Extreme Relativism Research Articles

Beyond modernism and postmodernism: A new philosophy for a new world

Having defined Modernism and postmodernism, I then describe in what sense both paradigms have failed. The article discusses the possibility of a new approach that circumvents such drawbacks and a kind of “third position” that build on the innovations that modernism initiated while suggesting an alternative mode of discourse that overcomes its potential extreme rationalism or extreme relativism.

Role of Academies in the 21st Century: Knowledge in the Age of Relativism

The present paper presents a brief overview of the development of academies and how their role has evolved during the centuries. At the core of the mission of academies one can find the concept of “knowledge” and its “diffusion”. A brief discussion about the importance of knowledge in the age of data and information is provided so as to explain the pivotal function of Academies vis a vis universities, the media, and governments. A final section discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by academies in an age characterized by extreme relativism and virulent populism.

Knowledge, education and social change: Exploring efforts to move beyond objectivism and relativism.

Learning to address the unprecedented, and increasingly existential, challenges confronting humanity requires the development of increased levels of intersubjective agreement about goals, normative principles and values, as well as effort to apply normative ideals to the needs of society. Yet deliberations about such questions have often been hamstrung by tendencies towards either extreme relativism, on the one hand, or rigid orthodoxy, on the other. Drawing on the work of Bernstein (1983), Seung (1993) and others, this article explores efforts to move beyond the traditional dichotomy between objectivism and relativism in processes concerned with the generation and application of knowledge for the purpose of contributing to constructive social change. To gain insight into how such an approach might find expression in an educational setting, the preliminary results of a case study of the approach to ‘moral empowerment’ taken by a Baha’i inspired school in Macau are discussed.

On the path towards "New Enlightenment": representations on the post-secular in modern scientific discourse

The subject of this research is the interpretation of the phenomenon of post-secularism in modern scientific discourse (the late XX – early XXI centuries). The object of this research is post-secularism as a phenomenon of modernity. Research methodology leans on the comparative and descriptive analysis. J. Habermas, introducing the concept of post-secular, noted that the process of secularization in the West is not only dialectical, but also incomplete; and secularization itself has strayed from the "right path" of its development. This launched the discussion on the post-secular. The interpretation of the post-secular can still be polar or mutually exclusive, requiring certain systematization of views, which is presented in this article. The conclusion is made that modern scientific discourse contains different interpretations of the post-secular. The first implies rejection of the secular, accompanied by revival of the religious, infiltration of religion into the sphere of active social relations, realization of the erroneousness of secularization and correction of these errors; in this sense, the concept of desecularization is rather appropriate. The second interpretation of post-secularism is counter-secularization: the process of desecularization intensified by revanchist sentiments of the reviving religiosity. Such post-secularism, focuses non on the correction of errors, but full dismantling of everything secular, which entails natural tension on all levels. Counter-secularization is not focused on dialogue and is potentially dangerous for its fundamentalist continuation. The third interpretation views post-secularism as the natural, self-generated continuation and/or development of secularism; the so-called “New Enlightenment”, which due to its unreligious religiosity and extreme relativism devalues the reviving sacred, originating either its transformation from the traditional religiosity to somewhat ecumenical, or the emergence of something new, in essence, pseudo-transcendent, which would be the final victory of the secular. Actualization of the possibility of choice and the choice itself between transcendence and pseudo-transcendence is the essence of the phenomenon of post-secularism.

CAN THE REQUIREMENTS OF SHARIAH LAW REGARDING CRIMINAL PUNISHMENTS BE INTERPRETED IN A WAY THAT IS COMPATIBLE WITH THE ICCPR AND CAT?

Criminal law deals with the protection of public interests and values deemed to be crucial for a particular society. In Islam, these values are ascribed to the divine commands. Thus, there will be calls from some Muslims for the implementation of Islamic criminal law by the state for they believe that this is required by Islam. Can therefore the death penalty or corporal punishments required by the Shariah law be imposed by a state while they are in conflict with the state’s obligation to comply with international human rights instruments? This paper will analyze this uneasy situation faced by some Muslim countries implementing Islamic criminal law but party to the ICCPR and CAT. It aims at verifying that an extreme universalism or cultural relativism approach regarding the validity of international human rights norms on this matter is insufficient. This is because Islamic doctrines strongly influence Muslims on this matter and failure to seriously engage them will lead to rejection of international human rights instruments which are important for protecting individual rights. This paper argues that an approach that is able to reconcile the requirements of Shariah law regarding criminal punishments and those of international human rights norms is necessary.

13 City, State, and Market: Lessons from Mesoamerica

ABSTRACTIn evaluating the contributions to this issue, this chapter questions the predictable co‐occurrence of cities with markets and states, a long‐held position in western social theory. However, an extreme relativism is also flawed, and the projection of anti‐capitalist fantasies on past, other peoples have equally distorted interpretations of the archaeological record and blinded researchers to the reality of market economies in societies including the Maya. Ultimately, the power of the comparative method entails more than the identification of commonalities between different market traditions. It can also serve to illuminate how market economics were embedded in distinct cultural, ideological, and material worlds. Calculating self‐interest, supply‐and‐demand, and impersonal exchange do not operate according to a single behavioral logic but are shaped by ideologies of identity and desire specific to distinct regimes of value. Therefore, attention to the cultural and spatial context of economic transactions—in the original spirit of Polanyi—remains indispensable to interpreting how markets may have shaped historically particular constructions of personhood, community, inequality, place, and the ontological status of commodities. In the end, I argue that archaeologists also need to investigate the political affordances of markets as specific urban places and not simply as epiphenomena to a priori political or economic institutions.

Reflexiones frente a una sociedad psicológicamente desorientada

Then, we compile a set of essays where we reflect critically, some of the most troubling subjects of our postmodern, technocratic, liquid, hyper-consumerist and chronic distresssocieties. Theuncertainty, permanent dissatisfaction, detachment, individualism and extreme relativism are some of the concepts portrayed in this work. It is clear an unfavourablediagnosis of our societyin individual and interpersonal psychological matters and recognizing realistically that we live more than uncertain times (covid-19 pandemic included). We ended this article by aimingfor individual and socio-family change to try to rise from this time of uncertainties and social roughness. Moreover, we consider that we must identify and know the social to better understandthe individual self of each human being. It is not enough to appeal to a personal change when the social machinery produces evils as we will see below. It hurts to say it but this current societydoes not promote health and that must be pointed out and denounced. We hope, we wish it wholeheartedly, humanist utopia can be realized slowly.

분류하고 저장하고 기억하기 : 프랑스혁명과 아카이브

Since the days of historical positivism that had allegedly regarded the archives as the storehouse of neutral facts had passed, the “linguistic turn” of the 1960-70s has given rise to the view that the “guardians of records” have in fact exerted huge influence on the process of the formation of issues and borders in historiography. Even as the archives have been established as a crucial part in the standardized pattern of the production of history, viz. record-memory-past-narrative, sources are at the same time being regarded less as an objective guide than as a prism that distorts the course of projection of historical “things” onto the present. However, if one insists on the subjectivity of the archives alone, it becomes impossible to escape from the Möbius loop of extreme relativism, skepticism, and infinity of interpretations. This article, taking “inventory” as the keyword, attempts a foray into this predicament. From the birth of the National Archives of France to the French revolutionaries’ discussion on the classification system of artifacts and specimen for national museums, this article studies exemplary cases of the archival experiments of the 1790s, in which we find that numerous endeavors were made to classify and conserve the heritage of the past as the property of the “nation,” alongside the infamous vandalism that appeared as a means of “forgetting” the Old Regime.

Realism, values and critique

ABSTRACTThis is a lightly edited transcript of a plenary talk given at the Beyond Positivism conference, Montreal, August 8–10 2017. The talk followed others by Christopher Winship and Frédéric Vandenberghe, which are mentioned in the text. The paper argues that critical social science needs an ontology of values, and that a coherent ontology must recognize that values are created by human beings in social settings, rather than being objectively true. Recognizing this, however, need not expose us to the moral nihilism of extreme relativism. Drawing on the work of Habermas and the capabilities approach, I argue that we can reason about what sorts of basic values we should be committed to, without invoking the concept of objective values. This provides us with material that we can build on to construct more complex constructive critical arguments.

Tragedia e delirio a Montevideo: il teatro di Copi

In his comic plays, French-Argentine playwright Copi (1939-1987) faces tragedy. References and forms from tragedy are plunged in humor and camp, within a framework characterized by the most extreme relativism – life and death coincide and every character (often transgender character) affirms and denies his/her identity. Copi's “heroes” show a lack of will, that leads their titanic efforts to become losers and they break into stalemate or ridiculous results. His plays are “circus” and “tragedy”, as protagonist of Cachafaz (1981) says. In Cachafaz, defined by the author “barbarian tragedy”, the tradition of Argentine gauchesco combines with a bloody and supernatural concept of tragedy, recalling Macbeth and The Bacchae. The language of the humorous and camp comedy is the basis for the reconstruction of a new tragic language, and the whole theatrical corpus of Copi doesn’t appear as parody or desecration, but as a “reactivation” of tragedy in the century of its “death” (Steiner).

Case method strategies for teaching sexual ethics to relativists and skeptics

AbstractMany undergraduates are culturally shaped to avoid making ethical judgments. They spontaneously adopt relativist and skeptical strategies such as “It all depends,” or “Whose morality?” or “Who's to say?” as ways of fending off the challenge of making moral decisions. The current tsunami that is washing away traditional sexual norms is both a result and a cause of this cultural shift. Case studies can mitigate this decline and help students to grow in both confidence and ability to make good ethical judgments. The case method, used with a Socratic pedagogy, engages imagination and counters the deficits in empathy found in many contemporary students. It moves students toward understanding morality itself. Against skepticism, it assists students in exercising practical reason, culminating in decision. Five cases invite students to overcome extreme relativism, to look for and evaluate relevant differences, and to enter into ethical discussion with other students on the sexual issues they face in their college years.

Pueblos distantes, derechos universales y voces silenciadas en torno a un documental sobre los wichí

This investigation is based on the analysis of the documentary titled Wichi: Distant Communities and the consequently debate opened in Argentina, confronting arguments that defend alleged ancestral practices as opposed to national laws. Three main topics are discussed. The first one is the idea that all actions are justified as long as they respond to «ancestral cultural practices», which is closely related to the extreme cultural relativism. Also, «authorized voices» are examined in those cases where native communities are involved, and who have been historically silenced. Finally, it is questioned the possibility that human rights may represent a limitation for cultural practices, in case any of the most vulnerable members of the groups is forced.

A critical review of Durkheim's reductionist view of religion

Durkheim concept of religion is established on his basic sociological ideas, but also on the division of all phenomena in human society into the sacred and the profane one. He believes that religion arises in society and that it should be seen only as a social phenomenon. Thereby, he rejects any possibility that religion may have anything metaphysical. He represents religion as a kind of symbolic representation of society itself. He says that society is the objective reality of what monotheistic religions call God, and ancient religions Mana. Yet, religion as a set of different symbols completely loses touch with reality. A religion that has no ontological and cognitive foothold easily opens the way to extreme relativism that struggles unsuccessfully with many contradictions. On the other hand, the relationship between religiosity and sociability is not always straightforward, so it is impossible to claim that no aspect of religion surpasses the human society. Thus, Durkheim's ideas about the starting point of religion not only exclude individual aspects of human existence, but ignore the spiritual and metaphysical dimensions of the entire existence as well. Moreover, we can criticize his view of religion by challenging his division of all phenomena in human society into the sacred and the profane. He points out that sacred phenomena are religious, and then social. However, not everything that is sacred is religious, and not everything religious is sacred. In many religions, such a division is not accepted. Furthermore, we should not forget that representation of religion as a social institution that deals only with sacred phenomena eventually leads to complete secularization of society.

The Changing Nature of Nature: Environmental Politics in the Anthropocene

Environmentalists engage many causes. They work on behalf human rights, poverty alleviation, and democracy as well as endangered species, a stable climate, and clean air, water, and soil. Amidst these diverse efforts, environmentalists maintain a fundamental commitment to nature. They see their job, to one degree or another, as standing up for the conservation, preservation, and sustainability of the nonhuman world. This dimension of environmentalism finds its roots in the West, especially Britain and the United States, 1 but has since become part of almost every social expression of environmental concern. Today, even the most human-centered environmental organizations—those focused on, for example, environmental justice, sustainable development, and industrial ecology— concentrate on nature insofar as they see a healthy natural world as a prerequisite for human well-being or a medium through which injustices are perpetrated. Indeed, since environmentalism’s beginnings in the nineteenth century, when people began worrying about industrialization despoiling rural and wild landscapes, to contemporary efforts to address climate change, freshwater scarcity, and loss of biological diversity, a central strand of environmentalism has prized the natural world and worked to protect it. The point of departure for this article is that the assumption behind the movement’s defense of nature is no longer valid and that continuing to subscribe to it compromises the promise of global environmentalism. The effort to defend or otherwise protect nature from humans assumes a distinction between the two. It supposes a domain that is essentially “human” and another that is fundamentally “nature.” Over the past few decades, ecological events and human understandings have proven this supposition erroneous. Today, humans draw so many resources from deep within and across the earth, and emit such incalculable amounts of waste into the air, water, and soil that, as McKibben famously

Commentary: The Future of Socially Engaged Anthropology: A Student Perspective

AbstractMany anthropologists have begun to shy away from disengaged textual analysis and extreme relativism, which were common in the discipline's earlier years. Instead, many have turned increasingly to issues of social justice and activism. These anthropologists must walk a fine line, respecting the agency of their interlocutors while remaining an assisting force in their struggles. In this article, I examine what socially engaged anthropology looks like to an undergraduate anthropology student. I comparatively examine the subfields of applied and public anthropology and consider the implications of such socially engaged scholarship for the broader discipline of anthropology. I also consider the relevance of these subfields to the newest generation of engaged anthropologists. In particular, I discuss public anthropology's power to allow anthropologists to advocate for, while not drowning out the voices of, their interlocutors. In my own work, I have struggled to reconcile not just my own privileged position with the position of my interlocutors, but also my hesitance to impose my own viewpoints on them with my desire to perform effective social activism. I ultimately find that the most effective way to perform useful solidarity work as a student anthropologist is to negotiate solutions by directly confronting any differences of privilege that may exist between researcher and interlocutor.

LIBERALISMO CLÁSICO Y NEOLIBERALISMO. LA ENCRUCIJADA DE MARTÍN DIEGO FARRELL

Este trabajo se centra en la crítica que Martín Diego Farrell, un ilustre filósofo del derecho argentino, dirige al utilitarismo y a su argumento fundamental, la restricción de la libertad en aras de una mayor utilidad. Es una crítica al utilitarismo sobre la que considero que es necesario reflexionar, pues constituye el punto de partida del abandono del utilitarismo por parte de muchos pensadores liberales actuales. Y es también, en mi opinión, el inicio de un peligroso camino hacia un relativismo extremo. He escogido a Martín Diego Farrell como paradigma para plantear algunos problemas actuales de los liberalismos. La autora considera que la filosofía de éste filósofo y jurista argentino es un síntoma claro de la evolución que se produjo dentro del liberalismo, sobre todo desde principios del siglo XX, hacia dos caminos diferenciados, e incluso opuestos, que será necesario subrayar y esclarecer. Desde este análisis podremos comprobar que, cuando hablamos de ciertos neoliberalismos, estamos hablando en realidad de teorías que dejan a un lado las auténticas raíces del liberalismo.

Film, Politics and Epistemology

Film, Politics and Epistemology Pentti Määttänen (bio) Michael J. Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. US$34.95 (paper), 180 pp. ISBN 978-0-414-77636-3 As the world changes so also do wars and conflicts. At earlier times, states tried to procure territories from other states and nations; generals could draw new lines on their maps according to the success or failures of their troops. This old geopolitical frame still dominates current thinking, even though contemporary enmities tend to be between states and networks. The new network structure of conflicts makes it difficult to follow what is going on and where. People no more identify themselves simply as members of a nation-state. Identification is based on various cultural, ideological, religious, ethnic and political factors. Members of a network may reside anywhere. This implies that they have to be searched everywhere. The fight against the enemy spreads all over the world. The space of war is distributed in a complicated way. The frontiers may be visible or invisible. Prisoners of war may be visible or invisible. There are “no-places” like Guantanamo and secret prisons of CIA, which form “a global patchwork of gulags”, as Michael J. Shapiro writes. For Shapiro, critical films prove useful and efficient in investigating and analyzing this new violent cartography. Examining films such as The Searchers, The Deer Hunter, Hiroshima Mon Amour and The Fog of War, and drawing parallels to novels of Milan Kundera and others, he shows how montage and juxtapositions conceptualize the scene of war and terror, which is so complex and heterogeneous that it cannot comprehended from a single standpoint or perspective. Even though (quoting Fredric Jameson) “We cannot grasp the truth about our world as totality,” critical cinema gives tools for navigating in this world of various conflicts and contradictions, antagonist viewpoints and opposing interests, tools for telling the difference between relative truths and plain lies. Cinema allows the disorganized multiplicity that is the world to emerge. Shapiro positions his project in relation to a number of historical intellectual trajectories (the scientific, the Humean, and the Kantian), each of which both allows for a new kind of politics and delegitimates others. The first, and most overt, is the way in which he sees concrete experience of the world as opposed to science, especially the positivism of social science. Shapiro quotes Friedrich Kracauer as stating that science’s objects are stripped of the qualities which give them “all their poignancy and preciousness.” This is somewhat surprising. In what way does science strip these qualities? Shapiro’s endnote reveals the context: Kracauer is quoting John Dewey, but the source is not mentioned (and Dewey’s name does not appear in Shapiro’s index). Kracauer likely refers to The Quest for Certainty where Dewey criticizes a certain philosophy of science, namely a strong version of scientific realism where the manifest image (concrete everyday objects) is displaced by the scientific image, the theoretical objects of natural science which constitute the real world. Dewey criticizes this view and points out that in actual practice science does not ignore concrete everyday objects, and I think this is a sound standpoint also in this context. Science (properly understood) and cinematic epistemology are not as different as Shapiro supposes. Shapiro and his major conceptual resources, Deleuze, Kracauer and Rancière, all contend that there is no “center of anchorage and of horizon,” that cinema provides “a critique of the sovereign subject,” and that “the world has many middle points.” Dewey’s analysis of natural science leads to similar conclusions. He criticizes classical correspondence theory of truth according to which it is possible to reach eternal and immutable truths about the real object of knowledge. Instead, truth is always relative to a viewpoint determined by concrete live bodies and material instruments of science. This does not amount to extreme relativism because the viewpoint(s) determined by bodies and (other) instruments is objective, bodies and instruments being real material objects. Foucaultian objective power relations are analogous, in that they too are constitutive of truth. It is possible to use abstract principles, rules and calculations as a “truth weapon”, as a conception that can...

Conserving (not preserving) culture: Avoiding the damage to culture of veiled moralism in HIV education

Language mechanisms in much HIV discourse insist that a Western-based moralism dominates. These mechanisms include: the use of strategic absences of information about the moral grounding of texts; and slippages of meaning, where one word is used to refer to many meanings. A common slippage of meaning is the use of the word ‘polygamy’ to refer to a range of behaviours, thus hiding low HIV risk sexual practices (polyfidelity) under the same umbrella as high risk practices (promiscuity) and advocating their general removal. Another dubious method of achieving a moral position is to take a true premise and use it to advance a false conclusion. For example, the true premise that wife inheritance in its historical form is an HIV risk does not automatically lead to the conclusion that wife inheritance ‘must’ be eradicated. This is only one possible conclusion. Another, more culturally sensitive, conclusion could be that wife inheritance should be embarked upon, as should all sexual relationships, in a context of HIV tests, and safer sexual practice. I argue that moralism (such as ‘wife inheritance is morally wrong’) cloaked as science (the claim that science ‘proves’ the moral position that wife inheritance is wrong) is a threat to traditional culture and discriminates against up-holders of traditional lifestyles. Drawing primarily from my experience of HIV education in a development setting in Southern Africa, I offer a weak (realist) moral relativism as an alternative to, on the one hand, the positivist-based, absolutist morality which threatens to destroy traditional cultures in the name of HIV education and, on the other hand, extreme cultural relativism in which ‘anything goes’. Possibly, HIV educators have not done enough to include some traditional safer sex practices in their professional inventory of acceptable behaviours, such as hlobonga (thigh sex) and polygamy interpreted as polyfidelity. My hope is that by being more respectful of traditional culture, whilst encouraging cultural change where necessary, HIV education will register greater success in achieving safer sexual practice. This article will be particularly useful for writers and researchers tasked with achieving behavioural change and/or tasked with writing educational materials on HIV in the Southern African context.

Performative contradiction and the regrounding for philosophical paradigms

As a unique method of philosophical argument, performative contradiction attracted general attention after the change in direction of pragmatics in the twentieth century. Hintikka used this method to conduct an in-depth analysis of Descartes’ proposition “I think, therefore I am,” providing a proof which is a model in the philosophical history; Apel absorbed performative contradiction into his own framework of a priori pragmatics; and Habermas introduced it into the theory of formal pragmatics and rendered it an effective weapon of debate. Wittgenstein, who had fallen into the trap of performative contradiction in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, later managed to extract himself from it and indeed used the methodology of performative contradiction to cure the ills of philosophy, making it a general philosophical method. Through analysis of its connotations and classic examples of its use we can see that it is crucial in refuting extreme relativism and skepticism, and hence provides methodological support for a new foundation for philosophical paradigms.

Between Arrogance and a Dead-End

The interpretive turn in the human sciences has profoundly influenced interpersonal, postmodern, and now relational psychoanalysis. Although it has transformed psychotherapy theory in many ways, some important philosophical difficulties have also followed in its wake. In this paper I examine two founders of the interpretive turn, the hermeneuticist Martin Heidegger and the postmodernist Michel Foucault. Practitioners of both theories feature an understanding of human being that is historical or cultural, and yet, admirably, attempt to avoid historical determinism. Some hermeneuticists do so by emphasizing how historical traditions intersect and then affect one another; some postmodernists do so by emphasizing the experiential and heuristic importance of the sociopolitical periphery. I examine these two strategies and their implications for psychotherapy by critiquing Heidegger's involvement in National Socialism and Foucault's limited vision of the moral: Heidegger's monocultural arrogance and Foucault's extreme relativism. I argue that both positions are deficient, and suggest that Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic concept of dialogue (enhanced with some of Antonio Gramsci's socialism) can remedy both flaws and point the way toward more helpful psychotherapeutic applications of the interpretive turn.