Relativism, Power and Philosophy

Abstract

It was Anthony Collins, the friend of John Locke, who remarked that, had it not been for the Boyle Lecturers' annual demonstrations of the existence of God, few people would ever have doubted it.1 It may have been a similar spirit of argumentative contrariness that led me to begin to appreciate fully both the strength and the importance of the case to be made out in favor of at least one version of relativism only after reading some recent philosophical root and branch dismissals of relativism as such.2 But of course I ought not to have been such a late-comer to that appreciation. For relativism, like scepticism, is one of those doctrines that have by now been refuted a number of times too often. Nothing is perhaps a surer sign that a doctrine embodies some not to be neglected truth than that in the course of the history of philosophy it should have been refuted again and again. Genuinely refutable doctrines only need to be refuted once. Philosophical doctrines that are not susceptible of genuine refutation fall into at least two classes. There are some to which, in the light of the rational justification that can be provided for them, we owe simple assent. But there are others to which our assent is or ought to be accorded only with a recognition that what they present is a moment in the development of thought which has to be, if possible, transcended; and this even although we may as yet lack adequate grounds for believing ourselves able to transcend them. Scepticism is one such doctrine; and relativism is another. But no doctrine can be genuinely transcended until we understand what is to be said in its favor. And a first step towards understanding this in the case of relativism must be to show that the purported refutations have largely missed its point and so been misdirected.