Abstract
What motivates relativism? After all, there are seemingly easier ways to account for the fact that the practices and beliefs of other peoples differ, sometimes dramatically, from our own. According to absolutism, such peoples may be simply wrong. Evolutionism, in a somewhat similar vein, suggests that their understanding may be less developed than our own. Universalism, on the other hand, holds that our practices and beliefs may not be, in fact, as different as they first seem. I argue that what at once complicates these other accounts of cultural difference and motivates relativism is the experience of deep engagement with a very different way of life. I analyze five features of this experience, using examples from the work of anthropologists such as E.E. Evans-Pritchard and Bronislaw Malinowski, and from my own experience living with the Chachi of Northwestern Ecuador: (1) the coherence we find in another way of life (attributive symmetry); (2) the inconsistencies we come to recognize in our own way of life (reflexive symmetry); (3) the jagged lines across which we trace our differences (complexity of conflict); (4) the key elements we discover in another way of life that lack a ready equivalent in our own (dangling pieces); and (5) the growth we experience that brings the facts of cultural diversity to light (first person).
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Notes
- 1.
“And what kind of relativism do you mean?” I can already hear my most eager readers asking. After all, we can put any number of modifiers before the word “relativism”: “moral,” “cognitive,” “linguistic,” “cultural,” etc. My brief description of relativism in the opening paragraph takes our blatantly normative claims (“is good,” “is right”), as well as our descriptive (yet, I will argue, subtly and importantly normative) claims (“is true,” “is real”) to be relative to a way of life. This is a very broad definition that nearly encompasses all of the narrower branches of relativism. If we were forced to choose one of the pre-existing labels, “cultural relativism” would probably fit best. However, there are important differences between a culture and a way of life. There are also certain controversies surrounding the concept of “culture” which need not get in our way here. Let us say cautiously, then, that a culture is an important example of a way of life, and that cultural relativism is an important case of the kind of relativism that I have in mind.
- 2.
This is, in fact, a common anti-relativist argument. See, for example, John W. Cook, Morality and Cultural Differences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 204.
- 3.
Some have argued that absolutism/relativism is a false dichotomy and that the relativist cannot argue for her position by arguing against absolutism. As far as I can tell, the point of dissolving this dichotomy is to offer pragmatism as a third, middle-of-the-road solution. Whether pragmatism stands on its own or is forced to join camp with either absolutism or relativism depends on how narrowly we construe the alternatives. In the discussion below, I treat pragmatism as a variation of absolutism because, despite its emphasis on contextuality and fallibility, it offers success as a non-relative means of weighing the beliefs, theories, and practices of one way of life against another. In other words, success for the pragmatist takes on the role of an external and universal standard. Anyone who is bothered by my classification should just read “non-relativism” wherever “absolutism” includes or refers to pragmatism. I don’t believe that it changes the force or structure of my argument.
- 4.
See, for example, Edward Burnett Tylor, Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (London: Macmillan, 1881), 448.
- 5.
See, for example, Karl Popper, “Facts, Standards, and Truth: A further Criticism of Relativism” in Moral Relativism: A Reader, eds. Paul K. Moser and Thomas L. Carson (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 32–52; and Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 121–29.
- 6.
This is a popular example in the literature on relativism, which I believe dates back to Edward Westermarck, Ethical Relativity (New York: Harcourt, Brace and company, 1932), 184. Cook gives this universalist treatment to the example in Cook, Morality and Cultural Differences, 102–3; 165.
- 7.
This, in fact, is touted by the universalists as an advantage over relativism, which they mistakenly believe to be incapable of defending its own practices and beliefs. I will address this further in Chap. 6.
- 8.
While universalism can be more charitable than pragmatic evolutionism, the two views are not incompatible. In fact, the universalist may use the success argument to explain how we know that our own principles are not merely right in a particular context, but universally.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Cf Michael N. Forster, “On the very Idea of Denying the Existence of Radically Different Conceptual Schemes,” Inquiry 41, no. 2 (06, 1998), 133–185.
- 12.
Cf Jack W. Meiland, “On the Paradox of Cognitive Relativism,” Metaphilosophy 11, no. 2 (04, 1980), 115–126.
- 13.
In some ways, I take this to be a point made by Jesse Prinz, in his book Jesse J. Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). However, the relativist must be clear that even this sense of justice is not absolute, but relative to a particular way of life. For further discussion of this point, see Chaps. 2 and 6 of this book.
- 14.
Cf Meiland, On the Paradox of Cognitive Relativism, 115–126
- 15.
Edward Evans Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1937).
- 16.
Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific; an Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (New York: Dutton, 1922); Bronislaw Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea (London: Routledge, 1932).
- 17.
Franz Boas, “The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart,” Science 9, no. 224 (1887b), 485–486; Franz Boas, “Museums of Ethnology and their Classification,” Science 9, no. 228 (1887a), 587–589.; Franz Boas, “Response to John W. Powell,” 9, no. 229 (1887c), 612–614.; Franz Boas, “On Alternating Sounds,” American Anthropologist 2, no. 1 (1889), 47–51; Franz Boas, Race, Language, and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 647; Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man (New York: The Macmillan company, 1922).
- 18.
We may imagine, as well, the case of the investigator who is a philosophical relativist and a methodological absolutist. Perhaps she believes herself so constrained to her own way of life that understanding another culture in its own context is not fruitful, or even possible. I do not believe such a constraint is a necessary consequence of relativism.
- 19.
- 20.
Unless explicitly stated, the reader should assume that by “relativism” I mean the philosophical relativism described at the beginning of this section, not the methodological relativism employed by anthropologists.
- 21.
Some might also argue that this is the axis where we find the beginnings of empathy and compassion.
- 22.
Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande.
- 23.
Ibid., 300–309.
- 24.
Ibid., 270.
- 25.
Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea, especially 62, 438–440, 538.
- 26.
Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), 173–222.
- 27.
Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, 28.
- 28.
Cf Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, La Mentalité Primitive (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1922).
- 29.
Cf Ernest Gellner, “Concepts and Society,” in Rationality, ed. Bryan R. Wilson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), 18–49; Graham Priest, In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
- 30.
Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea, 294–5.
- 31.
Richard A. Shweder, “John Searle on a Witch Hunt: A Commentary on John R. Searle’s Essay ‘Social Ontology: Some Basic Principles’,” Anthropological Theory 6, no. 1 (03, 2006), 106–108.
- 32.
Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, 34.
- 33.
Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea, 204.
- 34.
Ibid., 284.
- 35.
Clifford Geertz, “Thinking as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of Anthropological Fieldwork in the New States,” in Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 33.
- 36.
His purpose, specifically, is to address the ethical irony of this asymmetry in a globalizing world. There is much to say about this, and I am sorry not to have the space to address it here.
- 37.
While I have used the feminine gender for all of my generic statements about the deeply engaged person, I cannot bring myself to write “princess” here. For one reason, “princess” incorrectly connotes the image of a spoiled person with frivolous beauty. More importantly, I distinctly experienced this particular power relation with the Chachi, and also with more Westernized Ecuadorian groups, as an instance of masculinization. In the situations where this relation was most apparent, there was no feminine role that could hold as much power as my U.S. status afforded me, and so it seemed I was slipped into a masculine role by default.
- 38.
“[O]ver and again, I committed breaches of etiquette, which the natives, familiar enough with me, were not slow in pointing out. I had to learn how to behave, and to a certain extent, I acquired ‘the feeling’ for native good and bad manners. With this, and with the capacity of enjoying their company and sharing some of their games and amusements, I began to feel that I was indeed in touch with the natives, and this is certainly the preliminary condition of being able to carry on successful fieldwork.” Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific; an Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, 8.
- 39.
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Luboff, A. (2020). Deep Engagement. In: Facing Relativism. Synthese Library, vol 425. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43341-3_1
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