Abstract

Relativism is a conception with such wide and subtle ramifications in contemporary thought that it is easy to forget that its emergence as a pervasive influence is of comparatively recent origin. Appeals to historical and cultural diversity have become commonplace in the discussion of both theoretical and practical issues, and we have grown accustomed to the suggestion that it is mistaken to assume the existence of standards which can be treated as universally valid for all times and in all places. Such considerations are admittedly often held to apply most clearly to the spheres of ethics and aesthetics, where fundamental disparities of judgement and appraisal tend notoriously to arise. Nevertheless, the claim that each of us is necessarily confined to a particular perspective which determines his own outlook and system of beliefs, but which may radically diverge from the perspectives of men situated in different social or cultural environments, is sometimes taken to have more far-reaching implications. Thus it has been pointed out that, even within areas of paradigmatically factual or “objective” types of enquiry, what counts as rational or acceptable for the members of one society or group need not so count for those belonging to another, that the patterns of reasoning followed and the criteria of justification employed are capable of exhibiting significant variations; and here, once again, the conclusion may be drawn that alternative structures of thought can perhaps be compared and contrasted but that they should not be treated as if they were subject to arbitration by some allegedly absolute or immutable yardstick. Ideas of this kind may give rise to uneasiness or dissatisfaction, being felt to go against the grain of much of our ordinary unreflective thinking, while at a more sophisticated level they may be criticised or condemned on the grounds of being ultimately confused or incoherent. Yet they are at least familiar, and they have received support, not only from theses advanced by certain contemporary philosophers, but also from doctrines put forward from time to time by modern historians, social anthropologists and writers on natural science.