argument is just that, an argument. It has the following logical form: I believe for good reason that it would be advantageous if the religions of Christianity and Buddhism were reconcilable. However, Christianity and Buddhism are logically irreconcilable. I (Watts) will therefore choose a set of "logical" laws that do not introduce a contradiction, thereby resolving the difficulty by removing the contradiction. In other words, Watts' argument has a "western" logical structure, it relies on logical forms (such as the law of excluded middle) that are the mainstay of western logical analysis. To prove his point, Watts employs the very "logic" he wishes to reject, and thereby undermines what he wishes to establish in one stroke. But the problem facing Watts runs deeper than this reflexivity problem. Watts wants to demonstrate that the two religions, Buddhism and Christianity, are compatible despite the irreconcilability of their positions: that is to say, in spite of claims that either Christianity is true, or Buddhism is true, but not both. If the two cases are mutually exclusive, then both can be wrong but both cannot be right. Rejecting the law of the ex eluded middle (part of "western logic") does not gain for Watts what his argument requires, because rejecting it robs him of the ability to say anything at all. If his employment of the "eastern logic" maintains both A (Christianity) and -A (Buddhism) are true, then what is false?

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In the same manner, the relativist who rejects anti-relativist incoherence arguments as the illegitimate employment of a cultural form of myopic western logic faces the same difficulties. To argue their case, they will have to 1) appeal to argument that employs a "western" logical form, 2) deny the validity of "western logic", and 3) deny the validity of the law of excluded middle. Each move renders the statement of the relativist unintelligible. In True For You, But Not For Me, Paul Coplan puts it in the following way: "Not only do we need basic logical laws to reason clearly and communicate coherently; the truth is that we cannot function without accepting these underlying beliefs" (1998, 30). I believe this is the correct approach and more will be said of it in chapter three where I discuss "that which must remain fixed" in relation to Ludwig Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism in On Certainty. Nevertheless, the relativist may take a different approach. On the question of "western logic", he or she may go one step further and claim that the "truth" of relativism is not bound by the "western" laws of logic (i.e. excluded middle, non-contradiction) inasmuch as the "truth" of relativism is experienced and not rationalized (another way of saying that relativism is "more of an atmosphere than a calculus"). One example of this view can be found in Ram Adhar's Intercultural Philosophy. For Adhar, philosophy is an exercise in theosophy. It is one path towards the achievement of the "absolute". Logic, that is to say western logic, is a restriction in this respect and, according to Adhar, must be jettisoned: "The either-or situation of a deadly and exclusively two-valued logic denies the pluralistic approach of various roads leading to one absolute goal. The one absolute, in whatever field, is always in need of understanding, interpretation, and expression" (Adhar 2000, vii). Relativism makes sense for the reason that all appeals to the "absolute" are mitigated by the history of the culture in the religious or philosophical texts that interpret it and all texts are on an equal footing, even when they are inconsistent with one another: "There is no absolute text, for the one absolute has no one mother tongue, be it Arabic, Chinese, Greek, German, or Sanskrit. As there is no absolute text, so also there is no absolute interpretation. Interpretations have their own history" (100). Adhar does not deny that this claim leads to a form of relativism, yet he does not view relativism as an untenable position, for he claims: That there is no absolute value in this sense does not mean the acceptance of an absolute relativism (subjectivism, individualism) leading to total incommensurability. All this means is that the moment the telos of one absolute is linguistically, culturally, philosophically and religiously interpreted, understood and realized, it becomes a relative absolute, which


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means that the binding universality of the absolute expresses itself in various ways. (101) Adhar's claim poses a puzzling position which is, I believe, ultimately incoherent. If "western logic" is to be jettisoned and all texts are treated as equal (in the sense that even when they contradict one another all can be correct), then how can we be sure that all texts are discussing the same thing (in this case the "absolute")? Moreover, how can the absolute express itself in various ways, some of which may be inconsistent with one another, as the doctrines of the various monotheisms attest? Accordingly, by what criteria are we to recognize the absolute in its "relative absolute" form? What standards can we appeal to in order to create such criteria? Adhar's position seems to leave "no court of appeal" open to the convert. Also, how is it possible to make a mistake in this connection? That is, is it possible, when reading a particular philosophical or cultural text, to misconstrue the absolute in one particular "relative absolute" form? If it is not possible to make a mistake in doing so (what would a mistake look like in this relation?), then it is impossible to make a correct statement either. As I have argued, and unfortunately for relativists such as Adhar who wish to prove their case, the adoption of relativism, although initially alluring, yields the result that the "truth" of relativism is essentially ineffable and non-rational and no arguments can be offered to support it. To establish relativism, one can easily run afoul of self-refutation or unintelligibility and where the relativist case is pressed, as Wittgenstein remarks, "In philosophy we are often reduced to making an inarticulate sound" (Wittgenstein 1968, see sections 128-133).

Conclusion In this chapter, I have restricted myself to giving a general account of relativism, both in its classical and in some modern formulations. I have also attempted to highlight, through employing traditional anti-relativist arguments such as self-refutation and incoherence, that the relativist doctrine is logically problematic. I have concluded with a treatment of modern framework relativism, demonstrating that even in the modern reformulation of the relativist doctrine, the same telling objections pertain as to the classical relativist model. However, as Hilary Putnam has pointed out: "The Plethora of relativistic doctrines being marketed today (and marketed by highly intelligent thinkers) indicated [that] simple refutation will not suffice" (1981, 119).

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Accordingly, in the next chapter, I move from a general account of relativism to a more closely focused investigation on the roots of relativism. I do this by taking up one strand of the debate through an examination of a prime mover in the "cultural" relativism debate: Ludwig Wittgenstein. Specifically, I concentrate on his later work that culminates in his last book, On Certainty (Wittgenstein 1975). My aim is to ascertain whether Wittgenstein's treatment of philosophical problems leads inescapably to relativism, as many of his commentators have postulated. This investigation will in turn lay the groundwork for later chapters which deal with a form of cultural relativism that flows out of the Wittgensteinian legacy in the works of Peter Winch (1958) and Richard Rorty (1982, 1989, 1991).

Chapter Three

A Root of Relativism: Wittgenstein and Scepticism

To give a reasonfor anything is to breed a doubt of it. Hazlitt In the previous chapter I argued that the incoherence and self-refutation arguments offered by such writers as Harvey Siegel (1987) and James F. Harris (1992) are effective in refuting a wide range of both classical and modern formulations of relativism. In this chapter, I move from an abstract analysis of relativism to take up an investigation of how relativism is generated in a particular development within philosophy. The thread I take up in this and the following two chapters is that of cultural relativism as it is attributed to the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. As I have hinted in the introduction to this book, Wittgenstein's later work is an attempt to dispense with the problem of classical scepticism but the product of his investigation leads to the promulgation and reinforcement of a new version of scepticism, namely, relativism. I will trace the legacy of this relativism further in the writings of Peter Winch and Richard Rorty. Such a focus recommends itself because both Winch and Rorty acknowledge a debt to Wittgenstein in the development of their positions. I will argue that it is in various "developments" of Wittgenstein's thinking in these writers that we see one version of twentieth-century relativism (i.e cultural relativism) taking further root. Wittgenstein tends to be viewed as a relativist in two ways, both of which revolve around his treatment of language as a series of games - "language games". This treatment is extremely influential, and has been developed and expanded in ways antithetical to Wittgenstein's original application of the notion. It has been developed in Peter Winch's application of Wittgenstein's work in social science and in Richard Rorty's pragmatist epistemology. I will argue that there are two relativistic tendencies in Wittgenstein's interpretation. The first flows out of a reading of the concept of a language game and its application to philosophical problems. This reading is incorrect and although it is a reading that is taken up by Winch and Rorty, it is

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one that I wish to challenge. The second relativistic interpretative tendency is one that flows out of Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism in the pages of On Certainty. It is in this book that Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism, I argue, collapses into a form of cultural relativism. This relativistic tendency has been largely ignored by Wittgenstein's followers and commentators and is one which I wish to interrogate at some length.

Was Wittgenstein a Relativist? The influence of Wittgenstein on modern philosophy is vast. As Peter Hacker puts it: "Wittgenstein bestrides fifty years of twentieth-century analytic philosophy somewhat as Picasso bestrides fifty years of twentiethcentury painting" (1996, 1). As an influence Wittgenstein is not only cited by Winch and Rorty but by countless other writers in areas as diverse as cognitive science (Arbib and Hesse 1986), philosophy of psychology (Budd 1991), moral philosophy (Johnston 1989 and Pitkin 1972), business ethics (Takahashi 1997), anthropology (Cook 1998), epistemology (Boghossian 2001), philosophy of religion (Coplan 1998), and critical theory (Brill 1995). His influence on modern relativism is significant as, along with other writers, he is often characterized as providing a foundation for modern relativism. Thus, Stephen Himly outlines "the emergence of Wittgenstein's post-1930 . . . relativism and his notion of forms of life" (1989, 179) in which, according to Himly, "Wittgenstein proposes a sort of relativism which amounts to the suggestion that signs have meaning only relative to language games, systems of communication or linguistic calculi; and that these are in effect a form of life constitutive of the meaning of the signs" (180). This exegesis is echoed by Arbib and Hesse in their claim that: The Kuhnian revolution in the philosophy of science picked up Wittgenstein's theme of "language games": scientific theories were seen as internally consistent paradigms or world views, whose meaning, interpretation of evidence and criteria of acceptability are internal, with only indirect relation to hard data. This relativist tendency was reinforced by studies of symbol systems in social anthropology, in which religions are analyzed as internally coherent "symbolic games," and led to similar interpretations of Christian religion by Wittgensteinian philosophers. (1986, 20) As hinted above, if cultures can be understood as systems or frameworks, then the possibility of cultural relativism is born. Wittgenstein's "relativistic" influence is not confined to the analysis of religion. The relativistic reading of Wittgenstein has also been influential+

Wittgenstein and Scepticism

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in the philosophy of science, e.g. D.L. Phillips' Wittgenstein and Scientific Knowledge: a Sociological Perspective (1980), and in the social sciences, e.g. David Bloor's Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge (1977), and, as we shall see in chapter four, most notably in Peter Winch's classic The Idea of Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958). Wittgenstein's "relativistic" position continues to influence contemporary approaches to epistemology. An example of this can be seen in Donald K. Barry's book Forms of Life and Following Rules: A Witt gens teinian Defense of Relativism (1996), where Barry represents Wittgenstein as a relativist and rehearses the consequences for epistemology as traditionally understood.

Language Games I Clearly many of Wittgenstein's commentators believe that he is a relativist. Commentators who read Wittgenstein as a relativist, and philosophers such as Rorty and Winch who cite Wittgenstein as an inspiration, occupy a common ground. Their (erroneous) characterization of Wittgenstein can be put quite simply and briefly: Wittgenstein, in the later philosophy, offers the thesis that what we call "language" is in fact constituted by numerous "language games". Each "language game" is governed by its own idiosyncratic "logical grammar" and each "logical grammar" is rooted in a practice the practice of the community within which it appears. Truth and objectivity are self-evident to anyone who engages in the practice, i.e. who follows the grammatical rules of the particular game. So-called philosophical questions (at least traditional philosophical questions) about the ultimate "nature" of such concepts as truth or objectivity, are silenced by directing the questioner to the language game in which the concept figures. It is this that constitutes "the bedrock" of meaning upon which all such questions rest and where explanations (especially those of the philosophical ilk) "come to an end". Robert Kirk in Relativism and Reality characterizes Wittgensteinian relativism in the following way: People brought up in different cultures will speak different languagegames, with different rules from ours. They think of the world from within their own language and culture; in some cases they have different interests and values, in which cases, their culture leads them to direct their attention to different sorts of things from those salient in our culture. It is not as if the rules of our language-game were written in the book of nature. On the contrary, they are fixed by the custom and practice of communities in definite historical and social situations. (1999, 98)

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In this way, so the argument goes, there is no more to truth within the language community than acceptability. What a language community takes to be true is wholly determined by the language games in play within that community. It is important to note here that Kirk's characterization of the nature of knowledge and truth implies a further conclusion: different communities may fix different systems of truth. In other words, different communities may occupy different "realities" for if nothing beyond language games determines what is (or is not) correct or acceptable, then truth becomes nothing but acceptability and language games alone are both the caretaker and arbitrator of knowledge and truth. Kirk writes: "Given that different communities have widely different language-games which still purport to state the truth, differences between their respective language-games are enough to ensure differences in what is true and false, hence differences in the realities in which they deal" (1999, 99). Kirk gives a simple example to illustrate this point: "If one community includes 'the earth is bigger than the sun' among its acceptable statements, while ours includes 'the earth is much smaller than the sun' among its acceptable statements, we just have to accept that our realities differ; there is no independent source of correctness or incorrectness, of truth or falsity" (100). Kirk is canny to notice that a straightforward objection to the relativist/anti-realist in this context plays straight into the anti-realist's hands. For to object that "you can establish what's really true or false in this disagreement by measuring the earth and the sun" is untenable when you consider that measuring is a human activity which is governed by its own community-established standards. Theories about, in this case, the nature and structure of the solar system are, according to a relativistic reading of Wittgenstein, cultural constructions. According to this reading, truth and reality do not stand outside the relevant language games but are internal to, and dependent upon, the rules governing those language games. Interestingly, it can be argued that this form of what Christopher Norris refers to as "ultra-relativism" (1996, xii) runs through the entire corpus of Wittgenstein's work. As Norris comments: Such thinking finds warrant in Wittgenstein's famously obscure dictum that "the limits of my language are the limits of my world"; this idea pointed forward from the early Tractatus figures as a quasi-mystical acknowledgment of what lies beyond the furthest bounds of propositional logic or descriptive metaphysics - to the later Philosophical Investigations, where it becomes the basis for a doctrine of full-fledged linguistic and cultural relativism. (1996, xiii) If such a relativistic interpretation is correct, the possibility is created for this interpretation to form the basis under which relativism can be seen as

Wittgenstein and Seep tieism

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operating between two different communities or cultures that operate with differing grammatical practices, or indeed between differing grammatical practices within the same community. As a result, Wittgenstein is cast as a relativist. Incommensurability follows as a direct result of this relativist reading of Wittgenstein as no third position is available from which to assess the "epistemological fitness" of differing practices (language games), each just "judges as they do" (Grayling 1988, 15). Thus, Grayling concludes that "Wittgenstein's view . . . that cognitive relativism follows the same demarcation lines as cultural relativists" is "extreme relativism indeed" (1988, 17). He does not understate the problem when he claims that the "unacceptable entailment of relativism raises a question mark over his [Wittgenstein's] later philosophy as a whole" (109). Grayling is not alone in his summation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy for he echoes the view of Anthony Quinton. Quinton holds that what is entailed by Wittgenstein's post-1939 philosophy is that "all forms of life are equal" (1979, 47), that one cannot understand any form of life unless one "moves within it", and that all one can hope to achieve is an "internal understanding of it" (48). According to Quinton, Wittgenstein's mature philosophy is often a "strong support for cultural relativism" (48). Similarly, Stephen Himly (1989, 33) argues that Wittgenstein's later philosophy marks a fundamental shift away from an absolutist and static, to a relativist and dynamic conception of language. More recently, Rudolf Haller (1988) in his article "Was Wittgenstein a Relativist?" concurs with Himly's claim that the later philosophy of Wittgenstein carries with it an implicit relativistic tendency. And Christopher Norris claims that the appropriation of Wittgenstein as a relativist, which follows from an understanding of his mature philosophy as forwarding the claim that all truth claims "as some Wittgensteinians would have it" are "meaningful only in the context of some given language game or cultural life form, and hence on a par ontologically speaking with the postulated objects of religious, mystical or pseudo-scientific beliefs" (1997, 72, my italics). Ernest Gellner concurs with such a reading when he criticizes Wittgenstein as a philosopher who portrays the predicament of the individual as someone trapped within the boundaries of their cultural traditions, with the result that they are constrained by "a cozy, self-contained conceptual cocoon" (1979, 71). However, the interpretation of Wittgenstein identified by Norris is not only a highly general one, the spirit of which I shall challenge in the following section, it is also intrinsically flawed as an argument for relativism. For if cultures are incommensurable in the way in which the relativist would have us believe, then criteria that license such pro-relativist statements are also culture specific. If this is the case, it is impossible for the

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criteria that support the relativistic, meta-cultural assessment to be external to the culture in which they feature. Since cultural relativism is a theory about the relationship between cultures, it requires its proponents to compare and assess different cultures - even to be able to say that two cultures are incommensurable. But cultural relativism brings with it the strong claim that criteria are culture-based and that cultures (one with another) can be incommensurable. If the criteria for assessing meta-cultural claims about the relative nature of cultures are external to the particular theory making the claim (in this case, cultural relativism), then it appears that the criteria for assessing these cultures must also be external to the culture making the assessment. For if it were otherwise, how could the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the respective cultures be assessed? That is to say, since a major component of cultural relativism involves the claim that criteria for assessment are necessarily culture-bound and internal to the respective culture, then one could not evaluate cultural relativism (nontrivially) unless through a comparison of other claims made about the nature of a culture by other cultures. In other words, the cultural relativist's claim that cultures are incommensurable can be assessed by criteria external to that culture if and only if cultures are not incommensurable. To say that two cultures are incommensurable requires one to assume an intellectual position such that one can "stand outside" the totality of any single culture. Thus, the cultural relativist, in an attempt to propound the truth of their position, is caught in an "illegitimate totality" (Harris 1992). To develop any general theory - which the cultural relativist does - about any totality, which includes drawing the boundaries or limitations of that totality, one must include as part of the argument of the general theory something outside the totality. For the cultural relativist, the difficulty is caused by the complete generality of the theories. T.S. Kuhn, whom Arbib and Hesse place on an equal footing as "Wittgenstein the relativist", imposes a limitation upon his own theory of scientific change with his claim of the incommensurability between paradigms. As James F. Harris puts it: "Since rules and criteria for paradigm evaluation (including presumably even logical consistency) are clearly supposed to be internal to a paradigm according to Kuhn, then 'incommensurable' is a predicate which can only take on meaning relative to a paradigm" (1992, 27). However, incommensurability is a relationship between or amongst paradigms and as a result, it must follow a set (or sets) of criteria that are not internal to any given paradigm. In this way, Kuhn, along with the cultural relativist, falls victim to the self-referential paradox. Cultures and paradigms can be incommensurable only if they are not incommensurable.


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Two questions present themselves at this point: 1) whether Wittgenstein himself embraces relativism in his later philosophy and/or 2) whether relativism is an unwelcome, although inescapable, entailment of his later philosophy. My argumentative strategy will be to argue that a negative answer to the first question is appropriate not only for the simple reason that at no point in the Nachlass does Wittgenstein identify himself as a relativist of the type or types I have outlined in chapter three, but more importantly for the reason that Wittgenstein is famous for his declaration that he was not at all interested in propounding theses in philosophy. This declaration (Wittgenstein 1968, section 109) is emblematic of the subversive nature of Wittgenstein's later philosophy: subversive in that it denies the validity of philosophy as "theory building" as it has often been understood. It is important to notice that relativism, in its philosophically interesting Protagorean formulation, is just that - a thesis - an explicit claim about the epistemological status of knowledge. To understand how unlikely it would be for Wittgenstein to embrace a (traditionally understood) philosophical theory about knowledge, it is worthwhile saying a little about Wittgenstein's conception of and approach to philosophy in the later period. Having achieved this, I will address the second question by moving on to an investigation of the application of Wittgenstein's method to a particular problem in philosophy - in this case scepticism - in an attempt to reach a conclusion as to whether relativism is generated as a result of the application of Wittgenstein's method to the problem of scepticism. Lastly, I will examine some of Wittgenstein's notions of grammatical investigation and consider whether this approach lends itself to a relativistic interpretation. I will argue that a grammatical investigation in the Wittgensteinian sense is not relativistic, and if the spirit of Wittgenstein's investigation is to be preserved, should not be interpreted as such.

Style and Method As I have stated, in his later philosophy, Wittgenstein undertakes to eschew all traditional philosophical theorizing, i.e. all practices of subsuming particular judgements under general laws in an attempt to explain a specific phenomenon within the terms of an overarching theoretical framework (see Hacker 1996; McGinn 1997, 1989). For Wittgenstein, "we must not advance any kind of theory (in philosophy). There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place" (1968, section 109). I will go on

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to suggest that many of Wittgenstein's commentators, such as Grayling and Quinton, have failed to pay attention to the radical and subversive nature of this aspect of his mature philosophy. Instead of recognizing Wittgenstein's "method" as a departure from traditional practices of theory construction, they view it as a faltering attempt to engage in such practices, e.g. by developing a "theory of language" (Grayling 1988). As a result, commentators may try to force Wittgenstein's remarks into some type of formal argument for their preferred theory of meaning or truth. Grayling is explicit on this point when he states: Wittgenstein's writings seem to me not only summarizable but in positive need of summary . . . Nor is it true that Wittgenstein's writings contain no systematically expressible theories, for indeed they do. It is the difference between what Wittgenstein says and the way he says it which is relevant here; the fact that his later writings are unsystematic in style does not mean that they are unsystematic in content. (1988, v—vi) This "top down" approach to the reading of Wittgenstein's mature philosophy - that is, approaching his admittedly difficult and disparate remarks as if he were propounding a theory of some sort and then attempting a reading of his later philosophy by searching for the theory that is "lurking" there is itself at the root of many misunderstandings. Renford Bambrough, for example, correctly characterizes the spirit in which one should approach the reading of Wittgenstein's work when he states: "Our craving for generality, our contemptuous attitude towards the particular case, must be modified and transcended, if we are to achieve any answers to our philosophical perplexities" (1979, viii). One serious misunderstanding of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, I argue, is to read it as relativistic. For to take key concepts - such as "language game" and "form of life" - and to apply them at a high level of generality, thus treating these terms of art as components within a general theory, is a move that is not only out of step with the spirit of Wittgenstein's views on the role of philosophy, but also contributes to a distorting effect on our understanding of his claims. For under such a reading, Wittgenstein now appears to be rendering up a full-blown theory about the nature and structure of language. Wittgenstein himself was acutely aware of the temptation to approach philosophy in this manner: "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and to answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads philosophers into complete darkness" (1970, 18). The subversive character of Wittgenstein's philosophy is


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revealed here. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he believes science is not to be taken as the touchstone for his investigations. Accordingly, it should be noted that any discussion of Wittgenstein's later philosophy at the metalevel is problematic because the work is piecemeal to the extent that any attempt to generalize it into a traditional taxonomy of analytic philosophical theorizing often leads to mistakes. Renford Bambrough notes that "Wittgenstein does not present a philosophical system or series of doctrines. He rarely summarizes or signposts his work, and when he does so it is done in an epigrammatic and aphoristic style that is so close to what is being summarized that the same problem is likely to occur" (1979, 118-19). Thus, to reiterate, we will miss the whole point of Wittgenstein's philosophical method if we attempt to extract from his remarks a series of philosophical claims or theories about what constitutes meaning, understanding, sensations , and so on. What then is the "correct" approach to Wittgenstein's mature philosophy? Given that this philosophy is first and foremost a method, an answer to this question is best supplied by an example of how this method is applied to a philosophical problem. I undertake such a project in the next section by examining Wittgenstein's treatment of the problem of scepticism. However, a few introductory remarks about Wittgenstein's method of practising philosophy are possible at this juncture. Wittgenstein uses his evocations of concrete examples of our practices of using language not, as commentators such as Grayling would maintain, as sources of generalizations, but as means to overcome the particular misunderstandings that our urge to explain throws up and to demonstrate that there is nothing that needs to be explained. In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein remarks: "We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of language." But Wittgenstein also makes it clear that this order is merely "An order with a particular end in view: one of many possible orders; not the order" (1968, section 132). The primary purpose of Wittgenstein's drawing our attention to neglected aspects of language use through the description of concrete cases is not to build up a systematic or general description of those practices. Rather, in response to each specific false picture, as Wittgenstein views it, and to each impulse to misunderstand, "he evokes a particular concrete case or range of cases in which we see our concepts functioning" (McGinn 1997, 34). For Wittgenstein, the goal is both for himself and for his reader to gradually bring about a realization that philosophical pictures make no contact with the phenomena they are supposed to explain. Furthermore, the distinctive ways in which our various concepts function show us the nature of the phenomena these concepts describe, that is, show us what meaning, language, knowledge, and so on are. The often repetitive nature

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of Wittgenstein's method is intentional inasmuch as it attempts to function as a therapeutic process intended to bring about a shift in our style of thought. The cumulative effect of such a method should be that we see things differently. What before looked like an explanation is now seen to be an empty construction: "Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to be explained" (Wittgenstein 1968, section 126). What before seemed to cry out for some form of elucidation is now accepted just as it is, without our feeling the need (logically) to give it further foundations or support. "The philosophical problem . . . completely disappears" (1968, section 133). For Wittgenstein, it is imperative that we never lose sight of the goal that "the work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose" (1968, section 127). Moreover, the dialectical structure of the mature philosophy - which is evidenced in the interaction of Wittgenstein's different voices within the text - should be acknowledged as an essential part of Wittgenstein's method and not, as Grayling has suggested, as a mere stylistic device which obscures more general views that are being surreptitiously advanced. Wittgenstein's dialectical method is intended to bring about a change in our style of thought such that we do not attempt to express its results in the form of positive doctrines. This, as P.F. Strawson has pointed out, is a negative conception of philosophy but not one that implies a negative connotation. What Wittgenstein offers in the place of a "traditional" philosophical theory is a therapeutic of a given philosophical dilemma. Wittgenstein's style of thought eschews the abstract theorizing which he believes lies at the root of philosophical confusion. Thus P.M.S. Hacker comments: "In the debate about the nature of philosophy, he questioned the assumption that philosophy is a cognitive discipline in which new knowledge is discovered, theories are constructed, and progress is marked by the growth of knowledge and well confirmed theory" (1996, 104). Wittgenstein himself writes ironically in the "Big Typescript": "I read 'Philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of'reality' than Plato got . . .' What an extraordinary thing. How remarkable that Plato could get so far! Or that we have not been able to get any farther. Was it because Plato was so clever? ..." (B.T. quoted in Hacker 1996). Wittgenstein, with characteristic pith, illustrates that progress (defined as the resolution of problems) is uncomfortably absent from philosophy. That is, the same philosophical problems which were preoccupying the Greeks are still troubling to us today. Wittgenstein believes that this state of affairs should indicate that something is "rotten in the state of Denmark". The reason for this lack of success, he claims, is that our language (concepts) has remained the same and always introduces us to the same questions. For example, as long as there is a verb "to be" which seems to


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work like "to eat" and "to drink"; as long as there are adjectives like "identical" , "true", "false", "possible"; as long as people speak of the passage of time and the extent of space, and so on; as long as these all happen people will always run up against the same teasing difficulties and will stare at something which no explanation seems to remove (see McGinn 1997). For Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise primarily out of misleading features of our language. Language can often present very different concepts to us in a similar guise. To take one simplistic example: to be red is a property some things have and other things lack, but is existence a property that some things have and other things lack? It makes sense to investigate the nature of various things that exist, but it makes no little sense to investigate the nature of "being". In philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, we are constantly misled by grammatical similarities which mask profound logical differences (McGinn 1989, 1997). So we ask (philosophical) questions which are intelligible when asked of certain categories of things, but which make no sense, or a very different sense, when asked of things that belong to a different category. As Hacker puts it, "philosophical questions are frequently not so much questions in search of an answer as questions in search of a sense" (1996, 8). As Wittgenstein tersely says it: "Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language" (1968, section 109). His aim is to achieve the kind of understanding that comes from seeing particular, concrete cases in the right light. Yet, because philosophy is categorically different from science, such an approach does not issue in anything that could properly be called a theory, or even anything that could adequately be set out in a series of positive claims. Science is involved in the construction of theories which, hopefully, will enable us to predict and explain events. For Wittgenstein, the task of philosophy is to resolve or dissolve philosophical problems through the clarification of what makes sense; there is nothing hypothetical in philosophy, for it cannot be a hypothesis that a proposition makes sense. In comparison with the conventional construal of science, that is, as the attempt to explain phenomena through the employment of hypotheses and hypothetical-deductive inference from a statement of laws and initial conditions, the practice of philosophy stands in stark contrast (McGinn 1997). For Wittgenstein, there are no explanations in philosophy. Understanding is achieved through description, description of the use of words. Such a description would take as its subject matter an investigation of the practices, activities, actions and reactions in the characteristic contexts in which the rule-governed use of a word is integrated. This investigation does not amount to the construction of philosophical theories, but rather, to a methodology with which to approach philosophical problems. The aim of the application of the

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methodology is not to resolve a philosophical paradox or contradiction by means of a conceptual innovation, but rather to attain a clear view of the concepts that trouble us and the surroundings in which they find their home. As Strawson has claimed, philosophy as a "cure for the diseases of the intellect" (a similar image is often employed by Wittgenstein) has a negative connotation. The success of a philosophical investigation lies in disentangling the knots of one's own understanding thereby making a problem disappear and restoring the patient to good health: "Philosophy results in the disclosing of one or another piece of plain nonsense and in the bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These bumps help us see the value of that disclosure" (Wittgenstein 1968, section 119). This negative aspect of Wittgenstein's methodology might be seen as destructive for philosophy as it is traditionally construed, i.e. as the practice of theory construction in an attempt to "answer" philosophical questions. I suggest that Grayling's statement that "Wittgenstein's writings seem to me not only to be summarizable but in positive need of summary ..." (1988, v—vi) is in part a reaction against the subversive nature of Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy. Wittgenstein was acutely aware of this aspect of his mature philosophy. He states: "it seems to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important (as it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble). What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand" (1968, section 118). Such a radical conception of philosophy drew the pejorative comment from Bertrand Russell that Wittgenstein had transformed philosophy into an "idle tea-time amusement" (reported in Monk, 1996). Wittgenstein's method may appear to trivialize a profound subject, reducing philosophy to a matter of mere words. But this is deceptive. A moment's reflection reveals that there is nothing trivial about language. Human beings are essentially language-using creatures. Our language and the forms of our language mould our nature, inform our thoughts and infuse our lives. What Wittgenstein's method offers is a challenge, a challenge to describe our use of language where confusions about that usage lead us into philosophical bewilderment. As Avrum Stroll has observed, "What the reader is exposed to is thus a kaleidoscopic investigative process that does not take the form of explicit argumentation leading to the sorts of definitive conclusions that traditional philosophy has aimed at" (2002, 79). P.M.S. Hacker makes a similar point: Philosophy is a quest for a perspicacious representation of the segments of our language which are a source of conceptual confusion. Our grammar,


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the rules for the use of our words (syntax and lexicon), is lacking in surveyability - it cannot be taken in at a glance . . . A perspicacious representation provides us with a map of the conceptual terrain. (1996, 103) Interestingly, this statement echoes Wittgenstein's own in %ettel where he states: "The aim is a surveyable comparative representation of all the applications, illustrations, conceptions (of the relevant part of the grammar of a philosophically problematic array of expressions) . . . The complete survey of everything that may produce unclarity. And this survey must extend over a wide domain, for the roots of our ideas reach a long way" (1967, section 273). This methodological approach to problems in philosophy might seem to render philosophy too easy - I would suggest that this thought forms the basis, in part, of Russell's objection to Wittgenstein. For philosophy is seemingly reduced to an exercise in the clarification of the use of words, so that the solutions to the problems of philosophy are easily obtained. This approach to philosophy which is epitomized by the "Ordinary Language" school of philosophy, is not to be confused, as it often is (Norris 1996), with Wittgenstein's approach which recognizes the deep difficulty of philosophical problems: How is it that philosophy is such a complicated structure? After all, it should be completely simple if it is that ultimate thing, independent of all experience, that it claims to be - Philosophy unravels knots in our thinking; hence it must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots it unravels . . . Why are grammatical problems so tough and seemingly ineradicable? - Because they are connected with the oldest thought habits, i.e. with the oldest images that are engraved into our language itself. (2005, section 423) On the basis of this outline of Wittgenstein's approach to philosophy, and given that relativism is a theory, a set of positive propositions concerning the nature and status of knowledge, meaning and truth, it is astounding that Wittgenstein should be labelled a relativist by commentators who, as Christopher Norris states, categorize "Wittgenstein's talk of language games (or cultural forms of life) as the limit of interpretation", and with strong sociological approaches to science "which relativize truth to its localized contents of knowledge production" (2000, 29). To advance a relativist position, as I have demonstrated in chapter one, is to propound a positive thesis to the effect that knowledge, belief and truth are relative to a particular culture, conceptual scheme or framework, and that as a result one belief is as "good as any other" and that no one belief is "more correct" or "more true" than any other. If Wittgenstein is guilty of

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the charge of relativism, it is not for the development of such an unsophisticated view as this. Furthermore, given Wittgenstein's methodological principles, such a thesis would be an anathema to the spirit of his mature philosophy which he so painstakingly outlines.

Language Games II To defend Wittgenstein from the charge of relativism merely through an overview of his declared methodological principles will not be sufficient. It might be objected that, whatever the intention of Wittgenstein's approach in regard to philosophical system building, relativism does flow out of a reading of Wittgenstein's mature philosophy as, if you will, a framework that consists in a system of language games all of which have logically internal criteria of truth and knowledge. Does such a characterization of language games imply an anti-realist/relativist position? I believe the answer is no, for realists can easily accept this characterization of language games without contradiction. Indeed, language games are often understood realistically and it seems unintelligible to characterize them otherwise. Language games are employed by human beings interacting with one another and the world and by human beings living in communities. Children learn the language games of the community whether it be in a verbal form (speaking) or a non-verbal form (writing and social comportment) (Kirk 1999). Once they become proficient in the language games of the community, they find that they can, in the appropriate circumstances, co-ordinate their behaviour with that of other people in the community. But all of this is completely consistent with realism for it presupposes that there is a world with people in it, interacting both with it and with each other. It is consistent with the idea that the "world" in which the language game has its home is as it is regardless of whether the participants in the language games are clear about the nature of the world. Language games are therefore consistent with the idea that truth is not the same as acceptability. As Kirk puts it: "The realist will say that there are truths about the world which hold independently of whether participants in the language game have the means to recognize them or even state them'' (1999, 102). Proponents of the anti-realist/relativist characterization of language games will argue that when a realist makes such claims, she does so from "within" a language game, so there is only the appearance of a mindindependent truth i.e. that which is identified by the philosophical language game of the realist. For the anti-realist/relativist, philosophy is a


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language game like any other. As Norris puts it: "philosophy - is just one 'discourse' among others, a language game with its own favored idioms and metaphors, but without any privilege in point of epistemological rigor or truth. And these include (as in Wittgenstein) the language game" (2000, 170). Two things can be said of the anti-realist/relativist position in this regard. The first is that if the anti-realist/relativist is correct and philosophy is a "language game like any other", then the anti-realist/relativist argument loses its probative force. This is for the simple reason that if the truth of the realist position is a function of a language game, then the anti-realist/ relativist position is also, by virtue of its ontology, a function of another (different) language game. By his or her own lights, the anti-realist cannot appeal to any fact of the matter outside his or her particular philosophical language game (for there is no "real world" or "fact of the matter" to appeal to). Thus, the anti-realist is faced with the same dilemma faced by Protagoras and, for the same reason that Protagoras could not prove his case to Socrates, the anti-realist cannot prove his or her own case over that of the realist (Kirk 1999). The second objection to the anti-realist/relativist conception of a language game is that it does not offer any account as to how there can be language games that are not played by real people in a real world. That is to say, how is it possible for people to utter the sounds constitutive of a particular language game in a useful way unless they are interacting with a world independent of thought and experience. In fact, the explanation required here is even more problematic when you consider that the term "people", according to the anti-realist/relativist, is nothing but a constituent of a language game (Kirk 1999). This may seem bizarre and an unlikely position for even a philosopher to hold, but contemporary examples abound. Jane Flax, for example, characterizes such a viewpoint as follows: Since humans are "speaking animals", our personhood is constructed by language. Language speaks us as much as we speak it. Furthermore, the meaning of our experience and our understanding of it cannot be independent of the fact that such experience and thought about it are grasped and expressed in and through language. No a-historical or transcendental standpoint exists from which the Real can be directly and without construction/distortion apprehended and reported in our thought. (1993,453) However, under Wittgenstein's original conception, such a view is impossible to sustain, for a language game is internally dependent upon the rules

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that govern it. As such, the features of the environment within which the language game has its life may be appealed to if the question arises as to whether an individual is following the rules of a language game correctly. That is to say, the outside world is independent of the language game itself, e.g. whether a child uses the term "dog" correctly in a language game of naming depends partly on whether the animal named is an example ofcanis familiaris. More can be said in this relation; the discussion will be taken up again in chapter five where I examine the influence of Wittgenstein on Richard Rorty's variety of pragmatism. Nevertheless, although Wittgenstein's ideas encouraged many commentators to see in the notion of a language game elements of anti-realism, I believe that this is incorrect as far as "language games" are concerned. As Robert Kirk has perspicaciously noted, Wittgenstein's notion of a language game was invoked to illustrate the particular case, not applied in such a way as to cover whole languages and all the practices associated with them. Such a reading, as we have seen, is consistent with Wittgensteinian methodology. To cast Wittgenstein as a traditional theorist is not only a distortion of Wittgenstein's views, but as I have argued above, such a move from the particular to the general creates philosophical confusions of the very type which Wittgenstein wishes to avoid. In other words, the anti-realist/relativist conception is a fallacious line of reasoning that is itself based upon a promiscuous reading and application of the concept of a language game. Jose Medina, for example, argues that "Wittgenstein's contextualism rejects the idea that there is a single correct perspective that can be invoked in all contexts and for all purposes (as the metaphysical realists claim); but it does not follow from this that any perspective is as good as any other. As far as I can tell, there is nothing in Wittgenstein's view that entails relativism ..." (2002, 23). I am in agreement with Medina's rejection of a relativistic reading of Wittgenstein. To avoid any misconstrual of Wittgenstein's work, any assessment of "Wittgenstein's relativism" must proceed in a highly contextualized fashion and, as I have argued, Wittgensteinian methodology concerns itself with confusions in our language and not in the creation of general theories about language or the world. Thus far I have limited my analysis to rebutting accusations of Wittgensteinian relativism at a highly generalized level, i.e. "does Wittgenstein's notion of a language game lead to relativism?" I now turn to a more focused analysis of Wittgenstein's later work, one that is ignored by Medina. I examine Wittgenstein's treatment of philosophical scepticism in the pages of his last work, On Certainty, in order to ascertain whether relativism is generated as a result of his arguments therein.


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Scepticism and Relativism To investigate whether Wittgenstein's treatment of a philosophical problem entails relativism, I choose a less well-trodden road than that of his famous work, the Philosophical Investigations, opting instead for his last "book", On Certainty, where Wittgenstein addresses the problem of scepticism. I choose the latter work as a site from which to conduct my analysis for two reasons. First, it is my belief that On Certainty has not received the attention that it deserves. Secondly, it captures the anti-essentialist and anti-system-building spirit of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. I hope to demonstrate that Wittgenstein's mature philosophy is not merely nonrelativistic in its intent (i.e. its methodology) but also non-relativistic in its application. Wittgenstein inherits the problem of scepticism from the philosophy of G.E. Moore. In two papers, "Proof of the External World" and "A Defence of Common Sense" (Moore, 1963), Moore sets out to refute the sceptic by means of a proof which runs as follows: 1) "Here is one hand" (holding up left hand) 2) "Here is another" (holding up right hand) 3) Therefore: two hands exist. This, according to Moore, is an ipso facto proof of the existence of the external world because: 1) its premise is different from the conclusion it is used to prove. The conclusion "two hands exist" is different from "here is a hand" and "here is another hand". The conclusion - "two hands exist" - could be true even if both of the premises were false. 2) The premises state something known to be true. It would be absurd to say (according to Moore) that one did not know that there was one hand and there another, but that one only believes it to be true and cannot be certain of it. 3) The conclusion follows from the premises. If it is true that there is one hand and here another, it could not be false that two hands exist (see McGinn 1989, 38). Although the sceptic might be willing to accept the claims Moore makes for the structure of his proof, she will surely find premise 2) highly questionable. Can we assert that we know the premise "here is one hand" to be true? Is this not the very thing the sceptic wishes to call into doubt in the first instance? For, according to the sceptic, although it is trivially true that we do not doubt our knowledge of the existence of medium-sized objects (say, our hands) when we converse in the everyday idiom, behind such everyday practices lies the possibility of philosophical questioning which could show

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that things are other than they appear to be (see McGinn 1989). Thus, a sceptic might claim that Moore's proof has missed the point altogether. In such a case, a sceptic accepts that we may say under a certain set of circumstances "here is one hand and here another" and that this practice is accepted as credible in our day-to-day lives. But what is of philosophical importance for the sceptic is the claim that we can never be certain that we know anything, that reality is as we take it to be. Wittgenstein's reaction to this problem takes the form of a set of working notes published posthumously under the cover On Certainty. Wittgenstein does not attempt a refutation of the sceptic with a proof (indeed he holds that Moore's proof is faulty in that his use of "I know" is conceptually inappropriate). Instead of offering a proof, Wittgenstein attempts to demonstrate through an examination of Moore's uses of "I know" that the sceptical doubt is purely idiosyncratic - a form of "meta-doubt" - which does not make sense. Doubt of this kind has no role to play within our dayto-day epistemic language games. For Wittgenstein, the sceptic's case constitutes a form of "semantic redundancy". He claims that both Moore and the sceptic are guilty of semantic redundancy but for different reasons. Whereas the sceptic's questions make no sense in the context within which they are asked, Wittgenstein contends that Moore's misfired attempt at a refutation of the sceptic reveals something interesting about the form of (some of) our epistemic discourse. Thus, it is important to notice that Wittgenstein does not put forward a competing proof, nor does he propound a hypothesis which he then proceeds to defend. Rather, he begins by examining the ways in which Moore employs "I know" and "doubt" (see McGinn 1989, 40). Wittgenstein claims that Moore's use of "I know" is not a special fact about him (Moore). That is to say, the propositions in which Moore employs "I know ..." are not examples of knowledge idiosyncratic to Moore himself, information that he and no others have acquired (Wittgenstein 1975: 84, 100, 462). Anthony Kenny (1973, 34) illustrates this same point by asking us to compare Moore's use of "I know that there is a hand" with a sign on a tiger's cage at the zoo that reads, "I know that this is a tiger". He wants to remind his readers that "I know . . ." and "that is . . ." are interchangeable in the cases in which Moore utters them. Thus, Kenny's observation marks the beginning of a process of erosion initiated to rid us of the idea that there is something philosophically special, mysterious or profound about Moore's employing the term "I know". Wittgenstein continues on the same tack throughout On Certainty by attacking the special qualities with which Moore attempts to imbue "I know ..." Wittgenstein produces an exhaustive examination of the


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contexts within which "I know ..." is usefully employed, drawing comparisons that undermine Moore's usage. He also examines the contexts in which Moore's employment of "I know .. ." would have a use. For example, a philosopher may say "I know that's a tree" to demonstrate to herself that she knows something that is not a mathematical or logical truth (Wittgenstein 1975, 350), or he may say such a thing because he has failing eyesight (349). But outside such contexts, to say such a thing would be nonsensical inasmuch as the utterance would have no role to play within the life of conversation. It would, so to speak, be semantically redundant. Wittgenstein draws a comparison with a person who suddenly said "Good Morning!" during a discussion that had been under way for several hours one afternoon (461, 464). Out of context, such utterances might be taken as nonsense or even as a sign of insanity. Wittgenstein, in such examples, is suggesting that rationality and knowledge go together (554). That is to say, some "claims to know" are not false but unintelligible gibberish, something mouthed only by a lunatic or a philosopher (McGinn 1989). Wittgenstein does not deny that Moore's propositions of "I know ..." can be assigned a sense. One merely has to think of a context within which they would have a use. For example, Moore's "I know that I have always been near the surface of the earth" might be employed in a debate with a tribe of native people who think Moore has come from the moon (1975, 264, 349). But Wittgenstein's point still holds, for although Moore's propositions can be assigned a use and therefore a sense when such a use is found (as in the example above) in these usages, such propositions are no longer philosophically interesting (1975, 622). They can no longer contribute to a proof for a philosophical position or theory, such as realism or idealism, for once they are "relocated" so that they do function to make sense, they merely inform us of the commonplace (59). Wittgenstein also asks whether the sentence "I know ..." functions as a "first person introspection report". When Moore utters the sentence "I know . . .", is he reporting one of his private mental states? Wittgenstein questions and investigates Moore's assertion, by showing, by analogy, that "I know . . ." is unlike "I believe . . .", "I surmise . . ." or "I doubt . . ." in that knowledge claims such as "I know . . ." can be mistaken (21), whereas the claim "I believe that. . ." cannot. For example, one can say "he believes it, but it isn't so" but not "he knows it, but it isn't so". To the objection that this merely suggests knowledge and belief are two different mental states, Wittgenstein points out that the mental state of conviction may be the same whether it is knowledge or false belief (42, 308). He suggests further that in many instances "I know . . ." is to be understood as similar to: "You can count on this . . ." (575), as in the following example: "If I say 'Of course

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I know that's a towel' I am making an utterance (Ausserung). I have no thought of verification. For me it is an immediate utterance" (510). This approach is reminiscent of work in Philosophical Investigations, particularly the discussion of "pain behaviour" (1968, section 262), where Wittgenstein attempts to undermine the idea that pain is a report of an epistemically private mental state through the use of similar examples (see McGinn 1989). This observation connects to another thread of his analysis of epistemic discourse within the pages of On Certainty, where he considers what sense can be given to a statement such as "I know that that's a hand". He suggests that this proposition could be taken as descriptive of the kinds of things one could meaningfully say within the language game, such as "I have a pain in this hand" or "This hand is weaker than the other". These are language games within which there is no doubt as to the existence of the hand. What is problematic in Moore's account is that this suggestion is not conducive to the ends to which Moore wishes to employ such a statement as "I know that this is a hand". The reason, as Wittgenstein points out, is that if this is the kind of thing of which knowledge can be had (and the fact that knowledge is available in this instance is central to Moore's proof), then merely saying "I know ..." does not prove that one does know (1975, 487-9). One must find out how or why one knows X: the possibility of doubt and the possibility of knowledge go together (10, 450) (see McGinn 1989). This is a brief and by no means exhaustive account of Wittgenstein's approach to the dissolution of the sceptical case (not the sceptical problem). That is, it is an attempt to defuse rather than oppose the sceptic. What should be evident straightaway is his radical departure from any theory-building approach. For Wittgenstein has not propounded a theory to compete with and overturn the sceptic's claims. Rather, he has made a careful examination of some of the ways in which epistemic terminology is employed. It is from this fragmentary examination that Wittgenstein draws his formula for the dissolution of the sceptical position. Drawing our attention once again to the logic of knowledge and doubt, Wittgenstein asks us to imagine a schoolboy attempting to learn history, who doubts the veracity of everything that is told to him: "A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meanings of words, etc. The teacher says, 'Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make any sense at all' " (310). Doubt requires grounds, and doubt bereft of grounds is also bereft of a use (see McGinn 1989). Hence, the "doubt" which the sceptic wishes to entertain, the universal, or if you will, the meta-doubt, is impossible to sustain, for


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it has no meaningful role to play in epistemic discourse. For example, considering the classical sceptical problem about whether such objects as tables exist when we do not perceive them, Wittgenstein asks: "But if anyone were to doubt it, how would this come out in practice? And couldn't we peacefully leave him to doubt it, since it makes no difference at all?" (120). And returning to the central example of Moore's proof, he asks: "What would it be like to doubt now whether I have two hands? Why can't I imagine this at all? . . . So far I have no system at all within which this doubt might exist" (247). Wittgenstein's point is that the doubt entertained by the sceptic is an empty one. What the sceptic has to say constitutes no "move" within our discourse, the sceptic has nothing to say to us. To the objection that everything is only probable and never certain, Wittgenstein once again calls attention to how such a position would manifest itself in life: But imagine people who were never quite certain of these things, but said they were very probably so ... How would the life of these people differ from ours? For there are people who say that it is merely extremely probable that water over a fire will boil and not freeze, and that therefore strictly speaking what we consider impossible is only improbable. What difference does this make in their lives? Isn't it just that they talk rather more about certain things than the rest of us? (338) The position that everything was only merely probable and never certain would therefore manifest itself as no more than a verbal tick. It would have no role to play in the debate except perhaps as a sign of eccentricity. It is redundant and therefore lacking in content in regard to our everyday discourse. But Wittgenstein wishes to go further than merely pointing to the impotence of the "doubts" raised by the idealist and/or the sceptic. He also insists that the "doubt" of the idealist and of the sceptic is, strictly speaking, no "doubt" at all. He does this by drawing attention to the conditions that pertain when we speak of doubt in any particular instance. This he investigates through examples: " 'I don't know if this is a hand.' But do you know what the word 'hand' means? And don't say, 'I know what it means now for me.' And isn't it an empirical fact - that this word is used like this?" (306). Wittgenstein's point here is that to doubt that/?, one must understand what is meant by p. This is unproblematic until one is faced with the universal or "meta-doubt" of the sceptic; the doubt that calls everything into question. It is here that doubt collapses in upon itself, since if the sceptical doubt is radical enough to call into question the meanings of words themselves, then the sceptic must remain mute on the question of doubting in a particular instance, for: "If I wanted to doubt whether this was my hand, how could I

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avoid doubting whether the word 'hand' has any meaning? So that is something I seem to know after all" (369). Worse still, the sceptic must remain silent about the veracity of all assertions for, as Wittgenstein puts it, "If, therefore, I doubt or am uncertain about this being my hand (in whatever sense), why not in the case about the meaning of these words as well?" (456). The sceptical project, according to Wittgenstein, is thereby undermined. No sceptical discussion can get off the ground concerning the existence or non-existence of material objects (from which the sceptic would proceed), or on the question as to whether we are constantly being deceived by an evil demon, or some other such placeholder. For the "tools" necessary for such an undertaking are no longer available to the sceptic: "If this deceives me, what does 'deceive' mean anymore?" (332). It is this fact about our language that points to the peculiarity of the sceptical case: it is not a peculiarity in the sense of a technical understanding of the terms "doubt"or "deceive" on the sceptic's part which perhaps could find a use within a specialist discipline. The use to which the sceptic wishes to put the concepts "doubt" and "deceive" is an unworkable one, for as Wittgenstein puts it: "If you are not certain of any fact you cannot be certain of the meanings of your words either" (153). Wittgenstein further investigates the role of meta-doubt by considering where and in what situations it is possible to doubt. He suggests that the concept "doubt" is in a sense logically bivalent in that doubt is possible (intelligible) only in situations where something is known, i.e. something stands fast. This assertion may seem ambiguous. However, if we remind ourselves of the schoolboy who constantly interrupts his teacher, we can get a better sense of the direction of this investigation. Doubts for Wittgenstein presuppose the consistency of something that is not doubted and not tested. He states, "If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty" (115). With reference to history once again, not in the context of pedagogy as with his schoolboy example above, but rather in the context of checking a historical fact, Wittgenstein says: Does anyone ever test whether this table remains in existence when no one is paying attention to it? We check the story of Napoleon, but not whether all the reports about him are based on sense deception, forgery and the like. For whenever we test anything, we are already presupposing something that is not tested. Now am I to say that the experiment which perhaps I make in order to test the proposition presupposes the truth of the proposition that the apparatus I believe I see is really there (and the like)? (163)


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As the schoolboy's "doubt" was ungrounded, so would it be with a historian who "doubted" all historical facts. No historical analysis could be undertaken and the "doubt" of this peculiar type of historian would serve no purpose. It would lead to no new information, no new historical facts being discovered, nor would it lead to a re-writing or a revisionist interpretation of the facts. The breadth of the "doubt" in this case would be so universal that such a "doubt" would find no function within the discipline of history. It is in this sense that the "doubt" would be incoherent. Wittgenstein reinforces this point about historical knowledge by considering an attempted application of the sceptic's doubt to experimental method in the sciences: One cannot make experiments if there are not some things that one does not doubt. But that does not mean that one takes certain propositions on trust. . . If I make an experiment I do not doubt the existence of the apparatus before my eyes. I have plenty of doubts, but not that. If I do a calculation I believe, without any doubts, that the figures on the paper aren't switching of their own accord, and I also trust my memory the whole time. (337) Once again, Wittgenstein's observation is that "it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are indeed not doubted" (342). Doubt is, of course, of central importance to the experimental sciences, both as a motivator to the experimenter and as a healthy check upon what can or cannot be claimed on the basis of an experimental result. Wittgenstein is not denying this. Rather, he is dismissing the "meta-doubt" of the sceptic. For, if it is construed as coherent, such a universal doubt would result in an ossification, and finally a fossilization, of the practice of experimental method. No move would be possible, no experiment could be undertaken, no data could be trusted, and no result would be either logically or practically possible. Worse still, one could not even be sure that one was experimenting (McGinn 1989). Wittgenstein contends, therefore, that certain propositions are not so much immune from doubt as exempt from doubt. Propositions such as this are a logical requirement for any move within any particular area of discourse. As Wittgenstein puts it, "the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were the hinges on which those turn" (341). His contention here is that scepticism is not "deep" as a well is deep, it is merely that the bottom is painted black. For once doubt is brought back from the philosophically "deep" questions to examples of how the terms like "knowledge" and "doubt" are used in everyday talk, the "doubt" would be no longer philosophically

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interesting (622). It is important to note that Wittgenstein has attempted to achieve his ends without employing a countervailing proof, such as Moore's, to refute the sceptic, or developing a philosophical theory of his own design that would leave no room for the sceptic within its metaphysics. In doing so, Wittgenstein remains consistent with his "subversive" method of philosophical investigation.

Grammatical Relativism Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism invites the following objection: could cultural relativism be re-cast at the grammatical level, i.e. at the level of "Moore Type Propositions", thereby confirming Wittgenstein as a relativist, while at the same time circumventing the arguments against such an interpretation that I have offered? Avrum Stroll entertains such a notion by identifying two passages from On Certainty that "evince [Wittgenstein's] relativism" (2002, 36). First: "It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid" (Wittgenstein 1975, 96). And second: "If someone were to say, 'so logic too is an empirical science' he would be wrong. Yet this is right; the same propositions may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing" (98). Stroll characterizes the root of Wittgenstein's relativism along the lines of "Moore Type Propositions" and their attendant grammar of use. He writes: "Thus a proposition that stands fast at a given time may not stand fast at another. When it stands fast it is a 'hinge proposition' and when it no longer stands fast it ceases to be one." Stroll further notes that "standing fast is relativized to a context: a proposition is not intrinsically certain, but it is held fast by what surrounds it" (Stroll 2002, 136-7). That is to say, what makes the knowledge claim legitimate is the context within which it finds its home. Likewise, as Rom Harre and Michael Krausz have suggested: To engage in a common discourse the members of a community must agree in the way they use words. There must be an agreement in their "grammar." Grammars however, are human constructions, not super scientific theories of the world. It would seem then that they might be freely chosen, that "grammars are autonomous." Does this lead to relativism? (Harre and Krausz 1996, 21)


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In other words, they are asking whether cultural relativism could be born out of the fact that two different cultures might have their own idiosyncratic rules governing their respective languages. For Wittgenstein, this possibility is blocked by his observation that whatever symbolic system we employ within a particular culture, or a segment of that culture, the diversity of symbolic practices is constrained by nature (see McGinn 1989). For example, a bad choice of speaking about fungi may lead to a death by poisoning. But the constraint does not stop here, for human beings have natural propensities and capacities which can be exploited in the elementary training routines that make the acquisition of language possible. As Harre and Krausz put it: "every culture/language/form of life must be grounded in the material conditions of our embodiment in just this universe" (1996, 22). Thus, to say that meaning is normative (rule-governed) is not to say that it is governed by the decision of an individual or individuals, i.e. that it is a matter of preference. Rather, the "governor" of meaning, for Wittgenstein, is the form of life within which it is embedded. Its very freedom is a law-like one: "So are you saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false? It is what human beings say that is true and false: and they agree in the language that they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life" (Wittgenstein 1968, 550). It is important to note that Wittgenstein does not allow his treatment of grammar to stray into cultural relativism (as Peter Winch and Richard Rorty do). Yet, Wittgenstein does not himself draw relativist conclusions at any such point in his published works. Wittgenstein's philosophical method encourages us to ask the following question: When we use the term relativism, what exactly is it "relative to"? For example, in his treatment of scepticism, Wittgenstein employs a technique whereby he creates a "fictitious natural history". He asks us to imagine a form of life or a people whose manner of acting, seeing or calculating is radically different from our own, e.g. the monomaniacal schoolboy and his attempt to learn history (1975, 263). By comparing these fictions to our own practices, he highlights the meaning of the schoolboy's utterance. With this technique, Wittgenstein is attempting to show that no concepts and no symbolic representations that people employ are to be treated in the following way: . . . as absolute in the timeless, foundational, philosophical sense. If anyone believes that certain concepts are absolutely the correct ones, and that having different ones would mean not realizing something that we realize — then let him imagine certain very general facts of nature to be different from that we are used to, and the formation of concepts different from the usual ones will become intelligible to him. (1968, 230)

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For Wittgenstein, the relativist, in maintaining that all different points of view may be treated as equal in status, is assuming that there exists a stance from which all points of view may be treated as equal in status. In other words, the relativist is assuming what he or she needs to prove and, as a result, once this underlying assumption on the part of the relativist is made explicit, "relativism" would collapse, interestingly, into a form of conceptual absolutism. As I have already noted, in the case of cultural relativism, to regard all cultural forms and practices as equal in status is to adopt a standpoint outside any particular form or practice. In other words, it is a misfiring attempt to treat the grounds of any attempted explanation as an element to be explained. Henry MacDonald in The Normative Basis of Culture employs the following example to illustrate this same point: to insist that all cultural forms and practices (for example, the economic systems of different cultures) be regarded as equal in status is to assume implicitly that there exists a standpoint from which such forms and practices may be regarded as equal in status; it is to view the economic system of the cultures as serving ultimately the same basic function or purpose, say the distribution of wealth in the society but in different ways. Now, it is true of course that if we define the economy of a society as the method by which a society distributes its wealth among the members of a society, then all economic systems will have this purpose or function of distribution of wealth in common. But . . . to identify this common element is to say nothing about the economic system of a particular society. (MacDonald 1986, 131-2) What is said here defines what we mean when we talk of an economic system. To take a similar example, when we claim that all societies must have some means of distribution of wealth, this does not characterize any particular society. Rather, it simply conveys what we mean by a society. When relativists propound the view that differing forms and practices of different cultures are equal in status, cognitive, epistemological or otherwise, they are objectifying the meaning of those forms and practices. That is to say, "relativists" are not assessing the meaning of the forms and practices of the cultures with which they are confronted, but instead, are attempting to speak sensibly about some ethereal element common to all forms and practices of all cultures. To cite another of MacDonald's examples: "If we define an economic system as the method of distribution of wealth and view the barter system of a particular society as economic, then it is to say nothing about such a barter system if we say that it is the method of the distribution of wealth"


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(1986, 132). As I have mentioned, to regard all cultural forms and practices as equal in status, as the cultural relativist requires, is to try to adopt a standpoint outside any particular cultural form or practice. But according to relativism, there can be no "extra or super-cultural" position. Wittgenstein has suggested in his treatment of the problem of scepticism that certain propositions in our language (Moore-type propositions) express the grammatical rules for certain segments of our epistemological discourse. These grammatical rules are always true, but their negation is not false: rather, they are meaningless. It is in this way that such grammatical rules inscribe the boundaries of meaningful discourse. For if the proposition that something cannot be red or green all over expresses a rule for the meaningful use of the words "red" and "green", then the proposition "something can be red and green all over at once" is not false but meaningless. Moore-type propositions (or "framework" propositions) are "grammatical" in Wittgenstein's sense of this term. This is not to say that relativism is "true" or that "absolutism is false" or vice versa. I suggest that the propositions that define relativism and the various absolutisms that stand in opposition to the relativist position delineate the boundary between sense and nonsense. In this way, it can be seen that although relativism collapses as an epistemological theory, the attempt to state it meaningfully on the part of the relativist reveals something interesting about the boundary between sense and nonsense in this segment of epistemic discourse.

Conclusion Indeed, as I have argued, given the radical nature of Wittgenstein's mature philosophical methodology, it is understandable that commentators such as Quinton, Grayling and Haller would attribute to Wittgenstein a philosophical theory^ which he does not propound explicitly, and which is not a consequence of his approach to philosophical investigation. Strangely, Himly labels Wittgenstein a relativist because of the theory that he does not propound. The confusion seems to arise for two main reasons. The first is not so much due to a misreading of Wittgenstein (of which Grayling's is paradigmatic) as to a temptation to characterize Wittgenstein's later philosophy from within the framework of a metaphysical system as traditionally understood. As I have argued, the temptation to describe such terms as "language game" as forming part of such a "system" does violence to the spirit of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Nevertheless, when commentators produce a generalized overview of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, they fail to pay attention to the subversive nature of Wittgenstein's position in relation to traditional

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philosophy. Thus, they characterize the later work not as an exercise of a particular method but as a metaphysical system which, like many other competing metaphysical systems within the western canon, purports to be descriptive of the way the world is. On the contrary, Wittgenstein's methodology resists such a tendency. In the later philosophy, Wittgenstein is engaged in a constant struggle to avoid generalizations, as the piecemeal analysis of scepticism in On Certainty suggests. The second reason for the confusion flows from the idea that Wittgenstein's later work has a "social basis". From this highly generalized declaration, commentators such as Quinton, Himly and Bloor are quick to place Wittgenstein on the "cultural relativism" bandwagon, pulling him on board as an unwilling passenger (see Norris 1996). But as I have attempted to demonstrate, the "social basis" of Wittgenstein's philosophy is to be understood with a small "s". It is of course correct to say that Wittgenstein's philosophy has a social basis inasmuch as he examines the ways in which we employ our words in language. Thus, it might be described as an ethnomethodological approach to the practice of philosophy. But one must exercise care in drawing any positive theses, such as relativism, from this approach to philosophical problems. As I have argued, in his thinking on the problem of scepticism, Wittgenstein was unable to confirm the harsh discipline dictated by his methodology, especially in regard to his treatment of "Moore-type propositions". Wittgenstein's treatment of "Moore-type propositions" plays a systematic role in his reply to the sceptical challenge and it is this system or framework of Moore-type propositions that leaves open the possibility of a relativist interpretation. As I have hinted in this chapter, the training of the analytic philosopher looms large in this relation, and as we shall see in the next chapter, there is a constant temptation to explain the phenomena at hand via a theory or set of theories, rather than merely to understand them via a methodological approach. That is to say, Wittgenstein is urging philosophers (correctly or otherwise) not to explain the world via a metaphysical system, but rather, to come to a better understanding of our day-to-day use of the concepts of knowledge, doubt and deception, thus enabling us to dissolve the philosophical problems that trouble us. This ever-present tension between explaining and understanding becomes, for the philosopher, a further site for the growth of relativism and one that I now turn to by examining Peter Winch's "Understanding a Primitive Society".

Chapter Four

A Root of Relativism: Winch and Culture

What Shall Become of Us Without the Barbarians? Those People were a Kind of Solution. Constantine Cavafy In this chapter, I continue to trace the thread of relativism by taking to task one of Wittgenstein's followers, Peter Winch, who attempts to apply Wittgenstein's later philosophy to the problem of cross-cultural understanding (see Winch 1958, 1964, 1987). I argue that an investigation of the undertaking in which Winch is involved shows how one form of cultural relativism is generated. To understand the thrust of Winch's project, it is necessary to outline, briefly, the context within which Winch is writing. The rise of cultural relativism in the twentieth century took place in the social sciences, particularly in cultural anthropology. In turn, the discipline of anthropology owes much to the Enlightenment, for it was during the Enlightenment that people began to seek answers to questions that had been disallowed or answered merely by referring to religious dogma. For example, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in England and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Francois-Marie Voltaire in France posed questions about the origins of human beings as a species and the place of that species in the natural world. As James F. Harris observes: It is hard to imagine anything like a serious, scientific, anthropological study and comparison of human races. It is difficult to imagine aninvestigation of cultures' anatomies and languages in a pre-modernist world before such questions about the origin and nature of human species and human culture had been posed in a philosophical and scientific manner. (1992,43) From its beginning right up to and including the beginning of the twentieth century, anthropology was dominated by one model. This model, the evolutionary model, understood human cultural change as a predetermined and uni-linear progression. As a result, differences amongst cultures and races were accounted for by the positions they occupied on an abstract

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and theoretical evolutionary scale. In this way, anthropologists describing alien cultures would talk in terms of "advanced" or "primitive" ones. The role of the anthropologist was, at least in part, to locate different cultures in their "proper" places along the evolutionary scale, as well as to provide some account of the causal factors underlying the different locations and differences. The paradigm example of projects of this sort is found in the work of Auguste Comte, the father of sociology, who breaks down the transition from the primitive to the advanced into three stages, namely the theological, the metaphysical and the positive (or scientific). Each stage of development exhibits not only a particular form of mental development in the culture but also a corresponding material development. Comte holds that in the theological stage, military life predominates; in the metaphysical stage, legal forms achieve dominance; and in the positive stage, scientific and industrial development flourishes. Comte's project emerged from his historical study of the development of the human mind, where by "human mind" he means the Western European mind. "India and China", he claims, "had not contributed to the development of the human mind" (Comte 1988, 57). It is important to remember that when Comte talks of "the development of the human mind", he means the development of the sciences, specifically physics, chemistry and physiology (biology) (mathematics for Comte was a logical tool and not a science). Comte believes that each science develops a logic proper to itself, which logic is revealed only in the historical study of that science. As a result, in Comte's view, the mind must be studied historically rather than abstractly. That is to say, the logic of the mind cannot be explained a priori, but only in terms of what a culture has done in the past. Running concurrently with the development of the social sciences and anthropology at this time was a period of colonialization which accompanied the industrial revolution in the west at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century. This period, which resulted in the acquisition of huge colonial empires by Western European countries, flowed not only from military superiority but, more importantly, from industrial and technological superiority which was, in turn, a legacy of the Enlightenment and the rise of science. Evolutionary anthropology, with its fundamental belief in the uni-linear development of human nature, licensed members of the dominant culture, in this case the Western European industrialized countries, to regard themselves as more fully developed and hence more "advanced" than those of the cultures being discovered outside of Western Europe. This resulted in a situation where the culture of the west dismissed the often different practices of alien cultures and peoples as varying forms of "primitivism".

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As Harris has made clear, in earlier periods in history, colonization was marked by the fact that the dominant culture of the colonizing nation had been imposed by sheer military power. However, in the wave of industrial colonization which continued well into the nineteenth century, the superiority of the colonizing nations was believed to be intrinsic to their culture of origin. That is, it flowed from a superior scientific development, from a more "advanced" society with industrial technology, one with a highly developed and superior intelligence (see Harris 1992). As long as evolutionary anthropology held sway in keeping the notion of a dominant culture as part of the natural order of the world, cultural differences were to be interpreted, not as emerging evidence for cultural relativism, but as various misfiring examples of primitivism and regression on the road to civilization. However, the paradigm of evolutionary anthropology began to come under attack at the beginning of the twentieth century from anthropologists such as Franz Boas (1858-1942). Boas with his "culture history school" encouraged detailed empirical field studies and disavowed the grand, abstract universal theories of human development which had characterized the evolutionary anthropologists' work. The focus for Boas becomes the differences between cultures rather than seeing cultures as different stages in a single line of historical development. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) and his "functionalist" school were concerned with understanding certain features of a society with reference to the function these features serve for the society. In this way, a culture comes to be understood, not by comparison to others, as with the evolutionary anthropologists, but solely on its own terms. All the features of the culture are to be understood as incestuous and idiosyncratic rather than as results of a (sometimes misfiring) teleological struggle. Under these influences, the notion of a grand evolutionary scale along which all cultures progressed fell into disrepute. Each culture has come to be seen as simply different from every other and cross-cultural judgements or comparisons are viewed as highly suspect or, in the extreme, meaningless. Shadowing the developments in anthropology by Boas and Malinowski and others was a steady decolonization throughout Africa and Asia. The significant decolonization that followed World War II saw scores of independent nations replacing former European colonies. Along with this decolonization and rise of independent nations came a resurgence of cultural identity. Consequently, the cultural differences with which many anthropologists were faced became more pronounced than at any time since the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment itself, a prime mover in the technology that provided the Western European countries with the industrial revolution, became suspect. It also became credible to view the revolution in

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science and technology as one more culturally specific manifestation and not, as had been previously believed, the manifest destiny of the "superior" or "more advanced" cultures. Such a view finds contemporary expression in the works of such authors as Paul Feyerabend (1987, 21), who goes further by arguing that the period and inheritance of what we in the Northern cultures positively refer to as the "Enlightenment" can easily be viewed by nonNorthern cultures as pernicious in that the consequences of the "Enlightenment" have been both enslaving and ethnocentric, "as well as suppressive of the culturally varied views of the world" (Harris 1992, 12). The influence of these historical trends should not be underestimated. Such influences have contributed to viewing relativism as an entry point into the problems of anthropology, which both allows anthropology to continue as a discipline and avoids the imperializing conclusions of its evolutionary forebears. To quote the anthropologist Melville Herskovits: "in practice, the philosophy of relativism is a philosophy of tolerance" and "that a larger measure of tolerance is needed in this conflict-torn world needs no arguing" (1972,11). Herskovits believes that relativism offers a way to navigate through the narrow channel between the land of the oppressive imperializers, on one bank, and the land of the mute on the other. For relativism, if correct, would give epistemic licence to accept the veracity of knowledge - knowledge of the other cultures and knowledge claims within the context that such claims appear - as well as to understand our own knowledge and knowledge claims as perhaps different but not superior. Accordingly, Herskovits holds that the acceptance of relativism has valuable social results, such as encouraging the toleration of values and practices different from one's own. Relativism is thus viewed in a very positive light. As a doctrine of tolerance, it offers the promise of emancipation from the view that all other societies are struggling to become replicas of those in Western Europe. Under cultural relativism, other cultures have their own values and ideas which are as valid as ours and which we are in no position to condemn in any absolute sense, whether in evolutionary terms or otherwise, nor can we condemn the values enshrined in "our" own culture - a problem generated by cultural relativism which I will return to in chapter five. Thus, according to Krausz and Meiland: "cultural relativism is the position that. . . draws the conclusion that no society has a right to attempt to change or interfere with any other society" (1986, 23). This historical backdrop, which I have sketched in outline only, informs the debate on relativism in that the position of cultural relativism can be viewed as a doctrine with attractive political and moral results. As a result, the move to cultural relativism can be motivated by reasons other than those of a love of truth. As Geoffrey Harrison suggests: "There is a different way of

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providing support for a doctrine, different that is, from trying to show that the doctrine is true. This alternative method of support consists in trying to show that belief in the doctrine has valuable results" (1982, 229). If cultural relativism avoids many of the problems, both logical and political, that dog other positions (e.g. the position of the evolutionary anthropologist), then a strong case is made for the cultural relativist's position. I now turn to investigate such a case through engaging with the problem that the study of ritual practice presents to the western social scientist. In his classic book The Idea of a Social Science, Peter Winch claims that the mature philosophy of Wittgenstein holds a key to the problems of cross-cultural understanding that beset the anthropologists and social scientists studying cultural and social phenomena. Perhaps this thesis is best evidenced in Winch's "Understanding a Primitive Society" (1964) in which he lays out a template for understanding what have often been viewed as the puzzling ritual practices of native peoples. Winch inherits this problem from his own dissatisfaction with the treatment of ritual practices by James Frazer in his classic book The Golden Bough (1981 [1890]) and their later treatment by E.E. Evans-Pritchard in "Witchcraft, Oracles and the Azande" (1934). Frazer and Evans-Pritchard approach ritual practices in a similar way. Following Comte, they assume the imperialist viewpoint that the ritual practice of "primitive" peoples is premised upon and results from a misconstrual of the natural order of the world. According to them, scientific westerners possess the correct (scientific) understanding of the way the world works. As a result, we see clearly and are able to point out to native peoples the error of their ways. Winch's "Understanding a Primitive Society" is in part a reaction against this viewpoint. He wishes to tread a path between the obfuscation of the nature of ritual practice and the imperializing approach that he perceives in the work of Frazer and Evans-Pritchard. I will argue that although Winch proceeds from the most noble of intentions, wishing to avoid the imperializing approaches of many of his predecessors, his position nevertheless generates a relativism that is destructive of his aims. Winch's work in this regard stands as a landmark in the debate over relativism during the last four decades. His position continues to draw adherents. Berel Dov Lerner invokes Winch to argue for a form of instrumental pluralism: the view that there are many different — yet equally valid — forms of rationality (Lerner 1995, 80-96). I contend that any investigation of the forms of cultural relativism propounded since the 1960s must pay close attention to Winch's debt to Wittgenstein's philosophy. In Winch's attempt to explain the intrinsic nature of the magical and ritual practices of another culture, I argue that he is correct

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to avoid the temptation to explain ritual practice, but is, at the same time, seduced by the notion that such ritual practices must form a coherent and necessarily relativistic system of knowledge. It is this move to the systemization of knowledge on Winch's part that generates a highly influential form of cultural relativism. It should be noted that not all apologists regard the generation of a form of relativism as a negative matter. Rather, the answer to the negative or positive assessment will depend upon the species of relativism generated. As Herskovits has famously remarked: Cultural relativism, in all cases, must be sharply distinguished from concepts of the relativity of individual behavior, which would negate all social controls over conduct . . . the very core of cultural relativism is the social discipline that comes from mutual respect. Emphasis on the worth of many ways of life, not one, is an affirmation of the values in each culture. Such emphasis seeks to understand and to harmonize goals, not to judge and destroy those that do not dovetail with our own. (1972, 11) It seems unlikely that anyone would disagree with the goals of relativism in this regard. But can a cultural relativism be developed that does not reinherit the logical weaknesses of the individualist Protagorean model? It is to Winch's attempt to do so that I now turn. In doing so, I contrast the arguments of Wittgenstein in "Remarks on Frazer's: The Golden Bough" (1970) with the arguments proffered by Winch on the same subject matter in his article "Understanding a Primitive Society" (1964) and in his book The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (1958). By comparing the works of Winch and Wittgenstein, I will demonstrate that a debt is also due to Wittgenstein for the central tenets of Winch's project in "Understanding a Primitive Society". I will argue that his misreading of Wittgenstein's understanding of the concept of "grammar" leads Winch to depict Azande oracular practices as embodying a "concept of reality". First however, it is important to provide a reference range for the criticisms that will follow by giving a brief and general account of the "scientific explanation" approach found in Frazer's The Golden Bough, an elaborate and fascinating study of rituals in "primitive" societies. In this eclectic work, Frazer draws from a vast cornucopia of anthropological data. Repeatedly, he takes a particular example such as the King of the Wood at Nemi and argues for what he believes to be the "error" of our ancestors. For Frazer, Nemi rituals arise out of a misconception about the order of nature. That is to say, Frazer sees the beliefs that underlie such rituals as protoscientific. The killing of the King of the Wood at Nemi is to be understood by the anthropologist as a way of guaranteeing the future bounty of the

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land. As Frazer puts it, the rituals of our ancestors "were not willful extravagances, the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable at the time when they were propounded, but which fuller experience has proved to be inadequate" (1981, 312). Thus, for Frazer, ritual practices in "primitive" societies are the first blind and grasping strivings of an embryonic science. Contemporary western men and women with a fully developed and predictive scientific understanding of nature can cast a historical eye over the ritual practices of primitive peoples to reveal the errors inherent therein. Such a view, of course, invokes massive underlying assumptions about the progress and development of humankind, as well as many more tacitly held value judgements about the superiority of the scientific over the so-called "primitive" (see Johnston 1989). These assumptions are not bothersome to Frazer; in fact they lay fallow in his understanding. He does not acknowledge the political and social impact of his imperialistic viewpoint. For his wider project within The Golden Bough is to contribute to a social anthropology that will chart the course of humanity's rational development. Following Comte, Frazer holds that the human mind "has undergone an ... evolution, gradually improving from perhaps bare sensation to the comparatively high level of intelligence to which the civilized races have at present attained" (1981, 345). Frazer then, in his accumulation of anthropological data, intends to provide the basis for a theory that attempts to lay bare the general principles or laws of human development and hence of human action in general. He regards physical science as the determinate end-product of this development. Thus, he views any ritual practice as a kind of proto-hypothesis. For example, he explains peasant ceremonies in spring, at midsummer and at harvest on the hypothesis that they "were originally magic rites intended to cause plants to grow, cattle to thrive, rain to fall and the sun to shine'' (1981, 318). However, modern human development of scientific investigation has resulted, according to Frazer, in a thoroughgoing explanation of the causal chains that operate in nature. Science, according to Frazer, in achieving such an explanation, has risen above the proto-hypotheses of ritual. In the aftermath of the success of scientific explanation and with the benefit of historical hindsight, ritual can be seen as a vital stage-post on the way to the development of science, but once the practice of science has been embraced, ritual is then revealed, according to Frazer, as merely a collection of errors. This view is evident in Frazer's account of his central example, the King of the Wood at Nemi. He interprets the ritual slaughter of the King of the Wood as a muddle-headed understanding of the workings of nature. Put simply, modern people know that ploughing the remains of the old crop

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back into the land will enrich the soil and produce a healthy crop in the next season. That knowledge is based upon the scientific understanding of the chemistry of the soil and the nature of plant life. The "primitives" at Nemi merely know that the seasons change and believe (wrongly) that the passing away of the old (the killing of the King of the Wood) would guarantee the ushering in of the new (Frazer 1981, 212). Frazer captures the Nemi's understanding of the killing of the King of the Wood as one that has categorically misunderstood the causal nexus of the world, a causal nexus which he (Frazer) and his contemporaries in the west have mastered.

Understanding Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer takes the form of a set of eighty-four remarks or aphorisms (Wittgenstein 1970). According to Wittgenstein, Frazer's accountfails to acknowledge the roles of ritual practice at all and this failure springs from Frazer's attempt to characterize ritual practice in scientific terms. Wittgenstein argues that Frazer's account of ritual practice amounts to a gross over-simplification of the richness and diversity of its role in "primitive" societies. The fact that Frazer views ritual practice as "so to speak, pieces of stupidity" (Wittgenstein 1970, 68) is plausible, Wittgenstein argues, only because Frazer fails to recognize the specific features which set ritual apart from other types of activity (Johnston 1989). Magic and ritual play a special role in the lives of those who practice them and yet one of the most striking features of ritual, which Frazer ignores totally, is that only on certain occasions do people engage in such practises. As Wittgenstein puts it, "the same savage, who stabs the picture of his enemy in order to kill him, really builds his hut out of wood and carves his arrows skillfully and not in effigy" (1970, 69). Similarly, Wittgenstein notes, native peoples celebrate rites invoking the sun towards daybreak, when the sun is about to rise, but not at night when they simply burn lamps. These simple examples point to the distinctive nature of ritual practice. Moreover, they suggest that in contrast to other activities (including perhaps scientific practice), there is no clear distinction within a ritual between the means and the end (Johnston 1989). Thus, what is at issue for Wittgenstein in understanding ritual is not an explanation of how a specific goal is to be achieved, such as the production of a healthy crop through the use of a natural fertilizer. Rather, what is at issue is understanding the "whys" of the performance of a highly specific set of actions. "Understanding" here would consist of an insight into the significance of the action for the native person who practises it.

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Wittgenstein holds that it is misguided to see rituals as superseded by later technological advances or as resting on primitive proto-hypotheses subsequently shown to be false. One of the distinctive things about ritual is that showing that a particular ritual does not have an effect is not sufficient to undermine it. The distinguishing features of ritual point to a closer connection with the ethical or religious than with the practical or efficient. It is for this reason that Wittgenstein, with some irony, characterizes Frazer's account of ritual as "more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of a spiritual matter as a twentiethcentury Englishman. His explanations are much cruder than the meanings of the practices themselves" (Wittgenstein 1970, 69). These general objections to Frazer's project are not trivial nor are they merely ad hominem. Frazer's aim was to explain ritual practice using the methodology of scientific objectivity. Because of this aim, he abstracts from the significance of human ritual and in doing so, according to Wittgenstein, totally misses its point. In an attempt to provide a unified framework for his "explanations", Frazer adopts a reductive and grossly simplified picture of human action (Johnston 1989). He implicitly construes any action in means-ends terms aimed at want satisfaction. Wittgenstein does not only see this as misguided, but he holds that "the very idea of wanting to explain a practice - for example the killing of the priest king - seems wrong" (1970, 64). According to Wittgenstein, such rituals in a certain sense allow of no explanation. That is to say, if we can understand why people act in a certain way, it is not because we can explain their actions in the way that Frazer does, but rather, we can see that their actions have significance. Hence, the understanding we should seek of ritual practice, according to Wittgenstein, is totally different from the understanding of a natural process that would be provided by a scientific explanation. To understand ritual practice, says Wittgenstein, "one must only correctly piece together what one knows, without adding anything, and the satisfaction being sought through the explanation follows of itself" (1970, 62). In other words, our incomprehension in the face of ritual practice is eliminated by organizing our knowledge of it so as to clarify its significance. In doing this, we come to understand the practice. Wittgenstein is using the word "explanation" here in a narrower sense than Frazer, who attempts to apply a very broad-based proto-scientific explanation to ritual practice in general. Wittgenstein's intention is to highlight a fundamental difference between explaining a mechanical or natural process by tracing a mechanism or a pattern of prior causes and by seeking to present the process as an outcome of a set of natural laws on the one hand, and understanding human belief and action on the other. For example, in

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the former cases, such an explanation enables us to predict how the process will go, and in many cases to manipulate it. However, in the latter case, prediction and manipulation are not the issues. What is important in the latter case is the ability to understand the behaviour as a social action, as the action of a conscious being located within a context of beliefs, desires, intentions and emotions. Wittgenstein's aim here is to bring out the specific nature of ritual action. Ritual actions are not performed as means to an end. Ritual "aims at satisfaction and achieves it. Or rather it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then feel satisfied" (1970, 70). Understanding an action has come to mean understanding the meaning of that person's action by examining the context and the background against which it takes place. One might, for example, contrast one ritual action with others which we already do or can more easily understand. That is, to understand the immediacy and importance the Nemi ritual has for the Azande, we might contrast it with the importance of the Harvest Festival for the Christian, as a joyous celebration of nature's bounty, rather than an attempt to affect the course of nature. What is striking about this approach is that it renders the hypothetical and historical nature of Frazer's "explanation" superfluous. As Wittgenstein puts it, "the historical explanation, the explanation, as an hypothesis of development, is only one way of assembling the data of their synopsis. It is also possible to see the data in their relation to one another and to embrace them in a general picture without putting it in the form of a hypothesis about temporal development" (1970,70). Wittgenstein's analysis of Frazer is continuous with his analyses in other areas of his philosophy. Wittgenstein, throughout his investigation, pays close attention to the disparate and idiosyncratic nature of the phenomena under investigation. Thus, he does not offer a theory of explanation that competes with Frazer's. Rather, he attempts to show how Frazer's "picture" of historical development and proto-scientific hypotheses is misguided (see Hacker 1992). He effects this change of perspective through a timely reminder - timely in the sense that it applies to the pre-theoretical moment to examine the actual roles and the use of ritual within society, rather than to squeeze ritual into a preconceived "picture" masquerading as an "explanatory theory" in the way Frazer's project requires.

Explaining Winch goes beyond Wittgenstein in many respects, and where he does so his analysis runs into difficulty. The target of Winch's criticism is

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E.E. Evans-Pritchard's article "Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande" (1934). Evans-Pritchard, like Frazer, views ritual practice from a "scientific perspective", that is, he holds that there is "a very clear implication that those who use mystical notions and perform ritual behaviour are making some sort of mistake, detectable with the aid of science and logic" (1934, 61). Construing all ritual practices as "confused", Evans-Pritchard believes, according to Winch, that scientific investigation has: "shown conclusively that there are no relations of cause and effect such as are implied by these beliefs and practices. All we can do then is show how such a system of mistaken beliefs and inefficacious practices can maintain itself in the face of objections that seem to us so obvious" (Winch 1958, 92). Winch's disagreement with Evans-Pritchard is in part a straightforward "Wittgensteinian" objection of the type outlined above. He holds that ritual has its home within a specific and bounded context. As we shall see, Winch also argues (going beyond Wittgenstein) that "scientific understanding" is culturally and historically located and appropriate only to certain areas of study. To universalize this understanding by attempting to "apply" it to areas of human action (such as ritual) is an inappropriate move which can lead only to a distorted understanding of actual practices of ritual. Winch will contend that he and the Azande "are both thinking in patterns of thought provided for us by the societies in which we live" (Winch 1958, 93) and therefore, to misapply one (modern science) in an attempt to understand the other (African ritual practice) would be incorrect. However, Winch goes beyond Wittgenstein at this point. As Christopher Norris has argued with reference to Winch's account: thinkers like Peter Winch argue - often with reference to Wittgenstein that "a decision can only be made within the context of a meaningful way of life." Of course, this is true in the obvious (and trivial) sense; moral agents, social critics or advocates of principle will always make some appeal to some set of values that has been (or might be) acknowledged as "meaningful" by some (existing or conceivable) community of belief. But it becomes more dubious - indeed morally disabling - if pushed to a point where decisions or judgements must be viewed as meaningless unless they make some sense by criteria internal to the practice, the language-game or cultural "form of life" in question. (1996, 30) Winch commits this error as he argues that not only are scientific thinking and ritual practice very different species historically, belonging to different areas of human life, but also that they are both equally correct. This claim may at first seem obscure, but it is easily understood if one recognizes that such a

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view is a consequence of Winch's position concerning meaning and knowledge in general. For Winch, "reality is not what gives language sense. What is real and what is unreal shows itself in the sense language has" (1964, 314). On this reading and against Evans-Pritchard, Winch holds that there is no "separate" reality against which the correctness or incorrectness of any language can be assessed by a criterion of correspondence. Rather, language is a realm unto itself. This realm constitutes a microcosm within which the language user is located and, from this location, they inherit the norms of truth, falsehood, meaning and purpose that are embodied within their language community. Christopher Norris concurs with such a reading of Winch and characterizes the influence of Wittgenstein in Winch's project in the following way: Wittgenstein can be enlisted as yet another salutary influence, one who shows philosophy the way back down from its delusive "metaphysical heights" . . . it then becomes possible to push right through with the relativist argument and to assert that every such language game - including for instance Azande ritual practices reported by Evans-Pritchard and taken up by Wittgensteinian social philosophers like Peter Winch must be allowed to possess as good a claim to truth ("What works for them") as our own equally contingent or culture-bound ideas of scientific knowledge. (1997,55) An example of this view is Winch's understanding of rationality: "rationality is not just a concept in language like any other; it is this too, for, like any other concept it must be circumscribed by an established use, that is established in the language" (1964, 316). Winch further states that "it [rationality] is a concept necessary to the existence of any language; to say of a society that it has a language is also to say this it has a concept of rationality" (1964, 319). The validity of this viewpoint will not be examined here. Rather, for the sake of argument, I will assume that Winch is correct in his understanding of the nature of language. What is of importance is the consequence that Winch's position poses for understanding ritual. As Winch points out, if we accept his view, then "a system of magic like that of the Azande constitutes a coherent universe of discourse like science, in terms of which an intelligible conception of reality and clear ways of deciding (what is true and false) can be discerned" (1964, 320). Once again, such statements reinforce the interpretation of Winch as claiming that the cultural ritual practices of the Azande form a coherent schema within which the meaning of words or concepts is fixed and epistemologically legitimated. Notice that despite the fact that Winch is wary of "scientific methodology", something very similar

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to this temptation to explain ritual practice lurks in his own account. For Wittgenstein, ritual is a specific type of action that occupies a specific place within a person's life - even that of a practising experimental physicist and this ritual does not, necessarily, lend itself to explanations of the scientific variety even though the ritual practice of the individual (in my example, the physicist) is a feature of the society they find themselves embedded within. In sharp contrast to this, Winch speaks of a ritual in terms of a "system" of discourse that yields an "intelligible conception of reality" which seems, in its character, much closer to the explanatory model of science. Moreover, Winch talks in terms of "intelligibility" and "coherence" in relation to the "system of magic", whereas Wittgenstein argues (I think persuasively) that these are not always useful or edifying ways in which to think about ritual practice (Johnston 1989). More specifically, ritual practice does not need to be coherent or even to form a system for it to be meaningful and significant for those who practise it. A useful example here is the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity and the ritual practices attached to it. The doctrine is not coherent in logical terms inasmuch as it involves a contradiction: The father, son and holy ghost are all separate and different and yet they are at the same time all one person (the Christian god). Nor is the Trinity explanatory of the way "reality is". It offers the believer no insight in the form of prediction or manipulation of the world in the way a scientific theory does. Despite this, the Trinity has a profound significance for Catholics (Johnston 1989). Furthermore, the rituals attached to the doctrine of the Trinity may occupy a limited space within the life of a Catholic. Many contemporary Catholics are also physicists, yet this does not involve them in a contradiction, nor do their Catholic beliefs exhaustively determine what they understand by "reality". This observation is analogous to Wittgenstein's concerning the savage who stabs the picture of his enemy and yet builds his hut and carves his arrows skilfully. Winch's account, then, seems to have misunderstood the role that ritual occupies and to have extended this misunderstanding by claiming that ritual practice forms a belief system which determines in some way "what reality is".

Systemization Underlying Winch's theory on the supposed systematic nature of ritual beliefs is a further assumption. He seems to believe that there will be for any ritual practice, one determinate explanation of that practice, one that is "logical" within the context where it finds its home. Winch's tacit claim is that ritual

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practice has, at its bottom, a coherent logical structure that lies waiting to be "discovered" and explained by the anthropologist. But as I have argued, ritual practice and scientific practice do not partake of the same nature. To suppose that ritual practice forms a system analogous to that of science and therefore that such a system can be investigated and explicated scientifically by the anthropologist is erroneous. Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer demonstrates that all that the anthropologist can aim for is an understanding of the practice of ritual, not an explanation of its internal coherence or its relativistic intelligibility. As I have argued, an understanding is reached through an examination of the way in which similar ritual practices have significance for our own lives or the lives of our peers. This understanding exists only as a possibility. It may be that any such attempt to contrast a "foreign" ritual with a more familiar one would fail to enlighten. At no point does Wittgenstein assume that each ritual practice has one determinate explanation, whereas the fact that Winch is compelled to hold that a ritual practice has one determinate explanation is a direct consequence of his erroneous assumption that all ritual practices form part of a belief system with an underlying coherent and determinate structure. This assumption is not only out of step with the Wittgensteinian position from which it flows, but more importantly, as I have argued, it does violence to the piecemeal and disparate nature of ritual practice which Wittgenstein goes to great lengths to draw out in his Remarks. Winch faces a further problem in his account of how the systematic nature of ritual practices generates relativism. It will be remembered that Winch argues against Evans-Pritchard's claim that the primitive person is "mistaken" in his or her ritual practice and that science is in some sense "superior" to ritual practice. As Winch puts it: "Evans-Pritchard is not content with elucidating the differences in the two concepts of reality involved; he wants to go further and say: our concept of reality is the correct one, the Azande are mistaken. But the difficulty is to see what 'correct' and 'mistaken' can mean in this context" (1964, 324). According to Winch, no one system is "better" or "superior" to any other, for all systems are equally valid and governed by their own internal logic and criteria of correctness. Therefore, according to Winch, it makes no sense for Evans-Pritchard to say of science that it is "superior" to ritual practice, for no independent standpoint is available from which to make such assessments. As a consequence, judgements about which is "better" or "superior" find no application. However, just as it is illegitimate for Evans-Pritchard to hold that science is superior to ritual practice, it is also, and for the same reason, illegitimate for Winch to hold that both systems are equally valid. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this point is through an example taken from Wittgenstein. Writing on ethics

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and considering two ethical systems Wittgenstein says: "If you are saying there are various systems of ethics you are not saying they are all equally right. That means nothing. Just as it would have no meaning to say that each was right from his own standpoint. That could only mean he judges as he does" (1965, 11). What I wish to suggest here is that if Winch holds that there are different systems of belief (scientific practice and ritual practice) and each system has a unique status, then there is no independent way of adjudicating between them. As Norris has pointed out: "scientific truth claims . . . as some Wittgensteinians would have it [are] meaningful only in the context of some given language game or cultural life form, and hence on a par - ontologically speaking - with the postulated objects of religious, mystical or pseudo-scientific belief" (Norris 1997, 212). Under Winch's account, the appeal to an independent assessment of the nature of belief systems - be it in terms of logic or reality - makes no sense. In this way, Winch's criticism of Evans-Pritchard also silences the claims he himself wishes to make regarding the nature of belief systems, i.e. that they are all "equally valid". Winch is aware of the relativistic problems that are produced as a consequence of his account and he offers two arguments that he believes meet any such objections. It is to these arguments I now turn. Talking of the attempt to describe the ritual practices of "primitives", Winch states that "a new description of action must be intelligible to the members of the society in which it is introduced" (1964, 323). He goes on to state as follows: what determines this is the further development of rules and principles already implicit in previous ways of acting and talking. To be emphasized are not the actual members of any "stock" of descriptions, but the grammar which they express. It is through this that we understand their structure and sense, their mutual relations and the sense of new ways of talking and acting that may be introduced. (1964, 323) "Grammar" here does not mean what is ordinarily understood by this term. It does not simply refer to what constitutes a syntactically well-formed sentence. It is used here in the Wittgensteinian sense (see chapter three) to refer to the logic of a given linguistic activity. In other words, it is the meaning that is embodied in the "life", the praxis and practice of the language game. Wittgenstein draws our attention to our practices of language, not as some non-spatial and non-temporal phantasm, but as a spatial and temporal phenomenon. That is to say, to move away from the notion of language as a calculus, or a system of sentences, to apprehending language as essentially connected with the notion of application. Here the term 'language game' is

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meant to bring into prominence the fact that speaking is part of an activity, or a form of life (Wittgenstein 1968, 23). As McGinn correctly observes, language is embedded in all those activities that constitute human life and all these activities are intrinsically connected with, or grounded in, our use of language. For this reason, our form of life as human beings is shaped by our use of language and this form of life "is fundamentally cultural in nature" (McGinn 1997, 58). Winch's own view of the underlying "grammar" of linguistic activity is in step with his earlier claims about language forming a system which determines "the real" for the language user. He runs into problems, however, in trying to account for the possibility of one linguistic community, with its own practices, trying to fathom the radically different practices of another community. He would have us believe that this difficulty can be overcome by modifying the "structure and sense" of the "grammar" of another linguistic community in such a way as to make it "describable in our own 'grammar' of descriptions" (1964, 324). But such a "grammatical modification", under Winch's own account, is impossible. For as I have suggested, if grammar and meaning are one and the same, as Winch's account implies, then any change in the grammar will bring with it a change in meaning. The result of Winch's account is that an explanation of another community's practice from one's own standpoint will always be unavailable. To modify the grammar of another linguistic community (accepting that such a thing could be achieved) would do violence to the meaning in such a way that what one would be left with at the end of such a process would bear no resemblance to the original meaning one was attempting to explain. On the Winchian model, one might, whilst living in a different linguistic community, effect a change in the grammar that one is operating with and hence effect a change in one's understanding of reality. But this undertaking would constitute no less than a complete and radical transformation of one's outlook, rather like seeing the light on the road to Damascus. Such a suggestion will not serve Winch's purpose, however, for with this radical change of outlook (which is supervenient on the change of grammar), the old system of belief is expunged. It is not that the new system of beliefs can describe the old, for the old system will have been lost in the transition. Such a view is also at odds with a claim, already put forward by Winch, that the practices of Azande ritual and those of western science are "equally valid". Such a comparative claim is puzzling given Winch's account of the inclusive nature of the respective cultural systems. A question is raised for Winch as to which culture (western or Azande) is such a claim made in and whether the claim is equally valid from the point of view of both cultures. However, on this question, Winch is silent.

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The second argument which Winch offers to avoid the problem of relativism is as follows: he believes that common ground can be found in the linguistic community under study such that an explanation of its practices can be built up on this strong foundation. Winch states, "I wish to point out that the very conception of human life involves certain fundamental notions" (1964, 322). These are for Winch, "birth, death and sexual relations". He continues that, "their central position within a society's institutions is and must be a constant factor. In trying to understand the life of an alien society, then, it will be of the utmost importance to be clear about the way in which these notions enter into it" (323). Given Winch's account of meaning, this view is perplexing. That is, assuming that these features (birth, death and sexual relations) are central in all communities everywhere, how can these categories be employed (unproblematically) as a bridgehead for understanding a radically different culture? For while it may be that "we" [those who make up the society of which Winch is a member] regard birth, death and sexual relations as in some way defining our lives in a particular way, that is, nevertheless, a belief enshrined in our community. There is no way to ascertain that other communities hold such values as paramount, and the only way to discover whether they do, under the Winchian view, would be to understand the values that operate within a foreign community. To avoid circularity, this is something the "bridgehead" values of birth, death and sexual relations cannot facilitate.

Relativism As we have seen, social sciences such as anthropology have from their infancy explicitly adopted the methodology and techniques of the "empirical" natural sciences. Along with this general approach borrowed from the successful natural sciences came all the implicit epistemological assumptions of traditional science. Two such assumptions are the dichotomy between the knowing subject and the known object, and the desirability of objective, unbiased knowledge. It is perfectly intelligible that in the formative years of anthropology, while the discipline was still searching (in the late nineteenth century) for its identity as a science, an approximation to natural science may have been seen as an attractive avenue for examining the various aspects of human culture, which are the subject matter of social science (see Norris 1997). In his treatment of ritual practice, Winch offers an analysis of the nature of anthropology which places it in sharp contrast with natural science. Instead of trying to duplicate or emulate the natural sciences,

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Winch argues through his treatment of ritual that the social science of anthropology ought to embrace a very different kind of methodology a methodology that abandons all pretence of objectivity in the natural science sense - which would, as a result, lead to cultural relativism. James F. Harris asks: "the path from Winch's analysis of social science to a radical relativism is short, straight and wide, for if understanding and interpretation of all social practices are relative, then what is not?" (1992, 95). As Richard Bernstein claims: Winch seems to be suggesting that forms of life may be so radically different from each other that in order to understand and interpret alien or primitive societies we not only have to bracket our prejudices and biases but have to suspend our own Western standards and criteria of rationality about beliefs and actions that are compatible with or incommensurable with our standards. (1983, 67) As I have suggested, to undertake such a "bracketing" involves, in Winch's case, the generation of a cultural relativism. Winch's investigation into ritual practices has wider ramifications for the proper understanding of such notions as "rationality" and "human reason". Winch himself is acutely aware of these ramifications and he embraces the consequences of his position, claiming: . . . the forms in which rationality expresses itself in the culture of a human society cannot be elucidated simply in terms of the logical coherence of the rules according to which activities are carried out in that society. For . . . there comes a point where we are not even in a position to determine what is and what is not coherent in such a context of rules without raising questions about the point which following those rules has in the society. (1964, 324) However, a closer examination of Winch's position in this regard reveals its limitations. For instance, if the Azande use an oracle to decide upon a course of action, then the courses of action suggested by the oracle cannot be consistent with all possible courses of action. That is to say, a member of the Azande culture cannot act on the basis of the judgement of the oracle and not act on it at the same time and in the same respect (Harris 1992). If the judgement of the oracle is the criterion upon which the Azande base their decisions, the oracles must be able to provide some means for deciding that certain courses of action are superior in relation to others. The member of the Azande culture who consults the oracle can only follow the proffered

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advice on the ground that certain behaviours and understandings are consistent with the oracle while others are not (Johnston 1989). Winch anticipates this argument for the rationality of the Azande oracular system. He identifies, correctly, that the core of this argument is the question concerning contradiction. Perhaps surprisingly, Winch denies that contradiction is important when considering the Azande belief system concerning the role of the oracles. According to Winch, the Azande do not treat oracles in the same manner as scientists treat scientific hypotheses and as a result, they do not press their thinking about oracles to the point at which they would become involved in contradictions (1964, 317). Winch deals with the argument that if the Azande follow the rule of non-contradiction (which is seemingly evidenced in their behaviour), then they must conform to the same form of rationality as our own by arguing that oracular revelations are not the kind of beliefs about which one can raise the problem of consistency. To raise the problem of consistency in this context would reveal more about our own cultural prejudices than about the "lifeworld" of the Azande. Moreover, to insist the Azande pursue the issue of the consistency of beliefs to its logical conclusion is to be guilty of a "misunderstanding" and a "category mistake". Winch explains that the Azande beliefs about oracles "are not a matter of intellectual interest but the main way in which Azande decide how they should act" (1964, 312). Winch's suggestion here amounts to bracketing a set of beliefs, i.e. a member of a culture refusing to apply a set of standards or rules to a subset of beliefs as these standards are applied to the remainder of the beliefs that are held by a member of that culture. An example, again, is the significance of the Harvest Festival for the Christian. What is problematic about Winch's suggestion is that while it may be possible to undertake such "bracketing" with beliefs upon which no decision process is predicated (such as the Harvest Festival being a ceremony that celebrates joy in the bounty that God provides), it cannot be undertaken with a set of beliefs which serves as the basis for decisions on possible courses of action for the individual, society or the "form of life" (such as a system of explanation that drives the decision-making process). It must be remembered that according to Winch, this is precisely what the beliefs about oracles are supposed to do for the Azande, that is, we are concerned with a set of beliefs upon which a person is willing to act. As I have pointed out, any belief that functions so as to direct a person's behaviour, or provide that person with an understanding of the world upon which he or she is willing to act, can only do so if it excludes certain behaviours and/or courses of action. It is certainly true that the Azande might refuse to pursue a thorough epistemological examination and overhaul of all their beliefs. But an individual Azande cannot both act on an oracle and not act on it. As Harris

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argues: "for any person to act intentionally, for any person to plan his or her behaviour, for any person to act in such a way as to pursue certain ends, for any person to act to satisfy certain desires, one course of action must be inconsistent with others" (1992, 96). He furnishes an example to illustrate his point: suppose one is warned not to journey by a certain route because of some possible danger. Now it really does not matter whether this warning comes from an oracle or from the National Weather Service; the way in which the belief functions to direct a person's behaviour is the same. If a person holds a certain belief, then, on the meta-level, there must be a way in which that belief is tied to specific behaviour. (1992, 97) Harris's point here is that Winch, in his claims concerning the relativistic nature of rationality, fails to recognize that a game - a language game of rationality - with an inconsistent set of rules is the same as a game with no set of rules. For an inconsistent set of beliefs excludes no actions and as a result, any one action is just as likely as any other to bring about the desired result. Harris's argument highlights the fact that if Winch is correct in his characterization of Azande oracular practices, then no one Azande could act intentionally - a reductio ad absurdum. Winch's treatment of rationality as culturally relative has been influential and is taken up by Barry Barnes and David Bloor in their "Strong Programme" relativism. Ironically, Barnes and Bloor, who have attempted to follow Winch's lead and establish cultural relativism by arguing for the indeterminacy of translation or interpretation, have unwittingly produced arguments for the universally shared criteria of rationality for judgements. They employ the infamous example of how the word "yakt" is used by the Karam native people of New Guinea (Barnes and Bloor 1982, 101). While one might easily be led to believe that the word can be unproblematically translated into the English word "bird", Barnes and Bloor tell us that this is not possible as bats are also counted as "yakt" whereas cassowaries (a genus of running birds allied to the ostrich, emu and American Rhea) are not. Barnes and Bloor employ this observation to demonstrate that particulars of perceptual experience "are ordered into clusters and patterns specific to a culture" (1982, 67). Because different cultures represent the world to one another in different ways, and translation between cultures is, according to Barnes and Bloor, precluded by this fact, cultural relativism is engendered as a result. Yet, for Barnes and Bloor's argument to go through it must be established how one can be in a position to determine the conflicting interpretations of the word "yakt". Their argument for cultural relativism

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follows Winch's in that it is premised upon an assumption of the relativistic nature of rationality. Winch concurs that this assumption amounts to sloughing off the law of contradiction - or at a bare minimum, ignoring it - in some alien culture's criteria of rationality. But if such is indeed the case, why can "bird" not to be understood to include bats? Why can "yakt" not be understood to include bats and not include them at the same time? Barnes and Bloor's argument begs the question in the sense that possible interpretations are different only because of the assumed underlying criterion of rationality that is, in all respects, the criterion of the culture of which Barnes and Bloor are members. The paradoxical nature of arguments used to defend the Winchian position of the relativistic nature of rationality is also evidenced in Barnes and Bloor's treatment of Lewis Carroll's paper "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" (1895, 278). In his paper, Carroll outlines the seemingly paradoxical nature of movement when analysed in terms of the predicates of ordinary language. Barnes and Bloor conclude that the tortoise demonstrates that any attempt at justification fails since "justifications of deductions themselves presuppose deduction" (1982, 69). The claim they make is that "rationality" premised upon the law of non-contradiction is purely a contingent matter, and that it is just one type of rationality - one which the culture has taken on board as operative. According to Barnes and Bloor, since no justification for such a criterion can be found that does not appeal to the same principle, "we have reached an end point at which justification goes in a circle" (1982, 70). As a result, we must accept our criterion of rationality as culture specific and look to sociological explanations as to why our society has embraced the type of rationality it has and why alien cultures have the view of rationality they do. It is not necessary here to elucidate the details of Barnes and Bloor's argument, for the form of the argument itself is sufficient to reveal its paradoxical nature. The argument states that "If Carroll is right that the laws of deduction, including the law of noncontradiction, cannot be proved, then all justification of deduction is circular. Carroll is right. Therefore, all justification of induction is circular" (1982, 71). But such an argument requires that we follow the same rule of inference that is being attacked (see Shanker 1998, chapter 3). Harris seems to agree: "If Barnes and Bloor really think that the tortoise has demonstrated that the rules of logic cannot be proved, then they, like him, must simply say nothing" (1992, 103). What then does the Barnes/Bloor argument show? If anything, it shows that the claims to rationalism, to generate a set of universally held beliefs, or to establish a set of inference patterns as definitive of valid reasoning across all cultures, cannot be made a priori. Just because a priori arguments cannot demonstrate the universality of a set

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of beliefs or a universal set of inference patterns, this does not show that there is no such set of beliefs or inference patterns. Rather, it becomes an empirical matter as to whether such universality exists. Paul Feyerabend, who also encourages us to embrace the position that "rationality" is historically specific and culturally relative, is caught in the same paradox. Feyerabend says: The idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, "objectivity", "truth", it will then become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle, any thing goes. (1981, 27) Here, Feyerabend is advocating the elimination of all rules that restrict free inquiry and discount other "rationalities". He sets out to achieve this goal by supplying a reasoned argument as to why we should agree with him. Specifically, Feyerabend argues as to why we should prefer his version of anarchism. Yet, in his constant re-visiting of reasoned argument and his avoidance of breaking the rule of non-contradiction, he embraces the very standard of rationality he wishes to abandon. Thus, Feyerabend can be accused of logical inconsistency. Whether similar claims regarding the efficacy of an "anything goes" approach can be defended, rhetorically, is of central importance politically and this topic will be the subject of both the next section and the next chapter. To return to the point in question, Feyerabend contends that "all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits" (1975, 43). If, as I have argued, attempts to construe rationality as culture specific and culturally relative are self-referential and inconsistent, then we might concur with his claim subject to the following caveat: "The limits of method are the limits of rationality, and the limits of rationality are the limits of relativism" (Harris 1992, 27).

Relativism as Tolerance I Despite the apparent unintelligibility of cultural relativism in respect to ritual practice, the possibility remains that an attractive feature of the cultural-relativist position is that it promotes tolerance of practices alien to western cultural practices. I postpone the standard objection, i.e that it is

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irrational to believe a doctrine to be correct solely on the basis that it will have valuable consequences, as this will be taken up more fully in chapter five in my discussion of Richard Rorty's "pragmatic" cultural relativism. To return to the point at hand, sociologist Orlando Patterson, in his article on race relations, has the following to say about relativism as a principle of tolerance: True enough, [relativism] is often associated with a liberal and tolerant attitude. But it is doubtful whether the association is in any way causal. . . Relativism, in fact, can be associated just as easily with a reactionary view of the world, and can easily be used to rationalize inaction, complacency, and even the wildest forms of oppression (Patterson 1973, 123). Patterson is pointing out that relativism, by its very nature, may be employed as a morally despicable excuse rather than as a principle of action. As he puts it: "It is all too easy for the reactionary white South African or American to say of the reservation Bantus or Indians, that it is wrong to interfere with their way of life since what might appear to be squalor or backwardness to us, may be matters of great virtue to them" (1973, 124). In his article "Relativism and Tolerance", Geoffrey Harrison (1982) offers several reasons why relativism might seem to promote tolerance. First, if it is believed that no principles can be justified above all others, then the only available alternative to settling disputes "by force" is to tolerate those who disagree with us. Second, it is unfair to force our principles on others if ours cannot be justified over theirs. Third, we cannot think of those who disagree with us as in some sense morally or wilfully wicked and as in need of having the error of their ways demonstrated to them, if there is no way to make a rational choice between systems. Nevertheless, Harrison argues that these considerations are insufficient to establish a connection between relativism and tolerance. He poses the question as to why a member of culture A would be tolerant of the practice of B in a different culture, suggesting that if we take cultural relativism seriously, we must accept that A believes the practice of B to be correct. Accordingly, in the case of a difference in practices, e.g. where B believes something to be correct and A believes it to be incorrect, we must expect that B would defer to A's condemnation of the activity just as much as A would defer to B's approval of the activity. The fact that this does not often take place in historical examples of cultural interaction is of small concern to the relativist, who can retort by stating that the cultures involved have not discovered relativism to be true or correct. What is problematic for relativism as a principle of tolerance is that it gives justification to both A's and B's claims, which is to say it gives justification

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to neither. Harrison illustrates this predicament as "two men ushering each other through a doorway. Neither can be so impolite as to go through first" (1982,45). Jack Meiland and Michael Krausz have attempted to rescue relativism as a principle of tolerance with the following argument. They ask us to imagine a situation in which A and B belong to different cultures. To interfere with B, they argue, who is acting within his or her own culture is to interfere, not with a single activity, but with a whole way of life. As they put it: This is true in many of the cases in which people of another society act in a way abhorrent to ourselves by, for example, killing unwanted babies or old people. And interfering with a whole way of life would have unknown and perhaps undesirable effects. In this type of situation it is perhaps better to leave well enough alone and tolerate B's action. (Krausz and Meiland 1986,67) However, on close inspection it can be seen that this argumentative strategy does not furnish the required conclusion. What is being sought after by the relativist is an argument that identifies cultural relativism as a principle of tolerance. But the stance that Meiland and Krausz suggest does not establish any special connection between relativism and tolerance because the stance is not especially a relativist one. Rather, they raise the question concerning unforseen and undesirable results that might arise as the product of one culture's interference in the practices of another. But this concern is not exclusively confined to the domain of relativism. An absolutist can be just as worried about the unforeseen and undesirable results of any interference in an alien culture for exactly the same reasons as the relativist. Cultural relativism as a principle of tolerance is inconsistent. Even if inconsistency itself is not sufficient reason for relativists to abandon it, cultural relativism does not necessarily lead to the promotion of toleration between differing cultures. On the contrary and as I have already demonstrated, cultural relativism can just as easily promote intolerance or moral apathy. A further investigation of the connection between relativism and tolerance will be taken up in the final chapter.

Conclusion As I have demonstrated in this chapter, Winch attempts to reject the imperializing explanations of ritual practice that find their roots in evolutionary anthropology and are propounded by such writers as James Frazer and

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Evans-Pritchard. Taking his lead from Wittgenstein, Winch's critique, as I have attempted to show, is partially successful. James F. Harris summarizes the point: There is much to be gained from paying close attention to the lesson which Wittgenstein taught us and of which Winch reminds us - not to look for essentials where essentials do not exist; however, Winch's position goes far beyond this fundamental Wittgensteinian maxim. Winch grossly distorts Wittgenstein's original notions of language game and form of life. (1992,82) But the shortcomings of Winch's project are not to be identified, solely, with a departure from the line that Wittgenstein takes on the issue of understanding ritual. Taking his lead from the writings of Wittgenstein, Winch is seduced by the notion of explaining ritual practice in terms of a system. His systemization of ritual practice and the epistemological conclusions it generates form the genesis of one form of cultural relativism. This relativism, although broadly influential, is burdened with inconsistencies and moral and political ambiguities to the extent that it is antithetical to the spirit of Winch's own project in his essay "Understanding a Primitive Society".

Chapter Five

The Pluralist Tree: Rorty, Relativism, Diversity and Tolerance

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize. Blaise Pascal Richard Rorty cites Wittgenstein as one of the inspirational figures for his own thinking along with the, perhaps unlikely, pairing of Martin Heidegger and John Dewey. While it is true that Rorty is not a self-confessed relativist, I argue that there is a strong connection between Rorty's pragmatism and some version of relativism, and that in propounding his pragmatist position, Rorty is also espousing a sophisticated form of relativism, with the result that in this sense, he is one of the foremost representatives of present-day relativism. I will outline exactly how Rorty's relativism flows out of his pragmatism and will examine his ethnographic account of knowledge, reason, truth and objectivity in an attempt to show how this account leads to relativistic conclusions. Although I believe "Rorty's relativism" is susceptible to the incoherence and self-refutation arguments examined in chapter two, I do not expend a large amount of space in this chapter in applying these arguments to Rorty's project. Instead, I turn to investigate Rorty's philosophy, its attendant relativism and the purported advantages it brings to the problems he grapples with. I argue that although Rorty's relativism fails as a solution to the problems to which he applies it, the ways in which he applies relativism shed some light on why relativism remains an attractive option in certain political contexts.

The Linguistic Turn To understand fully Rorty's relativist position, one must say something about the aims of his philosophical project. Rorty opposes the foundationalist nature of traditional philosophical inquiry. That is, he is critical of the project of "first philosophy" that attempts to arrive at universally valid

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knowledge claims. Talking of the inheritance from which contemporary analytic philosophy proceeds, Rorty writes: One way to see how analytic philosophy fits with the Cartesian-Kantian pattern is to see traditional philosophy as an attempt to escape from history - an attempt to find non-historical conditions of any possible historical development. Investigations of the foundations of knowledge or morality or society may be simply apologetics, attempts to externalize a certain contemporary language game, social practice, self image. (1979,87) Susan Haack in her Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (1998) focuses on this aspect of Rorty's views. Haack criticizes Rorty as the spokesperson for a vulgar cynicism who, in his abandonment of the basic concepts of traditional epistemology, contributes to the decline of intellectual integrity and reason in contemporary thought (see also Putnam 1981). But such views do a disservice to Rorty inasmuch as they fail to capture the consistent themes in, and the trajectory of, Rorty's work. It is important to identify these themes and this general trajectory before moving on to a discussion of the relativistic consequences of his work. In his introduction to The Linguistic Turn (1967), Rorty adapts philosophical frameworks and contributes to debates that he has since dispensed with as irrelevant. However, his writings here bear the mark of the fundamental meta-philosophical attitude which becomes increasingly more pronounced in his writings over the next decade. In the preface to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty refers to his teachers, Hartshorne, McKeon, Carnap, Brumbaugh, Hempel and Weiss as follows: I was very fortunate in having these men as my teachers, but, for better or worse, I treated them all as saying the same thing: that a "philosophical problem" was a product of the unconscious adoption of a set of assumptions built into the vocabulary in which the problem was stated — assumptions which were to be questioned before the problem itself was taken seriously. (1979, xiii) In addition to the teachers he mentions, the influence of Wittgensteinian methodology for Rorty is evident. Here, as with his teachers, the message is to treat "philosophical problems" as confusions about our language or concepts, rather than to be led (erroneously) to believe that metaphysical theories are required to provide a solution to a veridical problem, such as the "nature of substance", "the essence of identity" or the "relationship

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between mind and body". Such a stance betrays a weakness of the Wittgensteinian approach, inasmuch as Wittgensteinian methodology would seem to assume (a priori and dogmatically) that all "philosophical problems" are confusions about our language and the way in which we use it when no claim or argument is proffered by Wittgenstein as to why this is necessarily so. Rorty's teachers avoid this objection by proffering analysis as the first step before "the problem itself was taken seriously". However, this leaves open the possibility that certain philosophical problems may, eventually, turn out to be legitimate, i.e. in the sense that these philosophical problems require constructive solutions, provided that the assumptions that sustain their formulation stand up under the initial scrutiny of critical analysis. To understand the philosophical roots of Rorty's relativism, it is important to understand his radical departure from this meta-philosophical view that is present throughout the development of his work and is evidenced in this chapter. This departure is signalled in the move from diagnoses of "philosophical problems" as mixtures of pseudo-questions and logical cul-desac, to the realization that the very notion of proper critical scrutiny is illusory. This departure can be seen as particularly pronounced when one considers the views expressed in Rorty's earlier work, such as Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), as compared to his later work, such as Philosophy and Social Hope (1999). In his early work, Rorty's approach to philosophy is informed by the historicist conviction that no "vocabulary" is escapable in principle. "Vocabularies" are the products of culture and as such, occupy social and temporal locations (Norris 1996, 149). Following Wittgenstein, Rorty (in his earlier work) believes that progress in philosophy is not gained through constructive solutions to problems via the instantiation of philosophical "theories". Rather, problems are tackled by the therapeutic dissolution of their causes. Rorty attempts to achieve this aim through the invention of new vocabularies or by launching new and fruitful metaphors (examples of these attempts can be seen in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1979]; Objectivity, Relativism and Truth [1991], and the unpublished "Unfamiliar Noises: Hesse and Davidson on Metaphor" [1987]). Nevertheless, in his later work, Rorty goes beyond this piecemeal approach. For, according to him, to sustain the therapeutic approach to philosophical problems requires accepting that no one vocabulary is final. As a result, any attempt to circumvent a philosophical problem by making such assumptions visible is subject to its own circumvention (Rorty 1999). Having expressed this realization, Rorty moves away from his earlier therapeutic approach to distance himself from the project of "philosophy" at least as it has been traditionally understood and articulated. Again, echoing a similar remark by Wittgenstein, he asks: "Why are


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philosophers, now as in Cicero's day, still arguing inconclusively, tramping round and round the same dialectical circles, never convincing each other but still able to attract students?" (1999, xxi). Rorty reinforces the suspicion that the traditional approach to philosophical problems is at fault. But it should be noticed that what fuels Rorty's departure from "philosophy" as "traditionally practised" is his apprehension of a logical inconsistency and not the attractive lure of a "better story", as if the traditional philosopher still lingers behind the mask of the liberal ironist (Norris 1997, 2000). The misfiring success of philosophy as traditionally practised lies, for Rorty, in the fact that: The philosophical tradition has insisted that these problems are found, in the sense that they are inevitably encountered by any reflective mind. The pragmatist tradition has insisted that they are made - are artificial rather than natural — and can be unmade using a different vocabulary than that which the philosophical tradition has used. (1999, xxii) So, for Rorty, the traditional "problems" of philosophy are self-delusions, but delusions, one must suppose, on a massive scale. Throughout his written corpus, Rorty expends a lot of effort critiquing the assumptions and practice of traditional philosophy. In his later work, in the "ruins of the goals and practice of traditional philosophy", we see the further development of his liberal ironist position. However, running through Rorty's work is a thread that, in its many different forms, ties the work together. This thread is his complete lack of faith in the idea that there is any "ideal" vocabulary which incorporates all veridical discursive forms. That is to say, there is no final, foundational and ultimate representation in language of "how the world actually is". As a result, the "vocabulary" of traditional philosophy is to be recognized for what it is: "the vocabulary in which the traditional problems of Western philosophy were formulated were useful at one time, but are no longer useful" (Rorty 1999, xxii). The goals of liberal ironist critique are such that "We hope to replace the reality-appearance distinction with the distinction between the more useful and the less useful" (1999, xxii). This move has the effect that the goals of the new philosophy, the philosophy of the liberal ironist, have a distinctive ethical and political dimension. As Rorty captures it: "one consequence of antirepresentationalism is the recognition that no description of how things are from a God's-eye point of view, no skyhook provided by some contemporary or yet-to-be-developed science, is going to free us from the contingency of having been acculturated as we were" (1999, xxiii). So, we are all trapped within the boundaries of our culture. Accordingly, "our acculturation is what makes certain options live, or momentous, or

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forced, while leaving others dead or trivial, or optional" (Rorty 1991, 13). It will be noticed that such a conclusion lends itself to what a more "traditional" philosopher might view as a relativist position: to a claim that culture determines what is to be taken as knowledge and that different cultures may have different "knowledges", both cultures being correct in their relative knowledge claims even when they contradict one another. Rorty anticipates the relativist connotation here. With reference to Quine and Sellars, he says: Sellars and Quine invoke the same argument, one which bears equally against the given-versus-nongiven and the necessary-versus-contingent distinctions. The crucial premise of this argument is that we understand knowledge when we understand the social justification of belief, and thus have no need to view it as accuracy of representation. (1979, 170) What then is Rorty's characterization of belief, knowledge and inquiry? What does social justification amount to and can it be easily distinguished from the realist assumptions? An example taken from his book, Philosophy and Social Hope, reveals his largely unmodified, pragmatic view intact: pragmatists think that the question to ask about our beliefs is not whether they are about reality or merely about appearance, but simply whether they are the best habits of action for gratifying our desires. On this view, to say that a belief is, as far as we know, true, is to say that no alternative belief is, as far as we know, a better habit of acting. (1999, xxv) A culture provides a set of knowledge claims that are functional in respect to social aims (Norris 2000). Talk of "correctly representing the world as it is" is unnecessary; indeed, it is an excrescence. That is to say, it is an unnatural and vestigial outgrowth of our ways of talking about the world. Rorty illustrates his position with the following example: When we say that our ancestors believed, falsely, that the sun went around the earth, and we believe, truly, that the earth goes around the sun, we are saying that we have a better tool than our ancestors did. Our ancestors might rejoin that their tool enabled them to believe in the literal truth of the Christian Scriptures, whereas ours does not. Our reply has to be, I think, that the benefits of modern astronomy and of space travel outweigh the advantages of Christian fundamentalism. (1999, xxv) Knowledge claims are to be characterized as what best serves the aims of the society within which they appear. The realist case is not wrong; it is merely


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unnecessary, a hangover from an earlier age when the correct apprehension of knowledge had not been discovered and fumbling and futile attempts were undertaken to accurately represent the world in the metaphysical "as it is". Certainly, relativism is born as a result of such a characterization, but this lineage should not cause discomfort, for this "charge" is only pernicious within the ontology of the realist, who holds that there is a "real world" which our language and knowledge systems seek to represent accurately. Here, Rorty believes that all that is necessary to make his case is to reject the possibility of proving realism. In its place, he embraces pragmatism and more specifically, pragmatism in extremis (Norris 2000). That is to say, if certain ways of talking are useful, so be it. But whether such ways of talking are useful because they capture or somehow approximate reality is a non-question. Rorty's claim in this connection is that the progress of knowledge can be measured only within the society within which the question is posed. This claim implies that to a member of a particular culture at a particular historical moment, the universe will always "unfold as it should". Rorty's denial of realism and his claim that a culture, and therefore a society, always moves according to its own internal rules and idiosyncratic criteria of success invokes strong grounds for the charge of relativism. But this charge is not bothersome to Rorty for the reasons already given. To reiterate, once the realist claim is dismissed as irrelevant, then the charge of relativism has no sting. For Rorty, it too belongs with the intellectual baggage of traditional, outmoded approaches to philosophy. So much for a brief overview of Rorty's general approach. Before the charge of relativism against Rorty's position can be assessed, it will be necessary to examine further his critique of anti-representationalism in some detail. It is to this examination that I now turn.

Rorty's Critique of Representationalism In Philosophy and the Mirror of Mature, Rorty states his goals explicitly: "I argue that the attempt . . . to explicate 'rationality' and 'objectivity' in terms of conditions of accurate representation is a self-deceptive effort to externalize the normal discourse of the day, and that, since the Greeks, philosophy's self-image has been dominated by this attempt" (1979, 11). He challenges representation as follows: to think that to understand how to know better is to understand how to improve the activity of a quasi-visual faculty, the Mirror of Nature, and thus to think of knowledge as an assemblage of accurate representations.

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Then comes the idea that the way to have accurate representations is to find, within the mirror a special class of representations so compelling that their accuracy cannot be doubted. These privileged foundations will be "the foundations of knowledge" .. . (163) Rorty's anti-foundationalist argument in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is based on an assumption often taken as central in the Northern tradition. That is to say, knowledge is not possible without an indubitable basis on which to build it. Rorty's critique of this assumption remains constant through the development of his thinking on the subject. As stated earlier, Rorty's characterization of the realist project is in terms of the seductive confusion about the ontology of the world. In Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Rorty states that we may think of knowledge as a relation to propositions and thus . . . justification as relations between the proposition in question and other propositions . . . Or we may think of both knowledge and justification as privileged relations to the objects those propositions are about. If we think the first way, we will see no need to end the potentially infinite degrees of ... \_justificationary propositions}. If we think in the second way we will want to get behind reasons to causes, beyond argument to compulsion from the object known . .. To reach that point is to reach the foundations of knowledge. (1989, 159, my italics] Is knowledge created by relating one proposition to another or by relating a proposition to its subject matter, i.e. to states of affairs in the world? According to Rorty, the advocates of the dominant epistemological tradition would have us believe that it is the latter (Norris 1997, 2000). As a result, philosophers are compelled (according to Rorty) to discover how an object of knowledge causes knowledge in the human mind. This conception of the nature of philosophy as traditionally practised informs Rorty's central metaphor, that of a mirror, in which the philosopher searches for a special privileged class of representations so compelling that their accuracy cannot be doubted. These mirrorings will be the foundations of knowledge. Undeniably, many philosophers have offered candidates for something that bears a close resemblance to what Rorty has in mind as the dominant philosophical tradition (Norris 2000; Searle 1998). Consider, for example, Lockean simple ideas, Humean impressions and Russellian sense-data. What is questionable is Rorty's move from denying the possibility of privileged representations (the foundations of knowledge) to the position that no progressive, "world driven" conception of the improvement of knowledge


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is possible. This "leap of logic" is epidemic throughout contemporary writings on relativism, as is noted by Searle in his analysis of certain anti-realist arguments (see chapter one). That is to say, does one, or several, negative results imply that all such results will be negative? The answer, of course, is (unsatisfyingly) "it depends". However, the bold employment of this fallacious line of reasoning by Rorty to establish the profound claim that traditional philosophy is completely wrong-headed because of its purported failures indeed rests on weak ground (Norris 2000). Rorty denies that a "progressivist" project is possible or that exposing a "foundation" for all our knowledge claims is possible. His argument is, once again, set within a historical framework. He claims that the German idealists (foremost among these being Immanuel Kant), having achieved the great insight that "the world of empirical science is a made world" (Rorty 1989, 2), nevertheless fell into the error of "seeing mind, spirit, the depths of the human self, as having an intrinsic nature . . ." (3). What Rorty thinks they should have done was to repudiate the very idea of anything having an intrinsic nature to be expressed or represented. By way of argumentative support, Rorty offers the following: We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there, and the claim that the truth is out there . . . most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include mental states. To say that the truth is out there is simply to say that where there are not sentences, there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages and that human languages are human creations. (1989, 4-5) Rorty's observation (I will not claim that it is an argument) is so highly general as to be unproblematic to any epistemologist interested in questions of "knowledge" and "truth". Rorty is reminding us (as if a reminder were a profound observation in this relation) that truth is a property of propositions and not of "things". But such an observation by Rorty lacks philosophical profundity in that it is equally compatible with realist or anti-realist ontologies and as such, it cannot further the debate as initially framed. Thus, this statement of Rorty's position is similar to the way in which the description of a "language game" is compatible with the realist position as discussed in chapter one. That sentences are what we declare to be true or false is both analogous to, and as innocuous as, the claim that a description of language games encapsulates our talk of truth and falsity. What makes it a telling philosophical claim for Rorty is his insistence that there are no facts "out there" in the world. For Rorty, his understanding of what constitutes the "facts of the world" is contained within yet another metaphor: "facts" are

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"sentence-shaped things" (1999, 67). Because Rorty expresses his understanding via a metaphor, it is difficult to be specific in terms of the interpretation of the details of his account of "facts". For here, Rorty supplies none. However, in general terms and as already stated above, Rorty believes that facts are to be equated with sentences. In the course of a discussion which trades in facts, sentences are the currency which we employ. Indeed, what other characterization could sentences be given under Rorty's account? Interestingly, Rorty departs from one of his mentors (Wittgenstein) at this juncture in that he offers a substantive account of the nature of sentences. On the one hand, Wittgenstein goes to great pains in the later period (Philosophical Investigations] to assemble reminders that obviate the need for a metaphysical theory. On the other hand, while Rorty declares that the Wittgensteinian approach is the correct way to proceed, he nonetheless indulges in offering a host of epistemological, ontological and semantic accounts in his claim that an account of the nature of representation is an impossible metaphysician's dream, as well as his tacit claim that truth is no more (and no less) than a product of discourse within any given culture. Difficulties are not merely confined to Rorty's choice of methodology and the consistency with which it is executed. Problems arise in explaining even an everyday use of language if we take Rorty's choice of metaphor (that facts are "sentence-shaped things") literally and without reference to "facts" as something separate from the ways in which we discuss and represent them. For example, why is it that we are often tempted to say that the world does indeed facilitate our ability to decide between sentences that are the vehicles for "the" facts or, as Rorty would have it, "our facts"? A simple example illustrates this temptation. Take the two sentences "Strychnine is poisonous" and "Strychnine is nourishing" (see Searle 1998). The truth or the falsity of these sentences would seem to depend on the effect of a chemical compound on animal or plant organisms and not on the conventions that govern the employment of the sentence in Canadian culture. Rorty's move is also difficult to reconcile with the findings of the empirical sciences. For Rorty insists that scientific revolutions are "metaphoric re-descriptions" of nature rather than insights into the intrinsic character of nature. But how this account is to be understood in relation to the discoveries of the circulation of blood, the sexuality of flowering plants or the processes underlying plate tectonics, is highly problematic (see Searle 1998). Rorty is aware of this temptation and he attempts to dispel any philosophical disquietude by outlining a distinction between the claim, on the one hand, that the world in some sense contains the causes of our being justified in believing something, and, on the other, the claim that the world contains something that makes our sentences true. He is concerned with dispelling the


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"realist" misconception that states of the world "out there" constitute truths, through an examination of language. This concern asks for a drastic change in our perception of philosophy. For Rorty, knowledge and justification are viewed as social phenomena. As a result, for Rorty, knowledge consists in understanding the social practices through which we justify our beliefs. Thus, an inquiry into the nature of knowledge becomes a matter of studying certain modes of action and interaction, and Rorty characterizes this activity (the attempt to justify one's beliefs) as conversation. Knowledge is thus regarded by Rorty as a matter of conversation, and so is philosophy. Science, humanities and morality are no exceptions: Rorty characterizes them as various modes of conversation rather than as inquiries having fixed structures based on a foundation. In Rorty's view, the social community and culture play a crucial role: they function as a stage and it is this stage that makes all our conversational interactions possible. It is not surprising that, as a result, the community becomes the ultimate source of authority, both epistemic and moral. This characterization expresses Rorty's world-view which is based on two presuppositions - first, we cannot get outside our own language-based paradigm or culture; and second, we cannot get a "god's-eye view" of the world. It must be remembered that for Rorty, his announcement of the "death of epistemology" (see Harris 1992) is not to be construed as a move towards nihilism or scepticism, but rather as an "edifying" and emancipatory move that sets the philosopher free from "the desire for constraint and confrontation" (1989, 38). For Rorty, there are no "perennial and eternal problems" (1979, 101) in philosophy, nor can there be any valid knowledge gained by "erecting a permanent neutral framework for enquiry and thus for all culture", for a neutral framework attempts to provide the impossible, namely, "non-historical conditions of any possible historical development" (1989, 41). In Rorty's assessment then, the fallacy of traditional philosophy lies in its conception of knowledge, for it is this conception that connects knowledge with permanence. In the search for permanence, how an object is known is explained through the intervention of mind. That is, the mind reflects the external world, and it is through these reflections that it forms the various representations of the external world that constitute knowledge (hence "The Mirror of Nature"). In this approach to epistemology, the mind is placed at the centre, the foundation of philosophical inquiry (Norris 2000). In the course of western philosophy since Descartes, the notion of the mind as representing the external world is slowly replaced with the view that language performs this task. But the perennial error of traditional epistemology as practised by the Platonists, Logical Positivists and other foundationalist philosophers has been that despite this change, the basic

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presupposition - that knowledge is a mirroring of the world - remains constant. As I have mentioned, Rorty is highly critical of the traditional epistemological project. His plea is that rather than looking for immutable foundations either in mind or in language, we should look instead into the social practices - the language games in which such basic notions as "truth", "reason", "objectivity" and "knowledge" play a part. Thus, as Christopher Norris observes: Rorty's claim that the realist injunction "we must have respect for facts" amounts to no more than the Wittgenstein thesis that "we must if we are to play a certain language game, play by the rules." Hence also his kindred (Davidson-derived) argument "to say that we must have respect for unmediated causal forces is pointless." For causal forces, no less than the facts, are always already under a description by the time they come to figure in our various language games, hypotheses, theories, conceptual schemes or whatever. (2000, 82) The "arguments" that license Rorty's conclusions in Philosophy and the Mirror of Mature take the form of an extended historical critique of the "invention" of epistemology. In his more recent work, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Rorty shifts the focus to an examination of the social character of "truth" and the nature of language. In both cases, however, the conclusion is the same. That is, "that we human beings, living forever within language, can assess the discourses of this or that cultural group, including natural scientists, only by matters of practical convenience" (1989, 88). Rorty exhibits his approval of the attack on the pretensions of the "absolutist" project of first philosophy in the following passage: great scientists invent descriptions of the world which are useful for the purposes of predicting and controlling what happens, just as poets and political thinkers invent other descriptions for other purposes. But there is no sense in which any of these descriptions is an accurate representation of the way the world is in itself. (1979, 4) Here Rorty, through denying the validity of the realist project, explicitly reiterates his commitment to anti-realism and in doing so, implicitly embarks on the path to cultural relativism.

Rorty and the Influence of Wittgenstein Before narrowing the focus of the analysis to the relativism that Rorty's philosophy engenders, it is worthwhile to assess how Rorty's position


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departs from that of one of his inspirational figures, Wittgenstein. For although Rorty acknowledges a debt to Wittgenstein, he departs from the subtleties of Wittgenstein's position in important ways. They are important because the very nature of his departure contributes to the genesis of Rorty's relativism. For a follower of Wittgenstein, Rorty's position is a prime example of the "family resemblance fallacy": the view that there is a family resemblance between the concepts "knowledge", "inquiry" and "truth". This resemblance in turn licenses the conclusion that in any discussions of "human kind", these concepts can be lumped, without residue, into the category of cultural artifacts. Such a move on Rorty's part is an essentialist and highly generalized claim which, in light of the discussion of Wittgenstein's work in chapter three, should be viewed as antithetical to Wittgenstein's usage. Moreover, according to Rorty, who acknowledges an allegiance to the mature philosophy of Wittgenstein, to conflate the methods and criteria of assessment of the sciences with the insights and principles of works of art, social formations or other cultural artifacts, is a peculiarity (Norris 2000). Such a move is peculiar for Rorty in that it violates one of Wittgenstein's deepest insights: that confusions arise when one treats a family resemblance like an identity. There is at most a family resemblance between the concepts of "knowledge", "enquiry" and "truth" as used in the discussions of works of human kind, which works include that most diverse and elaborate of human artifacts, the person, and the way in which these words are used in any discussion of the "nature of reality" or the "way reality really is". Rorty, however, simply asserts without argument that we must agree that scientific revolutions are "metaphoric redescriptions" of nature rather than insights into the intrinsic character of nature. It is questionable whether this line of argument can be sustained. Arguably, one might suppose that scientific paradigms and philosophical schools of thought are similar in kind, and that they are similar in all other respects and therefore open to the same kind of logical objection. But Rorty avoids the requirement for further analysis in this regard, claiming that he is not concerned with mounting an argumentative attack on realism, foundationalism or indeed representationalism of any pedigree, but only with providing a more useful or potentially fruitful story (a theme we shall return to at the end of this chapter). It must be noted at this juncture that Rorty's "misreading" of Wittgenstein spawns a greater difficulty. For Rorty conflates his reading of Wittgenstein with some of the views of Donald Davidson (e.g. Davidson 1984), in the following way. Language, so Rorty declares, is not to be thought of as a medium for representing how things are with the natural world, but rather

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as a more or less efficient tool for predicting what is likely to be said, done, or happen in a particular circumstance. In this way, a primitive positivism is fathered on Wittgenstein's subtle analysis (Norris 2000). That is, the entirety of the human edifice that is language is reduced to a singular tool that is to be equated with what is useful. As Rorty puts it: "This Wittgensteinian attitude, developed by Ryle and Davidson for all languages, naturalizes mind and language by making all questions about the relation of either to the rest of the universe causal questions, as opposed to questions about adequacy of representation or expression" (1979, 15). Here, we see evidence which Rom Harre and Michael Krausz have described as, "the anarchistic side of post-modern permissiveness" (Krausz and Harre 1996, 205), according to which right or wrong opinions about the world are equally caused by the world. According to Rorty, the history of culture has no telos, such as the emancipation of humanity. Our culture, for example, is something that "took shape as a result of a great number of sheer contingencies" (1999, 122). But if we are to take such a position seriously, then we can no longer adjudicate between two effects that are, on Rorty's reading, both equally caused. Both effects are occurrences in society. There can be no talk of naturally occurring effects, as opposed to products of society or of other binary oppositions that are crucial to our moral and artistic decisionmaking (Norris 1997, 2000). I would like to suggest that the "great levelling" which is attendant on Rorty's metaphysics, stands as a reductio ad absurdum of his position. That is to say, his ontology fails to account for the nuances and plasticity of our ways of talking about the world and, more importantly, his ontology is impoverished in its ability to account for mistakes. How is it possible to make any discrimination in language between a sentence that describes the world incorrectly and one that describes it correctly? Under Rorty's ontology, no appeal to the "facts of the matter" or "the world as it is" can be made. Furthermore, standing behind Rorty's assimilation of the natural sciences to social practice and politics lies a distorted reading of Wittgenstein's thesis that grammar is autonomous. Wittgenstein has noted that it is sometimes useful to the philosopher in his or her attempt to break the metaphysical "must" of monist explanations to point out that we are free to choose our conventions of discourse. Nevertheless, as I noted in chapter three, Wittgenstein holds that our common form of life is such that not only do we agree in our linguistic conventions but also in our judgements. As was seen in chapter three, these judgements will in part be determined by our nature as human beings and perhaps more importantly, in part by the nature of the world. For example, there is an ordering or regularity to nature that makes possible the instrumental value of our various quantifications of measurement. It is because objects in the world


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do not arbitrarily and inexplicably change shape and weight that the application of weight and measurement is possible (Wittgenstein 1968). As I have indicated, some grammars will be better suited than others to telling coherent stories about the way the world is. As I argued in chapter two, during my discussion of the compatibility between the notion of a language game and realism, the notion of a language game is coherent only when there is a world to interact with (Kirk 1999). Accordingly, some grammars will be better than others for devising action-guiding programmes that fit the world, with respect to standards that a culture sets itself. This way, the world can be said to determine the shape of our grammar: the very kind of interplay between world and grammar that Rorty wishes to deny. Rorty's departure from Wittgenstein by pursuing an epistemological reading of the concept of "grammars" does not, in itself, make Rorty's position untenable: however, it shows that Rorty is an imitator rather than a "follower of Wittgenstein". However, what is important to this thesis is Rorty's reading of Wittgenstein and the consequences it has for Rorty's relativism. It is to this latter point that I now turn.

Is Rorty a Relativist? As we shall see later in this chapter, Rorty accepts that relativism is selfrefuting but denies the charge that he (Rorty) is a relativist. In his essay "Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism", Rorty says of his own position: The . . . objection is that what I have been calling "postmodernism" is better named "relativism," and that relativism is self-refuting. Relativism certainly is self-refuting, but there is every difference between saying that every community is as good as any other and saying that we have to work out of the networks we have, from the communities with which we identify. (Rorty 1990, 588) Is Rorty correct to believe that he can distance himself from the charge of relativism? I believe that he cannot. Rorty can be identified as a relativist for the following reasons. First, his notion ofjustification, that is justification pertaining to knowledge and truth, is relevant. According to Rorty, "knowledge is what we are justified in believing" (1979, 3). For Rorty, knowledge is a case of justified belief (Kirk 1999; Norris 2000). The crucial question when faced with such a position is: how is this justification to be defined? Or, what does this justification consist of? Rorty's answer is that justification "is to be judged by the standards of our own day" (1979, 178). The notion of

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truth, like the notion of knowledge, is also bound to justification. There can be, for Rorty, no such thing as attaining truth since truth does not have any independent status and in this way, truth is equated with warranted assertability (Kirk 1999). For Rorty, notions of "knowledge" and "truth" become commendatory terms. That is to say, they are defined as compliments which people pay to their favoured beliefs and, as such, they do not require further justification. As Rorty comments: "Knowledge is like truth, simply a compliment paid to belief which we think so well justified that for the moment further justification is not needed" (1991, 24). Under Rorty's characterization, knowledge and truth are given a different status in relation to objectivity from the one employed in epistemology as it has been pursued in the foundationalist projects of the west (1991, 32). Indeed, a radically different characterization is required if Rorty is to effect a logical break from the practice of foundationalist epistemological projects. For Rorty, knowledge and truth are based upon the idea of consensus - a consensus among the people of a particular community. He claims that the same consideration holds in contexts where a community or culture makes normative evaluations or judges what constitutes rationality (Norris 1997). Echoing Winch, Rorty holds that although such normative evaluations are said to be trans-community evaluations, they are in essence no more (and no less) than disguised expressions of communal preferences. As a result, no such normative judgements can be universally binding. They are not, and can never be a-historical and should be understood and defined as historical in nature. In this way, normative authority in regard to "rationality", "knowledge" or "truth" must be understood as inter-cultural rather than transcultural (Kirk 1999). For example, in Rorty's treatment of the notion of "rationality", we find that, as with Winch, it is communal considerations that are the determining factor: "there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from the descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society - ours - uses in one or another area of inquiry" (Rorty 1991, 23). Given that Rorty adopts the position that "truth" is to be identified with agreement among cultural peers, it is quite natural, on first encountering this formulation, to take it in a relativistic spirit. Understood thus, it says that truth in a language, any language, is determined by what the majority of the speakers of that language would say (Putnam 1981). Moreover, there is a possibility that speakers of different languages would have different standards of truth, contingent upon what exactly they agreed upon, without recourse to any "facts of the world" over and above those produced by the language that they employ. Incommensurability would result between the two "linguistic communities" (Rorty 1979, 133).


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If Rorty is correct and the proper approach is not to look for foundational, eternal or universal "truths" but rather to involve oneself in conversation until agreement is reached within the community, a question arises as to what, exactly, the consensus (agreement) will amount to in this relation (Kirk 1999). What is this agreement? That is to say, what is it about? Rorty's positive answer is that it is an agreement on the values that we share among ourselves as a community; or in other words, every member of a community whose consensus it is. In this way, it is a moral conception of the individual that becomes the central focus. Rorty achieves this through what he famously calls "solidarity". As he puts it: "In the end, the pragmatist tells us what matters is our loyalty to other human beings clinging together in the dark, not our hopes of getting things right" (1979, 166). Reaching agreement in conversation is thus primarily the result of social loyalty, our desire for "clinging together". To view the end result of any conversation as a kind of objective truth in the traditional understanding of epistemology amounts very simply to a refusal to recognize the socio-cultural bases of a community's cognitive activities (Norris 2000). But what does "community agreement" amount to? Rorty's account of "agreement" and "standards of agreement" is a shifting one (Kirk 1999). It will be useful for the purposes of the following investigation to take account of his distinction between "normal" and "hermeneutic" discourse. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Mature, the idea is that much of our discourse is governed by standards on which the speakers of the language are in agreement. In his more recent book, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, these standards are compared to an algorithm, that is to say, to a decision procedure such as that offered by computers. Rorty's philosophical picture is one where, under normal circumstances, English speakers disagree about a question such as, "are there enough chairs in the dining room to seat everybody tonight?" Such a statement, according to Rorty, is taken to be true as a statement of "normal discourse" if it is certified by procedures on which the members of the particular "linguistic community" within which it is uttered are in agreement (Putnam 1992). If agreement cannot be reached on the question because members of the group (within which it is an item for discussion) claim allegiance to different "linguistic communities" (unlike Winch's cultural relativism, Rorty's formulation suggests the possibility that multiple "linguistic communities" may co-exist within any given culture), the discourse is rendered "hermeneutic", in the sense that the proper focus of the exercise is to interpret what the other has to say, and to reach an understanding of the other and of oneself. If the discourse becomes "hermeneutic" in nature, the best the two or more groups of "disputants" can do is to keep the conversation going. As Rorty puts it:

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"Here finally, I come around to the suggestion with which I ended the last section - that the point of edifying philosophy is to keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth" (1979, 377). For Rorty, statements in any "hermeneutic" discourse are true only in an honorific sense (Putnam 1992). Each side in the dispute calls its statements true, but this is just rhetoric designed to convert the other side in their allegiance. Rorty himself is not silent on the supposed relativistic tendencies within his own work and it is worth quoting him here at length: "Relativism" is the traditional epithet applied to pragmatism by realists. Three different views are commonly referred to by this name. The first is that every belief is as good as any other. The second is the view that "true" is an equivocal term, having as many meanings as there are procedures of justification. The third is the view that there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society - ours - uses in one area of inquiry. The pragmatist holds the ethnocentric third view. But he does not hold the self-refuting first view, nor the eccentric second view. (1989,48) Here, Rorty explicitly identifies his position in opposition to realism. Yet, in his response to the suggestion that he himself is forwarding a relativistic agenda, Rorty seems to vacillate between dismissing the "relativist charge" as an irrelevant non-starter and producing an argumentative strategy against the charge of relativism (Norris 1997; Kirk 1999). On the dismissive front, Rorty defends his philosophical hero, John Dewey, in the following way: "we are now in a position to see the charges of'relativism' and 'irrationalism' once leveled against Dewey as merely mindless defensive reflexes of the philosophical tradition which he attacked" (1979, 13). But, as an argumentative strategy, Rorty suggests: In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into which "the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move everything from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try. (1982,57) In other words: "We see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than an attempt to mirror nature" (Rorty 1979, 171). Again, Rorty provides us with a label for this view: "Explaining rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say . . . is the essence of what I call 'epistemological behaviorism,' an attitude common


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to Dewey and Wittgenstein" (1979, 174). But, as I have argued, such a "move" is premised on a mis-reading of Wittgenstein's mature philosophy and requires a rejection of realism. Moreover, even if such a "move" (from epistemology and metaphysics to cultural politics) were undertaken as an act of fiat, Rorty nevertheless explicitly accepts that such a strategic "move" retains a relativistic character: "To say that what is True and Right are matters of social practice may seem to condemn us to a relativism which, by itself, is a reductio of the behaviorist approach to either knowledge or morals" (1979, 178). According to Rorty, the discomfort of realizing that knowledge is "relative to" culture, scheme, framework, paradigm, episteme or discourse is experienced only by those hanging on to the traditional, western representational conception of "knowledge as mirror". Once this conception is overcome: "To say that truth and reference are 'relative to a conceptual scheme' sounds as if it were saying more than this, but it is not, as long as 'conceptual scheme' is taken as simply a reference to what we believe now - the collection of views which make up our present day culture" (Rorty 1979, 276). Of course, it is difficult under such a characterization to give a meaningful account of what other societies believe, for Rorty seems to discount the notion of competing schemes or paradigms. Certainly, there is a tension generated in how we can come to understand the "conceptual schemes" of other cultures, regardless of the amount of hermeneutic discourse we engage in. For if all we take to be true is that which is taken to be true by our culture (at the moment we pose the question), then what sense can we make of the truths in another culture? Can we understand them as "true"? What analysis of their knowledge production can we legitimately undertake? To what criteria of veridical knowledge production can we appeal when undertaking our examination of the "truths" of another culture? Why would we expect hermeneutic "understanding" (as Rorty would put it) to flow from our own cultural bias? It might be expected that Rorty would follow through at this point and claim that a relativism that is consistent with the notion that inter-cultural "understanding" is unavailable to us. Famously however, Rorty sidesteps the problems of relativism by avoiding the label. He does this by denying that the notion of "relativism" itself \$ coherent: "I think that the words 'relativism' and 'postmodernism' are words which never had any clear sense, and that both should be dropped from our philosophical vocabulary" (1979, xv). Also, in an eccentric move, Rorty holds that "there are no relativists" (1989, 108), and if there were any philosophers who purported to occupy such a position, then "they could easily be refuted [by] . . . using one of the standard incoherence arguments employed by Socrates" (1989, 49). Several observations can be made about such a pronouncement. The first

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and perhaps most striking is that to say that no one occupies a relativist position is simply factually incorrect. There are many relativists, some of them "self-confessed", whose philosophies or social theories have been correctly described as leading to relativistic consequences. These include: Nelson Goodman, W.V.O. Quine, Karl Mannheim, Peter Winch, Paul Feyerabend, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Joseph Margolis, as well as the "school of thought" called the Edinburgh "strong programme" in sociology. If Rorty is saying that nobody has been a relativist in the way in which he has defined it, this is an indicator of the vague and unsatisfactory nature of his definition rather than an argument for the vacuous content of relativism as a concept. Also, Rorty's statement that "relativism" is the view that every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic, "is as good as any other" is unsatisfactory in that it is too broad (see chapter one). Such a definition could just as easily serve as a definition of nihilism (the rejection of all standards) or scepticism (doubtful of all standards). Thus, one must be suspicious on inductive grounds of Rorty's final point, namely, if a relativist were found, then he or she would be easily refuted by a version of the self-referential arguments provided by Socrates. Another peculiarity of Rorty's understanding of relativism and his relation to it can be seen by examining his characterization of relativism as the view "that every belief a b o u t . . . a certain topic . . . is as good as any other". For such a characterization expunges certain internal features of the concept of relativism that are the cause of much anxiety amongst philosophers. If "relativism" both suggests and has been defined in such a way that a set of beliefs, truth, knowledge or meaning can qualify as such only from within an individual perspective, or from within a framework such as a cultural background or a conceptual scheme, then the consequence for the relativist is that from within a particular framework, some beliefs on a certain topic will be preferred to others and some will be regarded as more correct, some true and others false, as established by the "rules" or "criteria" of that framework. Therefore, the result of the relativist doctrine, if correct, is not that "every belief about a certain topic is as good as any other", but rather, that no criteria are available to make such ajudgement. On the basis of these cursory observations, it can be seen that Rorty has not unravelled a philosophical confusion with his definition, but has failed to define relativism satisfactorily. For if standards of truth, knowledge and belief are both defined by and dependent upon the framework in which they occur, then a state of incommensurability exists between frameworks (e.g. the paradigms of Kuhnian science). As a result, from within the bounds of any given framework, particular beliefs will be seen to be more correct than others and his claim that "a belief on a certain topic is as good as any other" has no probative force.


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Despite these disavowals, Rorty seems to flirt with relativism in one form or another throughout the development of his philosophy since the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Mature. To take one example at random, when it comes to questions ofjustice, Rorty claims: "the rightness or wrongness of what we say is just for a time and a place. What counts as rational or as fanatical is relative to the group to which we think we have to justify ourselves" (1979, 88). Simon Thompson, in his article "Rorty on Truth, Justification and Justice" comments: "Thus it seems that Rorty analyses both truth and justice in terms of a practice of justification that takes place within a community of inquiry, and in accordance with local norms" (2000, 34). As a result and despite Rorty's protestations to the contrary, Rorty can, on these grounds, be identified as a relativist because: 1) he reduces truth and (in this case) justice to a matter ofjustified belief or value and 2) he relativizes such justification to particular communities of inquiry. The fact that Rorty employs a misreading of Wittgenstein of the pedigree I have identified in chapter three has not gone unnoticed by Rorty's critics. In Solidarity in the Conversation of Humanity, Geras claims that Rorty's use of the notion of a language game renders "all truth and coherence relative to competing language games and as a result of such a move knowledge has to be treated as justified belief or warranted assertability, one's community, whether social or scholarly, being the source of epistemic authority" (Geras 1995, 128). As already stated, it is this "epistemological" mis-reading of Wittgenstein, coupled with his unsatisfactory rejection of realism that gives Rorty's philosophy its relativistic character. Moreover, Rortyan relativism seems far removed from licensing the conclusions Rorty believes that it will. One important criticism of his version of relativism is that since it constrains political theory to existing standards of justification, it forces a conservative acceptance of the "status quo". As Thompson has observed, "Rorty abandons an idea of truth that has a regulative, transcendental and critical force" (2000, 35) and in doing so, "The implication is that, without the ability to go beyond current norms, such a relativist political theory would not be able to reach a standpoint from which it could criticize those norms" (2000, 36). This misapprehension, that relativism is efficacious for certain political ends, is widespread among relativistic philosophers, such as Rorty, who wish to propound a relativistic position as a principle of tolerance. That is to say, Rorty underestimates the value of knowledge production that is representational and dynamic. Historically, new knowledge and the correction of mistakes has led in turn to the explosion of dogma and the possibility of transformative and progressive societal change. I will return to this topic in the section "Relativism as Tolerance II" later in this chapter.

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Is Rorty's Relativism Coherent? As I have argued, Rorty's position is construed in a highly generalized fashion, a clear understanding of which is difficult in relation to the way our language is actually employed in everyday situations. That is to say, he does not provide any concrete examples in everyday language as a frame within which to conduct his discussion and as a method of illustrating his position. Rather, his discussion takes place at the rarefied level of "societal standards" or "criteria within a culture". Does Rorty suppose it can be assumed by all those concerned with the issues epistemologically, ontologically and metaphysically that the meaning of his phrases and terms of art (especially in regard to those philosophers whose disquietudes he hopes to put to rest) are self-evident and uncontested? The answer to this question must be "no". For example, it is not at all clear what "agreement with one's peers" comes to. Hilary Putnam picks up on this line of criticism in his book, Renewing Philosophy, asking us to consider the following example: If I say to my wife "our kitchen needs painting," the only cultural peer who is aware that I think our kitchen needs painting in this case is my wife (assuming that I do not discuss the matter with anyone else). In a sense, my cultural peers agree: that is, all of my cultural peers who actually know that I made the judgement agree that it is true. Does that mean that it is true, on Rorty's theory? Let us take a more extreme case. Let us suppose that I live alone and I think that my kitchen needs painting, and I don't discuss the judgement with anyone. In that case all of my cultural peers who are aware of my judgement (namely me) agree that it is true. Does that mean that it is true on Rorty's theory? (1992, 34) Putnam raises a challenge to the all-encompassing Rortyan notion of "agreement". That is, there seems to be holes in Rorty's account of the nature of judgement. Moreover, what is intuitively accepted as true or false in certain contexts is difficult to account for under Rorty's description. It might be suggested that Rorty is saying that a judgement in normal discourse is true just in case one's cultural peers would agree if they were present, or if they were informed of the relevant circumstances. However, this move would not avoid questions about the number of cultural peers required to be aware of the relevant circumstances before truth is born as a result. It is perhaps for this reason that Rorty rejects this appeal to counterfactuals in a conference paper, "Counterfactuals and Pragmatism", which he read in Jerusalem in 1987. Here, he characterizes an appeal to what people, who are not themselves present or aware of the situation, would say, as a


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logical "sleight of hand" or an appeal to "ghost observers". But this leaves us in a position where we do not know how to interpret Rorty's "agreement" formula. In addition to the examples Putnam provides, he also considers the case of the "typical relativist" who uses counterfactuals un-self-consciously, and who holds (with Rorty) that what is true in a culture is determined by what the members of the culture would say. Returning to the statement concerning the need to paint my kitchen (bearing in mind that the statement belongs to the Rortyan category of "normal discourse" and not "hermeneutic discourse"), if the truth of my statement depends on what my cultural peers would say, then what determines that? What determines what my cultural peers would say? The determinant cannot be that they say what they say, because they say what they say. But on Rorty's account, no appeal can be made to anything outside the discourse as a determinant. It might be objected that all that is required of the relativist confronted with such an objection is to interpret "truth" relativistically, which is consistent with their own position and does not require realism to forward the argument. But even so, the relativist is faced with a further problem. For the truth value of the statement "my kitchen needs painting" depends, for a relativist of Rortyan pedigree, on the truth value of the statement that the paint in my kitchen is dingy and peeling. This in turn depends on what the relevant laws are (physical, biological, psychological, etc.), which further depends on what people, that is to say, the community, would say the relevant laws are (Putnam 1992). Hence, the relativist's case cannot be forwarded on grounds that are culturally relativistic but only solipsistic. Solipsistic relativism of the form "what I say is true for me is true" has been demonstrated in chapter one to be inconsistent. More importantly, this individualistic and solipsistic formulation of relativism cannot serve to establish a community-based model required by Rorty's argument. I have noted that the notion of community is central to the Rortyan world-view since it is the community in which supreme authority lies. But what is to be understood by "community" in this instance? That is to say, how large or small is a community? (Mohanty, 1997). Rorty holds that the context within which the question is raised will enable one to answer this question. For example, in the context of a cognitive realm of physical theories, the notion of a community is constituted by the members of the community and in the realm of physical theories, the community is constituted by the physicists. The physicist community is a good example for Rorty's purpose as it is a context within which the notion of a community has a restricted reference. In conversation, all physicists refer to a central kernel of concepts and theories, the technical terms of which are clearly and

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universally defined. However, the same is not true in the context of everyday conceptualizations where we find such commonly held concepts as "body", "mind", "truth", "knowledge" and "objectivity". One might expect that Rorty would appeal to a family resemblance account in this relation, however he does not. Accordingly, the notion of community that Rorty must necessarily posit in these contexts has a vast range. As a result, problems arise when employing the notion of a "community" to settle disputes. In the case of a moral dispute, on what criteria should we depend? Should it be the little community centred around my village or the wider community outside? (Harris 1992). The ambiguity generated by Rorty's telling silence in this regard renders his account unsatisfactory. No definitive answer to these questions is offered by Rorty in this context, although such an answer is required. It can be seen that the tension generated by Rorty's notion of community comes from two closely related factors. The first concerns where to draw the temporal and geographical boundaries of a community and the second, how to employ the notion of a community in the decision-making process. The second factor is supervenient on the first for if no boundaries can be established as to what will count as a community, then such an entity cannot be invoked in every decision-making process. In the picture of knowledge Rorty provides, no decision-making process is practically feasible as the logic of any choice is tied to his amorphous notion of "community". Furthermore, there is no appeal to external factors such as "states of affairs" or "facts" in the world, for the consensus of the community is the determining authority in any epistemological judgement. Rorty's account of knowledge is a closed one and it is for this reason that the problems generated by his notion of community and the attendant problems of disagreement between communities cannot be overcome by the picture he provides, for Rorty provides no criteria for judgement in this relation. A further problem with Rorty's account of knowledge has been identified by Hilary Putnam, who asks the perspicacious question: "On what grounds can I legitimately use the expression 'your culture'?" (1992, 237). As Putnam correctly observes, for Rorty to say that something is true is to say no more (and no less) than saying something is true by the norms of the practices and procedures of one''s own culture. As a result, cultures alien to one's own become "logical constructions out of procedures and practices of one's own culture" (238). In other words, one can speak the truth about an alien culture only to other members of one's own culture. "Truth" is an idiosyncratic function of the community within which it is a feature. Objectivity is held back at the boundary of one's own culture and one cannot escape to any truths beyond. As Putnam says, "the solipsism of/is replaced


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by the solipsism of we" (239). If the Rortyan is confined to making objectivity judgements solely within the boundaries of his or her own culture in conversations with other members, how is he or she ever to explain or understand a culture alien to his or her own? This point must be examined in more detail as it is one of the central tenets of Rorty's position that his view of philosophy brings with it a greater potential for understanding and crosscultural tolerance. It is to these claims for potential tolerance and emancipation that I now turn.

Relativism as Tolerance II Rorty's position on the status of science vacillates. Sometimes he claims science is irrelevant to the proper thrust of philosophy: "I tend to view natural science as in the business of controlling and predicting things, and as largely useless for philosophical purposes" (quoted in Festenstein and Thompson 2001, 32), whereas at others he sees the need to attack the "absolutist pretensions" of science. This Rorty does by arguing that science is a discourse like any other within western culture. Science should not be viewed as providing a privileged access to the world around us or as a "final vocabulary". As Rorty says: great scientists invent descriptions of the world which are useful for the purposes of predicting and controlling what happens, just as poets and political thinkers invent other descriptions for other purposes. But there is no sense in which any of these descriptions is an accurate representation of the way the world is in itself. (1989, 4) But in carrying out his attack on science, Rorty is caught between the horns of a dilemma. For if he holds that cross-cultural understanding or explanation is indeed possible, then he must abandon his relativist stance and accept that some form of appeal to the "facticity" of the world is possible. If he accepts his own "relativist" conception of knowledge, then this will sit uncomfortably with any justification strategy compatible with his own declared political position of a liberal (Norris 2000). For it must be remembered that Rorty's relativism is in part a reaction against the universalizing absolutism of traditional philosophical projects. According to Rorty's political agenda, the claim that the feasibility of such projects is a chimera generates a version of liberalism and openness to other cultures and societies that hold views different from our own. But does such liberalism follow from Rorty's position? It is equally likely (perhaps more so) that if one culture is

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xenophobic or negative in a racist or sexist way in its outlook on some other culture, then that culture can never escape from its xenophobic and negative predicament. Indeed how can the xenophobic culture move towards liberalism? In this way, Rorty's account unwittingly reinforces the status quo, a fact that runs contrary to his aims of progressive social emancipation. Attendant upon this social conservativism is the question for the relativist as to whether a culture can ever come to an understanding of itself as xenophobic if its values and ethical norms are as they are. For example, what we in our society might regard as immoral (e.g. the practice of female circumcision) might be regarded as correct in another society, where the consensus exists that this practice is not only acceptable but highly moral as a practice guaranteeing women a life of "purity" devoid from the temptations of "animal" pleasure (see Harrison 1982). Moreover, the notion of liberal tolerance would be taken to the most macabre of extremes in Rorty were the racism of another culture to be true if the Volk of that society believes it to be so, if for example, the consensus of that society is that racism is correct. Rorty seems to have inherited the same problem with his relativist position as Geoffrey Harrison (1982), which I have identified in the Introduction as political impotence within a logical space for social self-critique. Relativism often proceeds from the most noble of intentions - in Rorty's case, the need to avoid the universalizing character of traditional epistemology in an attempt to generate a liberal outlook - but the result seems to fall well short of this goal. As I have mentioned, far from generating an emancipatory political relativism, the reinforcement of the status quo can support both a dogmatic conservativism and, at worst, oppressive regimes. Christopher Norris is one who holds that consensus relativism is often informed by a conservative political agenda. He writes of Rorty and Stanley Fish: "neo-pragmatists like Rorty and Stanley Fish [are] thinkers whose appeal to prevailing norms of communal judgement and belief is more obviously geared to a conservative (or at any rate conformist) political agenda" (Norris 1997, 199). Afshari is another contemporary writer who draws attention to this point. In his book, Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism, he comments: "Relativism is a consensus theory. As such it manifests itself in such a way as to produce oppressive practices within a culture. In fact, it can reinforce such oppression by leaving no moral or ethical appeal to standards outside of that adopted by the culture" (2001, 57). In this way, he stresses that the claim that "knowledge is all that a culture currently takes to be true" by no means implies that the culture will be an open, liberal one in which all views are tolerated and where no oppression is possible. The tension created by Rorty's relativism goes beyond the problem of cross-cultural understanding and tolerance. For Rorty, truth


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involves individual behaviour conforming to a certain social consensus model. This understanding has come under criticism from MaCarthy (1990) who argue that Rorty's picture of the individual is incorrect. Moreover, if we are to take Rorty's position completely seriously, then we encounter the following paradox. It is a fact of our contemporary culture that there is no philosophical unanimity. We do not all accept the one philosophy (hence, in part, the reason for writing this book). Moreover, it is certainly true that we are not all avowed relativists. This state of affairs is likely, one might suppose, to continue for some considerable period of time. Moreover, if the majority of people within our culture (our linguistic community) were to agree that "the majority of my cultural peers would not agree that relativism is correct", then according to Rorty's relativistic criterion of truth, relativism would not be true. It must be stressed that this inconsistency is not a logical inconsistency of the type which I considered in chapter two when investigating the incoherence of the relativist case. Rather, this inconsistency is an empirical one as it rests upon an empirical premise concerning the present state of our culture or, to use the Rortyan vocabulary, an empirical premise that describes our linguistic community. This critique is not to be restricted to a critique of science. Moreover, it robs social theory of its ability to critique insofar as what is the case is also that which is correct (Norris 1997, xvi). This prevents critical engagement. There is no possibility of a naturalistic fallacy in Rorty's understanding. There is no "is" from which to (illegitimately) infer an ought. All that "is" is an agreement between knowers. Norris has also suggested that there can be no meaningful debate between (academic) disciplines, for the notion of "truth" is what is produced by a community of knowers. Between communities of knowers, no common ground exists under which meaningful debate can take place. There exists no "is", and no "state of affairs" for the different disciplines to apply their community-based methodologies to either (Norris 1997, xiii). Despite the paradoxical consequences of this empirical possibility, Rorty's position could be tenable if he were to shift the discussion of the logical status of the charge of relativism from normal discourse to hermeneutic discourse. Thus for Rorty, statements that assert or deny relativism and anti-relativism are not themselves true or false in the sense in which statements in normal discourse are true or false. Under Rorty's conception, if I assert that a philosophical statement is true I am in fact doing no more than simply paying a compliment to an utterance. As Hilary Putnam puts it: "the statement of what sounds like relativism is for Rorty not the announcement of a metaphysical discovery, but a bit of rhetoric: a bit of rhetoric whose purpose is to get us to change our ways, to give up talk of truth and falsity rather than to express some kind of metaphysical truth" (1992, 209). But what would be

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the probative force of Rorty's argument in this relation? Indeed, would it qualify, in the formal sense, as an argument at all? Pronouncements such as Rorty's are seemingly paradoxical inasmuch as they announce the impossibility of theories without leaving a logical space from which to establish how such a critique can be seen as veridical. Stanley Fish does not view this observation as a criticism. Rather, he embraces it and views Rorty's pronouncements as a sobering reminder of the limitations of theory building and use. Norris characterizes Fish's view in the following way: as Fish mock-ruefully concedes - his own arguments "against theory" can have no consequences positive or negative, aside from the somewhat pyrrhic satisfaction of not falling prey to "theory hope" in its more naive or self-deluding forms. Thus the utmost of Fish's expectations (or so he would have us believe) is perhaps to get the odd postcard saying "you're right" while otherwise everyone - or anyone whose views count for anything - will go on thinking and talking exactly as before. (1996, xii) From what I have outlined above, it can be seen that Rorty's position provides no help in securing the claims of justice. Michael Freeman, for example, comments "relativism or nihilism . . . are either useless or dangerous in the face of evils such as genocide" (1991, 15). Similarly, Geras concludes that,"if there is no truth then there is no justice" (1995, 21). Geras emphasizes that Rorty's liberal ironist position deprives those who are oppressed of their most powerful weapon in their struggle for justice: "to tell others what really happened or how things really stand - to tell the truth about the injustices they have suffered or are suffering" (22), and in this way, the possibility of being heard is denied to those groups who are, or have been, oppressed. Sabina Lovibond, in her article "Feminism and Pragmatism: A Reply to Richard Rorty", echoes Geras's disquietude with a concrete example. Lovibond argues that liberal ironism of the type propounded by Rorty prevents the possibility of feminist theorists saying sexual harassment "is a feature of social reality" (1992, 66). She argues that traditional language or truth and reason have the potential to provide a powerful political support in the fight for justice. In other words, bereft of the realist appeal to the "facts of the matter", victims of social injustice are left with no more than their own respective descriptions of the situation they find themselves in - a description which is, of course, "just as good as" that of their oppressors. Lovibond (1992) and Bernstein (1992) have argued along similar lines to Norris (1997), i.e. that liberal ironism reduces political discourse to a matter of merely rhetorical persuasion. As echoed by Simon Thompson, "rather


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than a medium of reason and truth determination, the language of politics becomes no more than the rhetoric in the service of power" (2000, 105). Extending this line of argument, Thompson claims: rather than regarding politics itself as a practice of collective deliberation and decision, he [Rorty] reduces it to nothing more than struggles for power . . . on Rorty's account a given standard or standard that defines truth or justice in a particular society only prevails because its exponents have had the power to impose it in that situation''. (106) So, in Rorty's view, by denying that traditional realist analyses of political discourse are activities of collective deliberation to arrive at reasoned principles that are to govern our common life, politics will be emancipated from the traditional model's often imperializing and oppressive character. As Rorty puts it: But of course we pragmatists never call ourselves relativists. Usually, we define ourselves in negative terms . . . we so called "relativists" refuse, predictably, to admit that we are enemies of reason and common sense. We say that we are only criticizing some antiquated, specifically philosophical, dogma. (1979, xvi-xvii) However, by leaving no door open to reasons stronger than those available to us by reading off local standards and conventions, Rorty offers no reliable moral guidance in our conduct of political affairs, apart from an appeal to power. To close, an essential tension exists in Rorty's writing on the pragmatics of philosophy as traditionally understood and practised. On the one hand, he follows Wittgenstein in the belief that philosophy, as it has been practised in the west, has misapprehended the root of philosophical problems and a fresh philosophical genesis is required. On the other hand, Rorty's exhaustive rejection of the representational project of traditional philosophy involves him in an account of the nature of language and representation which, as I have suggested in this chapter and despite his avowals to the contrary, has the character of social (and relativistic) theories of knowledge which, ironically, abound within the tradition he wishes to dispense with. In the corpus of Rorty's works there are two themes. One is his insightful and provocative meta-philosophical musings — musings that suggest a move towards descriptions that edify; and the other his community-based accounts of knowledge. Both of these themes are fascinating and both are at odds with each other. Whatever the result of the clash between these two themes in Rorty's work, one thing is certain and that is that edification does not and cannot supplant deliberation in matters moral and political. Philosophy as

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traditionally understood, the search for and interrogation of knowledge and truth, cannot be so easily dismissed or jettisoned. In this chapter, I have outlined how Rorty argues in an analogous but different way from that of Winch. I have further outlined that Wittgenstein's therapeutic method of perspicacious investigation of the way in which language is employed in different contexts can be re-cast in such a manner as to constitute an epistemological theory about language and meaning. I have argued that the "ethnographic" account that Rorty provides is relativistic in nature. Furthermore, for Rorty to save his account from the problems of incoherence I identify in chapter one, he is required to appeal to some form of realism (or similar representational account), but he cannot launch such an appeal without running afoul of his declared meta-philosophical principles. Rorty's attempts at a philosophical genesis are instructive in two ways: 1) I suggest that the appeal of Rorty is attractive to those who are wearied by the failures of traditional representational projects and the sickly "progress" of traditional philosophy when measured against the gains made by the physical sciences and technology. Rather than offering a positivist or another reductive naturalistic programme that collapses philosophy into the physical sciences (the result of which would expunge the discipline of philosophy in any form), Rorty boldly outlines the basis for a radical redefinition of the practice and proper subject matter of what was hitherto called philosophy. 2) Relativism need not be an anathema to the liberal theorist because relativism, properly characterized, provides an epistemological underpinning and reinforcement of cross-cultural understanding and tolerance. I have argued that Rorty's "anti-philosophical" account fails in that it imports well-known epistemological positions (e.g. consensus theories) in an attempt to "side step" philosophy. Quite so, but as I have attempted to illustrate, the philosophical position that Rorty finds himself occupying (perhaps unwittingly) has many shortcomings, including an untenable relativism. Moreover, even if Rorty's philosophical position can be saved, the political goals it is purported, by Rorty, to serve do not bear fruit. For, as I have argued, in a similar way to the relativism of Peter Winch, Rorty's relativism can just as easily serve as an epistemological underpinning to social oppression as to liberal emancipation.

Relativism as Tolerance III. Carl Schmitt: Relativist Despite my analysis of the relativistic thread in the mature work of Wittgenstein, Winch and Rorty, many will remain unconvinced of my


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characterization of relativism as moot in terms of its ability to promote tolerance and understanding. In a conference paper "Tolerance: the Ultimate Obligation of the Relativist", Paul O'Grady characterizes relativism in the following way: "Relativism seems obviously true to many people. It also seems obviously true to many of those people that since what is right for one group isn't right for another group, then we need to be tolerant of everyone" (2002, 1). In other words, "relativism" is for many simply the synonym for tolerance and understanding. To further combat such a misapprehension, I opt to take a different approach to that of the analysis of theory by considering an historical example, that of a practising, but unlikely, relativist, a relativist whose theories and their application had far-reaching and concrete social and political manifestations. The figure that I have in mind is Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), a philosopher of fascism and one-time Nazi. Schmitt was born into a family business in Plenntenburg, Westphalia. He studied state theory and law in Berlin, Munich and Strasbourg and took his graduation and State promotion exams in 1915. In 1921, Schmitt accepted a professorship at the University of Greifswald and it was from here that he published his essay "Die Diktatur" ("On Dictatorship"). It is in this essay that Schmitt identified and discussed the foundations of the newly established Weimar Republic, emphasizing the role of the office of the Reichsprasident. Schmitt's vision was one of a strong totalitarian leader, an individual who could personify the wishes of the masses. Such a leader could act with ruthless and monomaniacal efficiency and without the fetters of discussion, debate and the (almost) inevitable compromise. Thus, in Die Diktatur, we find Schmitt's judgement that by virtue of the dictator's ability to divine the will of the people and to act in an unconstrained fashion, unfettered by institutions or bureaucracy, a dictatorship can be, in a substantive sense, more democratic than democracies. After publishing this essay and holding several other academic appointments, Schmitt became a professor at the University of Berlin in 1933 (a position he held until the end of the war). It was at this juncture that Schmitt became a member of the NSDAP (on May 1, 1933). Soon after this he was made preussischer Staatstrat by the high-ranking Nazi Hermann Goering and became President of the Vereinigung nationalsozialistischer Juristen (Union of National-Socialist Jurists). Schmitt's political philosophy represents a sobering political lesson not only because he ran in the same race as Hitler and his grisly crew, but because the architectonic of Schmitt's fascism was co-extensive with that of relativistic political theory. Schmitt held that no truth or rational adjudication was possible in the tangle of post-Enlightenment ethics or politics.

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Politics and ethics were not, as many had believed, processes amenable to rational assessment by which the best or the most just course of action might be identified. Rather, the basis of both ethics and politics was an idiosyncratic affair, a matter of conviction akin to a theological fervour rather than a rational engagement (see The Concept of the Political, 1932). Notice that Schmitt's account locates him, at least in terms of his assumptions, among the ranks of his postmodern contemporaries. That ethical and political knowledge cannot be adjudicated by any overarching moral absolutes or universal imperatives collapses into the view that political and social knowledge grows out of the social context as evidenced in the discourse and narrative of a given historical moment. For Schmitt, along with the postmoderns, such "knowledge" is not the reflection of a timeless ideal, but is contingent and subject to taste, fashion and whim. Certain facts follow from Schmitt's assumptions in this relation. In the absence, indeed the impossibility, of an overarching set of moral and political principles or imperatives, and in his denial of the possibility of objective deliberation between differing political or moral viewpoints, Schmitt is identified as sharing the relativist camp. But surprisingly his conclusions are not those one might intuitively expect of a relativist. For Schmitt does not conclude on the basis of his account of the subjectivity of all moral and political principles that all beliefs regarding such matters ought to or must be respected and tolerated. But rather, that the process of politics is a battleground between on the one hand self-defined friends and on the other hand enemies who wish to subvert, or have the potential to subvert, their goals. As Schmitt puts it: "each has to decide for himself whether in the concrete situation the otherness of the stranger signifies the negation of his own way of life so that he has to be fended off and fought in order to preserve the way of life that is existentially important" (27). In any political battle, a group of "self-identified friends" may, of course, lose out. Schmitt is consistent with his relativistic viewpoint here, arguing that the mark of the political is not justice and fairness, but that the mark of the political is intensity. Therefore, for Schmitt, the result of political engagement may indeed be "the real possibility of physical killing . . . the existential negation of the enemy" (32). Here Schmitt, as relativist, sees no moral problem: "When a people no longer has the power or the will to maintain itself in the political sphere, so politics does not disappear from the world. All that disappears is a weak people" (53-4). As mentioned above, Schmitt's self-identified friends were those of fascism or right-wing nationalism as manifest in the German National Socialist Party (later to be known as the Nazis) whose political goals and aspirations are a matter of infamous


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historical record. So, here we have, in the form of Herr Schmitt, a relativist who places the value of faith and fervour over that of reason, who shared assumptions with the postmodernists, and, as a result, occupies a theoretical position whose stance is avowedly relativistic. However, Schmitt does not commute relativism into a bastion of respect and tolerance. Starkly, Schmitt believed that the realization of relativism leads, inexorably, to a dismissal of the rational element in politics and ethics and demanded the necessity for the dominance of the powerful over the weak, even to the point of the annihilation of those who disagreed or dissented from the party line. For Schmitt, might makes right and this in turn renders life nasty, brutish and short for his political opponents. Schmitt had another political message, one that was closely intertwined with his relativism and one particularly pertinent to the investigations of this book. Schmitt argued that liberals are bound to lose the battle against any form of nationalism or theocracy. The form of the prediction was as follows. Liberalism is an ideology which supposedly does not carry with it a conviction of its own truth. Liberalism thus understood (as I describe it below, Teflon Liberalism) claims to be neutral between, or tolerant of all ideologies, religious or otherwise. Liberalism's institutions try to prevent any one of those ideologies from dominating the others. As Schmitt perspicaciously observed, it is the ideology of liberal neutrality (in the form of Teflon Liberalism) that dominates the others. For Schmitt, it is in this essential tension, in casting itself as an ideology that holds that a neutral state is best while, at the same time, claiming that a pluralism of ideologies is to be tolerated, that liberalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. For Liberalism thus understood attempts to institutionalize neutrality by giving the individual certain rights against the state. The availability of these rights, however, enables the individual to get together with like-minded persons to try to establish the particular conception of the good which they believe to be true even if the conception is one which is possibly irrational or unpalatable or even harmful and pernicious to others within the society. Liberalism is therefore doomed to inherit and foster crises and power struggles. Because Liberalism can survive only if no interest group wins the battle, the great threat to continuing Liberalism is itself. Schmitt's work and life stand as a robust counter-example to the popular preconceived notion that all the relativists are, by definition, saints of tolerance and captains of diversity. Perhaps the most important lesson Schmitt leaves us with is the reminder, pertinent to the challenges of contemporary politics, that the differences between species of liberalism are not just over the policies they advocate but also over the meaning of politics itself. Moreover,

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Schmitt's prediction of the essential tension of liberalism is, I would suggest, as pertinent today as it was when Schmitt voiced it. What follows is both a discussion of and a reaction to Schmitt's prediction.

Relativism and Deliberation: A Case Study In order to flesh out the possible advantages and drawbacks of a relativist conception of liberalism and the potential crisis and conflicts it may foster, I will employ a concrete example, culled from recent events in the education system in France. Here I pay special attention to the efficacy of relativism as a deliberative tool for establishing social policy, resolving conflict and promoting tolerance and diversity. The example I have chosen concerns the action taken by students at a school to continue to wear the Islamic head scarf despite a French law enacted to ban this and other similar practices. Islam and Islamic practice are often portrayed in the media and beyond as a popular target for debate and, more often than not, condemnation. For example, the popular contrarian writer Christopher Kitchens (2004) refers pejoratively to fundamentalist Islam as a form of "theocratic fascism" and spares no ink in his attack on the Islamic world-view. But such rabblerousing against a purported "enemy of the moment" obscures a central problem facing the Northern Democracies: how is liberalism to be understood? That is, how are liberal systems to accommodate and/or react to the requests of the large religious minorities who live, work and contribute within the system? In December 2003, the Parliament of France considered and, in March of the following year, passed a bill banning "conspicuous" religious items from state schools. Forbidden items might include: Sikh turbans, Jewish skullcaps, Christian crucifixes and Muslim head scarves. The law which affects 12 million French schoolchildren called for a period of dialogue, although the French education minister Francois Fillon stressed at that time that there was no room for negotiations. As he put it, "There is no question today [the day the bill became law] of excluding. It is a question of convincing.'' The bill has been thrown into sharp relief by the impact on the French Muslim community. Many Muslims who support the wearing of the head scarf maintain that the practice has nothing to do with politics, but rather is about dignity and obedience to God. Contrariwise, opponents of the wearing of the head scarf have argued that the covering of the head is a symbol of women's oppression which has no place in a democratic society and certainly not in a school. Nevertheless, many Muslim women have


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gone on record to say that they believe that it is morally correct that their heads be covered up and that the religious symbolism is a fundamental part of their identity. But while many Muslim women clearly view the wearing of the head scarf as a personal identity issue, their insistence upon wearing it within the institution of state schools contrary to current law raises questions about the authority of the state as well as questions about religious intolerance which, in turn, have fuelled an ongoing debate about the benefits of assimilation as opposed to multi-culturalism in an age of immigration. Some critics have rightly pointed out that the insistence of the state on enforcing the ban on "conspicuous" religious symbolism may simply push many, including Muslim women, out of the system and thereby jeopardize integration. Those hostile to the wearing of the head scarf on the grounds that, whatever its religious connotation, it is also a symbol of a profoundly intolerant faith, find themselves caught in an essential tension, i.e. seeking to stamp out the expression of a religion in the name of tolerance. This is especially true of feminist critiques, for those activists who have fought vigorously for the equality of the sexes and the equity of gender are understandably disquieted by the act of sanctioning a symbol (the head scarf) which appears to contradict what they have long campaigned for. The French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter said: "If we allow women to wear headscarves in state schools, then the republic and French democracy have made clear their religious tolerance but they have given up on any equality of the sexes in our country." The former French Prime Minister, Alain Juppe, defends the French government's decision to pass the new law on the basis of the country's tradition of secularism: "We must defend secularism - the next step may be separate train compartments for men and women, beaches reserved for one sex." Secularism has a distinguished cultural biography in France and can be seen as a product of, or a reaction to, the Catholic Church. The French Revolution (1789-99) brought with it a head-on clash between church and state. Church assets were seized, property confiscated and priests were required to swear allegiance to the Republic. Both during the Revolution and the imperial aftermath, the Vatican resisted the "republican order" which the French government in Paris was trying to impose across Europe. The French government responded by marching on Rome (and the Vatican) twice, in 1798 and in 1809, to abduct recalcitrant and bothersome Popes who had worked through political means to undermine the separation between church and state. The dictator Napoleon Bonaparte reached an uneasy peace with the Catholic Church by bringing its offices under state tutelage but practising a "hands off" policy towards the church on the understanding that it confined itself to the engagement with spiritual

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matters alone. Such an arrangement, known as the Concordat, lasted a century. However, in 1905, amid renewed anti-clerical militancy, the Third Republic decreed the separation of church and state. Such a separation meant strict official neutrality in religious affairs. The French state would not allow any proselytizing in public buildings, including state schools. The insistence on schools as religion-free zones where the "citizens of tomorrow" are being taught and imbued with a recognition of their civic responsibility goes to the heart of the French conception of citizenship. The radical politics of the Republic recognized each individual as an end unto themselves rather than a functionary in God's divine plan for the universe. As such, a French citizen owes allegiance to the nation and has no officially sanctioned religious (or ethnic) identity. It is within such a cultural context that school bans must be understood. It is also important to note that such bans are nothing new. For example, in 1937, the education minister of the day instructed head teachers to keep all religious signs out of their establishments. What is new is the level of controversy generated by such a secular policy. In 1937 the state was confronted by a weak opponent (the Catholic Church) in what was already an overwhelmingly secular society. During the 1960s and 1970s, mass immigration from former French North African colonies brought with it many of the Islamic faith. Many second- or third-generation immigrants have lived in France, mostly in deprived areas. For many, militancy and the wearing of head scarves go hand in hand and are both a way of expressing righteous anger at the failures of equality and assimilation within the system and a way of forging an identity of their own. Given the immediacy of the problems raised by the "clash" between religious law and secularism presented here, problems of an almost Himalayan severity, it will be worthwhile to pause and consider the question that started this section: namely "How is liberalism to be understood?" That is to say, what is the most efficacious reading of liberalism given the pressing needs of tolerance and accommodation for all in contemporary Northern societies. I suggest below in the next (and penultimate) section that an anti-relativistic reading of liberalism is worthwhile not only because it is sustainable in the face of the Schmittian critique but also because it is best suited to the goals of tolerance, diversity and accommodation for all.

Teflon vs. Ruthless Liberalism Let us begin by positing two extremes: two extremes of liberalism. First a "Teflon Liberalism". A Teflon Liberalism is a liberalism informed by


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Relativism. It is a concatenation of all the positive claims made for relativism in this book thus far. Teflon Liberalism (henceforth TL) is informed by the notion that all knowledge and belief is culturally and historically bounded within a framework. Accordingly, morality is relative to culture and therefore cross-cultural judgements, i.e. judgements across frameworks, are always morally illegitimate. TL is a doctrine that poses as both supporting diversity and encouraging tolerance. Secondly: a "Ruthless Liberalism". Ruthless Liberalism is not informed by relativism. Ruthless Liberalism (henceforth RL) rejects the notion of the relativistic framework and holds that to analyse all of our beliefs and ideas (including this one) is the cornerstone of the humanities and of humanism and the guarantor of our freedom and our tolerance within society. TL is such that the individual who embraces it cannot entertain the possibility that a belief or a resulting practice of a religious devotee may be irrational or harmful. After all, according to the Teflon Liberalist, the religious devotee is merely practising religious freedom within their framework, whether this practice be transubstantiation, female circumcision, honour killing or the stoning of adulters. TL, informed as it is by relativism, cannot render any epistemological or ethical grounds to claims that such practices may be irrational or wrong-headed. Moreover, in terms of the religious texts, scriptures and edicts, i.e. the religious authority from which the practices of a religion flow, the interpretation that a religious devotee invokes must, for a Teflon Liberalist, be unequivocal. Therefore, for a Teflon Liberalist, a religious text must be apprehended as perfect in all of its parts. For the Teflon Liberalist, a secular, analytic or historical philosophical/scientific questioning of religious texts, scriptures and edicts belongs, simply, to a different narrative, a different discourse (in other words another "framework") and it would be illegitimate and facile to engage with it in these ways. Indeed whatever the nature of Fatwa and Jihad, two incarnations of the expression of fundamental religious conviction, to claim on behalf of their proponents that both flow from a relativistic notion of knowledge is a farce. Yet this is exactly the claim the would-be relativist must make. TL when applied to questions of religion, especially religious law, results in an inability to question a set of fundamental beliefs because they carry the nomenclature of "religious" or "sacred". Sam Harris in his book The End Of Faith (2004) recognizes the continuing fashion in political and academic circles to "bracket" certain beliefs as unassailable or sacrosanct: "A man's faith is just a subset of his beliefs about the world; beliefs about matters of ultimate concern that we . . . have told him he need not justify in the present" (2004, 67). Harris recognizes the potential danger to the health of the marketplace of ideas by what he refers to as "bracketing" and what I

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identify as a "consignment to the frames". As already mentioned, free and open exchange, but more importantly, the interrogation and investigation of ideas, is a cornerstone of humanism and therefore indispensable to a liberal humanist society. The call to recognize that the emphasis in our understanding of liberalism has been too much on the free and open exchange of ideas and not enough on our investigation and interrogation of these ideas is, in itself, inherently dangerous and suffocating to humanism. As Harris puts it: "It is time we recognized how maladaptive this Balkanization of our discourse has become" (67). The result of such "Balkanization" is to apprehend religious and cultural practices such as, for example, institutionalized misogyny and torture of women as "differences", differences alien to those outside of it, but legitimate to those within the frame. The word "difference", in this relation, is so often treated with an almost sacred character, the very mention of the word accompanied by an uncritical (nodding) approval. This notion, that the acceptance of "difference" is the natural policy of liberalism for a multicultural society (whatever the circumstance or situation) is analogous to the failure to consider that when swimming in the sea, it is also natural to be bitten by a shark. This failure, to be found in the minds and policies of so many, is a miasmal intellectual phenomenon and is the political peculiarity of the moment. It is certainly true that religious minorities have not been granted a stake in education, representation or real power (and this is something that many of the Northern countries have shamefully failed in providing). But the answer to the pressing social problems born out of this situation is not to relativize these groups and by doing so "ghettoizing" and isolating religious minorities into separate schools and separate legal systems, all of which are surrounded by a Bastille of "anti-religious hatred" laws. For to do so is to absolve the emerging younger generations from a cosmopolitan vista of civic responsibility and from entering into a wider cultural and spiritual debate. Such a relativistic social policy, fuelled by TL, perpetuates and feeds the difficulties it purports to address, i.e tolerance and diversity. As such, it is the disease masquerading as the cure. In a talk given by Salman Rushdie at the Columbia Graduate School in 1991, entitled "What is my Single Life Worth?", Rushdie mounted an extended humanist plea for "ruthless" secular liberalism in the face of the "relativism" so fashionable in informing the Teflon Liberalists of the historical moment. At the moment of presenting his talk, Rushdie had spent over a thousand days in seclusion and hiding after a death sentence was issued by the religious and political leader the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, following the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (the novel being ruled a blasphemy on the Muslim faith). In his talk, Rushdie struggles


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to understand the blinkered Western liberalist thinkers who seem unable to identify the cause of his predicament: Out there where you are, in the rich and powerful and lucky West, has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it? (Rushdie 2002, 484) Rushdie identifies the anti-intuitive and even bizarre conclusions of a relativism that informs liberalism (of the Teflon pedigree), while remaining optimistic about the moral intuitions of many non-relativistic (and nonfundamentalist) people: I know that many people do care, and are appalled by the crazy upside down logic of the post-fatwa world, in which a single novelist can be accused of having savaged or "mugged" a whole community, becoming its tormentor (instead of its tarred and feathered victim) and a scapegoat for all its discontents. Many people do ask, for example: When a whitepop-star-turned-Islamic-fanatic speaks approvingly about killing an Indian immigrant, how does the Indian immigrant end up being called the racist? (Rushdie 2002, 484) As I have attempted to suggest, a theory (relativism) that informs our conception of liberalism, and in doing so leads to attitudes or actions that have victimized, serves as an indicator that either our intuitions must be wrong (and therefore must be overhauled and revised) or the theory that runs roughshod over such intuitions is shoddy and ill conceived. I would contend that Rushdie's life experience post-1989 is, in part, a testament to the latter implication. In any vision of liberalism, whether it be "Teflon", "Ruthless" or some other species not covered here, an indispensable set of questions suggests itself in understanding that liberalism, that is to say, whether liberalism will treat pluralism as good, disagreement as virtuous, politics as rule bound, fairness as possible, opposition as necessary, and government as limited (see http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i30/30b01601.htm). As I have tried to point out, relativism cannot help to forward these questions.

Conclusion

In this book, I have illustrated that relativism is a powerful and pervasive position the influence of which is widespread and considerable. Following Siegel (1987), I have argued that modern formulations of relativism (or the paradigmatic examples of relativism) are different from the classical model in form but not in species. Accordingly, I have argued that antirelativist arguments can be re-cast and re-applied with efficacy against such modern formulations. In chapter two, I discussed the ways in which the "anti-anti-relativist" arguments appeal to a form of realism, a form of realism supposedly indispensable to critics in any attempt to refute relativism. Thus, in his book Richard Rorty, Alan Malachowski claims that critical assessments of relativism are "inextricably tied to a certain metaphysical picture, namely: realism" (2002, 5). I have denied this "inextricable" connection and have attempted to demonstrate that arguments that challenge the incoherence and inconsistency of the relativist's position can be mounted without appealing to a particular metaphysical picture, in this case realism. Therefore, this book is, in part, an extended plea for the negative mode of practising philosophy identified by P.F. Strawson, an outline of which I sketched in the Introduction. In an attempt to identify the roots of a range of contemporary relativist positions, I have argued that modern formulations of cultural relativism can be seen to have grown out of the move to communal or cultural theories of knowledge and that such communal and cultural theories can be illustrated via an examination of the mature philosophy of Wittgenstein and his philosophical legacy. To this end, I have chosen one thread of the relativistic tradition by investigating this philosophical legacy in the writings of Peter Winch and Richard Rorty in order to demonstrate how their respective readings of Wittgenstein lead to relativism. Running concurrently with my identification of the roots of relativism, I have attempted to shed light on the peculiar evergreen nature of relativism. For, if the arguments levelled by the Platonic Socrates against

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relativism were conclusive, and if the same arguments can be re-applied to obviate modern incarnations of relativism with efficacy, then why does relativism remain such an attractive position to so many? As I have argued, the answer to this question has a complex set of causes or, as I have characterized it, a complicated ecology. Relativism, in its modern form, retains its appeal when viewed against the very often stark contrast of its historical antecedents. Historically, the pernicious incarnations of colonialism and its attendant cultural imperialism have generated a philosophical empathy for a doctrine (relativism) that purportedly undercuts the possibility of one culture or society standing in judgement, or legitimately enforcing its will, over another (see Norris 1995). Moreover, on the same historical continuum, the perceived failure of the projects of positivism, including the "representational project" attacked by Rorty (chapter five), combines with the post-colonial experience to generate fresh ground for relativistic projects within the academic community and beyond. To return to the western philosophical roots, we are reminded that the ancient Greeks set great store by the relationship between the following two questions: 1) What is it to know well? and 2) What is it to live well? That is to say, for the Greeks our moral responsibilities extend to knowledge and knowledge production just as far as they extend into matters of responsibility and right action in the more familiar moral sphere (see Francks 2005). This relationship has been revived in modern writers such as Lorraine Code (1995) who have argued that to live well we must know well and that we have an "epistemic responsibility" as "knowers". However, as I have shown, relativism undercuts the traditional rational project of looking for good reasons and in doing so it occludes our responsibilities as "knowers" (epistemic agents). The notion that all ideas can and must be interrogated, a suggestion made so strongly in the secular liberal tradition by John Stuart Mill (i.e. that in the marketplace of ideas, the only currency is argument) has fallen into disrepute. As already mentioned, this has been in part due to the failure of positivist projects to provide the unalterable truth and partly due to the fact that the very notion of "truth" itself has been seen, more often than not, as no more than a "rhetorical club" with which to beat the less powerful or disadvantaged (see chapter one). The reaction to the Enlightenment is still strongly evident. To take one example at random, John Gray in his book Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions (2004) argues that science, touted as the very paragon of objectivity, is in fact just another form of faith-based inquiry. He also argues that the notion that, armed with scientific method, liberalism and democracy lead inexorably to progress is, in all but a highly curtailed sense of the word "progress", illusory. Such eschewing

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of the value of theory has enjoyed a devastating effect through academia and the political sphere. As Christopher Norris puts it: We have reached a point where theory has effectively turned against itself, generating a form of extreme scepticism [relativism] which reduces everything - philosophy, politics, criticism and "theory" alike to a dead level of suasive or rhetorical effect where consensus-values are the last (indeed the only) court of appeal. (1991, 4, my italics] In opposition to such a reduction, a central plea of this book is that 1) Relativism undercuts the notion of "truth", a notion without which we can no longer make sense of the practices of inquiry, belief and assertion; and 2) although no Utopia can be identified a priori as a necessary or determinate result of interrogating beliefs for their truth value, a society that allows such interrogation is better (and by "better" I mean more open, more tolerant and more diverse] than a society that does not allow such interrogation. For the ability to pose questions about any or all beliefs in this openended and untrammelled fashion is important for the health of a society. "Health" in this regard meaning that in a const ant re-engagement with fundamental, spiritual, ethical and aesthetic questions, human beings are free to employ the entire gamut of our creative, philosophical, technical and theological powers and that the very licence to do so bolsters tolerance and diversity. Contrariwise, in both religious fundamentalism and relativism, there is either, in the case of fundamentalism, a complete absence, indeed a moratorium, on such engagement, or, in the case of relativism, a relaxation or avoidance of such engagement. Lastly, I have argued that relativism is a perennial position by virtue of the purported advantages that its proponents believe it brings to the political and cultural landscape in matters of tolerance and understanding. I have outlined some ways in which relativism is identified as the absence of judgement of the "other". For if no absolute or objective truth (outside a culture or society) is available, then according to the relativist no sense can be made of judging or enforcing morals or principles on practices or peoples outside the cultural sphere. I have argued that this perception of relativism, being an umbrella under which tolerance and understanding will thrive, is false. In fact, contrary to several of the relativist positions examined above, relativism is philosophically moot. For I have argued that a relativism which reinforces the dominance of the cultural status quo might as readily be employed for purposes of oppression (as in the case of Carl Schmitt) as for emancipation, and might be employed as a conservative brake on progress within a culture. Moreover, as relativism serves to obfuscate important distinctions, it invokes a form of intellectual lassitude that excuses us from the disquietudes raised by the pressing problems of

Conclusion

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cultural differences and inter-cultural understanding, as well as suppressing critical challenges to the established order in society, politics, science and philosophy. The relativist, when presented with the problem of deliberation (or as I refer to it, POD), that is, when presented with competing or incompatible knowledge claims, reminds one of the science fiction plot Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the same way that in the film humans were commuted via alien "pods" to unfeeling automatons so the relativist, when faced with POD, transmogrifies the classical models of the search for knowledge and the search for truth into a form utterly lacking in the dynamism of humanism. Finally, this is not a reactionary book. It does not harken with mawkish sentimentality to the positivist dreams of "pure" or "absolute" truth. It also, by its analysis, honours pluralism and diversity - but it does so by rejecting a relativist conception of epistemology and by implication a relativist conception of liberalism (Teflon Liberalism). It achieves this in two ways: First, this book implores the reader to take cultural differences seriously and to do this by abstaining from the all too common phenomenon of reducing pressing social and political problems to self-contained and unassailable "paradigms", "frameworks", "narratives" and "discourses" (as I have identified it: "a consignment to the frames") and thereby sweeping discussions of intellectual, spiritual, moral and political difference under the convenient intellectual carpet that is relativism. Second, this book suggests that a Ruthless Liberalism is better suited to the toleration and protection of differences while at the same time guaranteeing equality and fairness. Indeed, as I have argued, relativism must be put aside if a genuine and nuanced rendering of the nature and form of cultural differences is to be fully appreciated. For only when this vital undertaking has been achieved can solutions to the problems presented by cultural differences be mapped. Relativism, as a purported "aid to deliberation", is to be seen as a call to an end of thought, an intellectual cul-de-sac, and as such, relativism as a politic is something to be avoided. Given the pressing problems of inter-cultural differences and inter-cultural understanding (problems that have grown more acute and pressing since I undertook the writing of this book), relativism offers nothing of value when touted as a solution. Rather, as I have attempted to establish, it is, in matters of deliberation, a new and pervasive form of scepticism.

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Index

absolute truth 6,32, 143 absolutism 30, 74, 100, 112, 125 Adhar, Ram 46, 47 aesthetics 6 Afshari, Reza 14, 126 agreement 117, 122, 123 anthropology 12, 77-83, 93-4, 100 anti-realism 8, 37-42, 62-4, 109 anti-representationalism 105 archaeology of knowledge 42 Aristotle 44 Atlantic Ocean argument 39 Azande 81, 82, 86-8, 90, 92, 94, 95 Badinter, Elisabeth 135 Bambrough, Renford 56, 57 Barnes, Barry 33, 96, 97 Barry, Donald K. 51 Baum, Robert 21 Beckner, Ernest 6 behaviourism 119 belief 5, 106 Berlin, Isaiah 19 Bernstein, Richard 94 Bhaskar, Roy 21 bio-ethics 6 Bloom, Allan 5 Bloor, David 33,51,76, 96, 97 Boas, Franz 79 bracketing 137 Brown, Harold 1 . 29,30,31 Buddhism 45 Carroll, Lewis 97 Catholic Church 135, 136 Catholicism 89 Chile 15

Christianity 45, 50, 86, 106 Christians 14,95 Clark, David K. 45 Classical Greece 27 classical (Protagorean) relativism 26-9, 55

Code, Lorraine 141 cognitive nihilism 13 colonialism 14, 23, 78, 79, 140, see also imperialism community 117, 123, 124 Comte, Auguste 12, 78, 81, 83 conceptual absolutism 74 Condillac, Etienne Bonnot (Abbe de) 10

consensus 116, 130 'consignment to the frames' 1 38 Copernican revolution 1 1 Coplan, Paul 7, 46 counterfactuals 122 Critique of Pure Reason

11

cultural constructions 52 cultural politics 118, 119 culture 6, 53, 77, 93, 101, 105, 1 14 culture history school 79 customs 5 Davidson, Donald 18, 113 decision-making processes 124 decolonization 79 deliberation 134, 143, 144 Derrida, Jacques 22,23 Descartes, Rene 111 Deweyjohn 102, 118 dialectical method 58 discourses 89, 123, 127, 143 doubt 68,69,70,71

154

Index

ecology 141 Edinburgh strong programme 1 20 empirical natural sciences 93 Enlightenment 6, 12, 22, 24, 77, 78, 79, 80, 131 epistemic agents 36 epistemic correctness 37 epistemic discourse 68, 69 epistemic responsibility 141 epistemological behaviourism 118 epistemological fitness 53 epistemology 51, 111, 112, 118, 119, 143 ethics 90, 131, 1 32, see also morality ethnocentrism 9 ethnomethodological approach 76 Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 81, 87, 88, 90, 91, 101

evolution 77, 78 evolutionary anthropology

Gardiner, Patrick 1 1 Geertz, Clifford 19 Gellner, Ernest 13,53 gender studies 6 genetic fallacy 8 genocide 128 geocentric theories 40 German idealism 109 ghost observers 123 god's-eye view 25, 42-4, 105,111 Goodman, Nelson 120 grammar 60,61,72-5,82,91,92, 114, 115

grammatical relativism 72~5 Gray, John 141 Grayling, A. C. 56, 58, 60, 75 Greece (Ancient) 27 Greeks (Ancient) 10, 107, 141

78, 79, 81,

100

evolutionary model 77 experimental method 71 explaining 86—9 facts 109,110,124 fairness 143 fallibilism 30 family resemblance 113,124 Fay, Brian 38, 39 female circumcision 17, 126, 137 feminism 128, 135 Feyerabend, Paul 7, 1 9, 2 1 , 80, 98, 1 20 fictitious natural history 73 Fillion, Francois 134 first philosophy 102 Fish, Stanley 126, 128 Flax, Jane 23,24,43,63 form of life 56,95, 101 Foucault, Michel 41,42 foundationalism 30,113 framework relativism 35—7 frameworks 32, 35-7, 120, 143 Frankfurt, Harry G. 9 Frazer, James 8 1 , 82, 83, 84, 85, 90, 1 00 Freeman, Michael 128 Fukuyama, Francis 9 functionalists 79 fundamentalism 142

Haack, Susan 103 Hacker, P. M. S. 50, 58, 60 Haller, Rudolf 53, 75 Harre, Rom 72,73, 114 Harris, James F. 29, 49, 54, 77, 79, 94-6, 101

Harris, Sam 137 Harrison, Geoffrey 9, 80, 99, 100, 126 Harvest Festival 86, 95 head scarf controversy 134—5 healthcare 14 Heidegger, Martin 102 heliocentric theories 40 Herbert, Christopher 16, 18 Herder, Johann Gottfried 11,12 hermeneutic discourse 1 17, 1 18, 123, 127 Herskovits, Melville 9, 10, 80, 82 Himley, Stephen 50 Kitchens, Christopher 134 Hobbes, Thomas 77 honor killing 137 humanism 138 human sacrifice 15 ideal state 12,23 idealism 109 identification, problem of 1 7~22 imperialism 7, 9, 14, 23, 81, 141, see also colonialism

155

Index incoherence 1 8, 28-34, 43, 49, 122-5 incommensurability 53, 54 individualism 46 industrial colonization 79 intellectual anarchism 21 inter-cultural understanding 143 internalism 21 Iran 14 Islam 134 Jarvie, I.C. 13 Jordan, James 31 Juppe, Alain 135 justification 29, 30, 97, 1 1 1, 1 16, 121, 125 Kant, Immanuel 11,109 Karam 96 Kenny, Anthony 66 Khomeini, Seyyed Ruhollah (Grand Ayatollah) 138 King of the Wood 82, 83, 84 Kirk, Robert 8, 43, 44, 5 1 , 52, 62, 64 knowledge archaeology of 42 community-based accounts 129 as fallible 30 and frameworks 120 nature of 52 Rortyon 102, 108, 111, 115, 116 Schmitton 132 subjectivity of 10 theory of 1 9 Krausz, Michael 17-18, 35, 72, 73, 80, 100, 114 Kuhn, T. S. 19, 20, 21, 22, 33, 41, 54,

liberal ironism 105, 128 liberalism 13, 125, 126, 130, 133, 136-9, 143 Libertins Erudits

11

linguistic communities 116,117 linguistic relativism 52 linguistic turn 102-7 Locke, John 10,77 logic 44-7,71,87,89,94 Logical Positivists 1 1 1 Lovibond, Sabina 128 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 23 Macklin, Ruth 14 magic 84, 88, 89 Malachowski, Alan 140 Malinowski, Bronislaw 79 Mannheim, Karl 120 Margolis, Joseph 120 meaning 130 Medina, Jose 64 Meilandjack 31,35,80, 100 meta-doubt 68, 70, 71 metaphysics 103, 106, 107, 1 10, 1 14, 118, 119 ofpresence 23 methodology 88,94, 110 Mill, John Stuart 141 modern relativism 32~4 modern thinking 22 Moore, G. E. 65, 66, 67, 68, 72 Moore-type propositions 72, 73, 76 morality 5, 7, 12, 17, 101, 124, 132, 137, see also ethics

moral relativism

12

120

Lacan, Jacques 23 language 5, 49, 56-66, 72-5, 87-8, 91-2, 96-7, 101, 103-4, 109-16, 130 games 49-55, 62-6, 75, 87, 91, 96, 101, 109, 112, 115 Laudan, Larry 21 law of excluded middle 45, 46 law of non-contradiction 46, 95, 97, 98 Lerner, Berel Dov 81 Levy-Bruhl, Lucien 9

Nagel, Thomas 13 Napoleon Bonaparte 135 narratives 143 naturalism 130 naturalistic fallacy 127 Nemi 82, 83, 84, 86 neo-pragmatism 126 nihilism 13, 111, 120 Nola, Robert 6 normal discourse 117,123,127 normative evaluations 1 1 6

156

Index

Norris, Christopher 5, 29, 41 , 42, 52, 53, 61,63,87,88,91, 112, 126, 127, 142 Nowell-Smith, P. H. 16 O'Grady, Paul 7 O'Grady, Stephen 131 O'krent, Mark 25 On Certainty 64, 65, 66, 68, 72, 76 oracular system 95 Ordinary Language school 61 pain behaviour 68 paradigm-governed position 21 paradigms 19,20,21,22,54, 119, 120, 143

Pascal, Blaise 10 Patterson, Orlando perspectivism 38 Phillips, D. L. 51

1 3, 99

Philosophical Investigations

57, 65, 68

Protagoras 16, 19, 27, 27, 31, 33, 34, 63 Protagorean relativism, see classical relativism 26 Putnam, Hilary 18, 47, 122, 123, 124, 127

Quine, W. V. O. 19, 36, 106, 120 Quinton, Anthony 53, 56, 75 race relations 99 rationality 88, 94, 96, 97, 1 1 6 realism 8,9,44,62, 107, 108, 113, 115, 118, 140 reason 94 relativistic qualifier 31 religious fundamentalists 17,106 religious symbolism 135 representationalism 107—13 representational project 140 ritual 83-90, 92, 94, 98 Rorty, Richard 1 8, 24, 26, 48-9, 5 1 , 64, 73,99, 102-43 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 77 Rushdie, Salman 138-9 Russell, Bertrand 60-1 ruthless liberalism 136-9

philosophy ethnomethodological approach 76 and history 103 lack of progress in 58, 105, 130 as a language game 62, 63 Rortyon 111,129 of science 51 task of 59 sacrifice 15 Western 1 1 1 scepticism 10,46,49-72, 111, 120, 143 Wittgenstein's approach to 55—62, 73 Schmitt, Carl 130-4, 142 physical sciences 130 science 20, 59,71, 78, 84, 85, 87-9, 1 30 Plato 10,27,44 scientific methodology 88 Searle, John 8, 25, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 109 Platonists 1 1 1 plurality of values 19 self-referential argument 19, 54 politics 6, 1 5, 26, 1 0 1 , 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 1 29-32, self-refutation 29, 31-3, 46, 49, 1 15 Sellars, Wilfrid 106 142 Popper, Sir Karl 16, 19,35 Siegel, Harvey 15, 27, 33, 49, 140 positivism 130, 140, 142 Sim, Stuart 21 social anthropology 83 post-colonial movement 16 postmodernism 1 6, 22~5, 43, 1 1 5, 1 1 9, social practices 1 1 1 social science 1 6, 49, 5 1 , 78, 93, 94 132, 133 solipsism 123 pragmatism 49,64, 102, 106, 107, 117, Strawson, P. F. 58,60, 140 118, 128 primitivism 78 Stroll, Avrum 60, 72 problem of definition 17-18 strong-programme relativism 96 problem of deliberation 142 structuralism 42 problem of identification 17—22 styles of reasoning 32 subjectivism 46 progressivism 109

157

Index Sumner, William Graham systemization 89-93

6

Teflon liberalism 133, 136-9, 143 theory of ethics 19 theory of knowledge 19 theory of language 56 Thompson, Simon 121,128,129 tolerance 13, 14, 17, 26, 80, 98-100, 125, 130-4, 137 Trinity, doctrine of 89 truth absolute 6, 32, 143 as consensus 28 as effect of discourse 24 located in propositions 42, 109 relativistic interpretation 123 Rortyon 116,121 social character of 112 undercut by relativism 142-3 ultra-relativism 52 understanding 90 universalism 24 use-mention fallacy 39

vocabularies 104 Voltaire, Francois-Marie

77

Wainright, William J. 7 Watts, Alan 45 Weinert, Friedel 6, 35-7 Western logic 44—7 Wilson, Bryan R. 9 Winch, Peter 7, 1 8, 26, 33, 48-5 1 , 73, 76-101, 120, 130, 140 Wittgenstein, Ludwig approach to philosophy 73-5 influence on Rorty 18,1 02-4, 1 1 0, 112-15, 120-1 influence on Winch 18,81-90,101 on metaphysics 1 1 0 and relativism 26 and scepticism 46, 49-76 xenophobia yakt

96, 97

126

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