From Modern to Postmodern Epistemology? The ‘Relativist Turn’

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the impact of postmodern thought on contemporary debates in epistemology. As shall be illustrated in the following sections, present-day conceptions of knowledge have been profoundly influenced by what may be described as the relativist turn1 in epistemology. From a relativist perspective, the validity of all knowledge claims is contingent upon the spatiotemporal specificity of the sociohistorical context in which they are raised. On this view, epistemic validity is — always and unavoidably — context-dependent. Given that it obliges us to question both the representational adequacy and the explanatory capacity of all cognitive claims to epistemic validity, the relativist position can be considered as an attack on the Enlightenment belief in the civilizational mission of reason, understood as a universal force shaping the development of human history. Epistemological relativism, then, constitutes an assault on the anthropological optimism underlying modern intellectual thought. As such, its advocates are wary of the — implicit or explicit — trust in the assertive, normative, and expressive capacities of the ‘rational subject’,2 which features centrally in the project of the Enlightenment. This chapter aims to demonstrate that the presuppositional differences between modern and postmodern conceptions of knowledge are based on three fundamental tensions: (i) truth versus perspective, (ii) certainty versus uncertainty, and (iii) universality versus particularity.