Abstract
Husserl presents his first thoroughgoing critique of relativism in of the Prolegomena to the Logical Investigations. This critique takes place within the broader context of the central argument of the Prolegomena, the refutation of psychologism. One line of argumentation within this refutation is: relativism is incoherent and self-refuting, psychologism is a form of relativism, therefore … In accordance with its function within this main argument, the critique addresses first and foremost relativism in the form of psychologism, i.e., the form in which what is relativized is the validity of the fundamental principles of logic; and that to which this is relativized is the psychological constitution of a given species. Yet while this particular form of relativism is the primary target of the critique, relativism in a more general form falls within its range, as Husserl himself remarks upon several occasions.
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Notes
Hua XVIII 122 (P AIB 114). (“Aller Wahrheit Maß ist der individuelle Mensch. Wahr ist für einen jeden, was ihm als wahr erscheint, für den einen dieses, für den anderen das Entgegengesetzte, falls es ihm ebenso erscheint.”) The notation “Hua XVIII 122 (P AIB 114)” indicates that the original German version of the passage is located on page 122 of the Husserliana edition, Volume XVIII, and page 114 of both the first (A) and second (B) editions of the Prolegomena. Here as elsewhere, the German is given in parenthesis in the note.
Ibid., 122 (P AIB 114). (“Alle Wahrheit [und Erkenntnis] ist relativ — relativ zu dem zufällig urteilenden Subjekt.”)
Ibid., 123; (P AIB 115). (“Man wird ihn auch nicht durch den gewöhnlichen Einwand überzeugen, daß er durch die Aufstellung seiner Theorie den Anspruch erhebe, andere zu überzeugen, daß er also die Objektivität der Wahrheit voraussetze, die er in thesi leugne. Er wird natürlich antworten: Mit meiner Theorie spreche ich meinen Standpunkt aus, der für mich wahr ist und für niemand sonst wahr zu sein braucht.”) This passage reveals the inaccuracy of the Carr reconstruction of the Prolegomena critique of relativism. Carr reduces the entirety of the critique to this single self-refutation argument, and then dismisses it on the grounds that it would be unconvincing to a relativist. However, Carr thereby overlooks both that this argument is only a small part of a larger critique, and that Husserl himself does not pretend that a relativist would find this argument persuasive. (See “World, World-View, Life-World: Husserl and the Conceptual Relativists,” reprinted in Interpreting Husserl, Phaenomenologica, vol. 106, [Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987], especially 221.)
A typical argument to this effect can be found in William Vallicella, “Relativism, Truth, and the Symmetry Thesis,” in The Monist 67:3 (July, 1984), 452-66. The Vallicella argument consists largely in objecting to the relativist: “How can a proposition be true for me if I reject that proposition?” (Vallicella, 463.)
See Benno Erdmann, Logik. Logische Elementarlehre, third revised edition, edited by Erich Becher (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1923), especially 226ff., and 472. (It should be noted that Husserl’s critique addresses the position outlined by Erdmann in the first edition, which Erdmann apparently modified in subsequent editions, although he claims not to have changed anything essential. See 477, n. 1.)
Discussions of the distinction between subjectivism and non-subjectivist relativism occur frequently in the contemporary literature, especially in the writings of those who wish to defend relativism in a non-subjectivist form. C. Behan McCullagh, for example, sets forth this distinction and then attacks Putnam’s critique of relativism, claiming that Putnam’s account falsely equates relativism with subjectivism, whereas subjectivism is a position no real relativist holds: “If, as Putnam suggests, the relativist means by ‘this doctrine is right’, nothing more than ‘I think this doctrine is right’, and has no objective reference for the word ‘right’, then his claim would indeed be not just trivial but meaningless. However Putnam has not represented the relativist’s claim correctly. When the relativist says ‘this doctrine is right’ he does not mean merely ‘I think this doctrine is right’ but also ‘this doctrine is justified by the beliefs and standards of rationality generally accepted in my culture’.” (See C. Behan McCullagh, “The Intelligibility of Cognitive Relativism,” The Monist 67:3 [July, 1984], 320-1.) Mark Okrent develops the distinction between subjectivist and non-subjectivist relativism in terms of the contrast between Protagorean and Kantian idealism. According to Okrent, Protagorean idealism is the thesis that esse is percipi; whereas Kantian idealism holds that the subjective constitution determines only the formal structure of objects of experience, and not their entire being. On the Kantian view, the object as it is ‘objectively’ or in truth is therefore not necessarily identical with the object as it appears, and illusion and deception are possible. Okrent maintains that most modern versions of relativism are variations of the position which results when one begins with a Kantian conception of objects of knowledge as ‘formed’ (although not wholly created) by the subjective cognitive constitution, but then rejects the Kantian view that the relevant subjective structures are universal and invariant features of humanity. In contrast to Kant, modern relativists hold that the form given by the subject to the object of knowledge is an historically and culturally variable one. Thus while Kant is a’ species’ relativist regarding the truths of mathematics and the natural world, maintaining that judgments in these domains are true for all finite subjects with spatio-temporal forms of intuition, modern relativists tend to be cultural relativists, holding that judgments regarding a certain domain are true only for subjects sharing a common cultural and historical background. (See Mark Okrent, “Relativism, Context, Truth,” in The Monist 67:3 [July, 1984], especially 342-353.)
Thus the non-subjectivist relativist McCullagh, for example, maintains that relativism is justified given the beliefs and standards of rationality generally accepted within our society, and that whoever shares these ought to become a relativist. In this way, McCullagh presents an argument on behalf of relativism aimed to persuade others to adopt a position they may at present not hold. (It should be pointed put that McCullagh combines epistemic relativism with metaphysical realism, or truth absolutism, and therefore his thesis is that justification is relative to one’s standards and beliefs, and not that truth is so. However, this does not affect the present argument, the aim of which is only to establish whether it is inconsistent for a relativist to attempt to persuade others to adopt relativism.)
A position of this sort is sketched by Goodman in regard to his general theory of the multiplicity of worlds. Without prejudging the question of whether this theory is a relativist one, the theory can be seen to encounter a difficulty similar to that of relativism in the area of self-justification. How can a theory that worlds are multiple be shown to be true? Will it not — as all other theories — be true in some worlds but false in others? Goodman’s response is that the merit of the theory lies not in its truth (indeed, he holds it has no truth-value, and is not even a theory, but a way of conceptualizing), but rather in its practical value, its ‘efficiency in world-making’: “I am not so much stating a belief or advancing a thesis or doctrine as proposing a categorization or scheme or organization, calling attention to a way of setting our nets to capture what may be significant likenesses and differences. Argument for the categorization, the scheme suggested, could not be for its truth, since it has no truth-value, but for its efficiency in world-making and understanding.… Put crassly, what is called for in such cases is less like arguing than selling” (Nelson Goodman, Ways of World-making, [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978], 129).
The arguments set forth in this passage have a straightforward application to the form of relativism or ‘categorization’ presented by Goodman. For when Goodman denies that the ‘way of thinking’ proposed by him possesses a truth-value, holding instead merely that it commends itself on the basis of its ‘efficacy in world-making and understanding,’ it is not clear whether Goodman claims this efficacy itself to be something which obtains in all worlds, according to all correct descriptions, or only for some and not for others, with no reason for preferring the descriptions which hold the categorization to be inefficient to those which hold it to be efficient. If Goodman’s position is the latter, then even the justification for’ selling’ is undermined. If his position is the former, then the efficiency of the way of conceptualizing is attributed an absolute ontological status which the conceptualization itself declares does not and cannot obtain.
Hua XVIII 137 (P A/B 132). (“Man kann nicht Wahrheit relativieren und an der Objektivität des Seins festhalten. Freilich setzt die Relativierung der Wahrheit doch wieder ein objektives Sein als Beziehungspunkt voraus — darin liegt ja der relativistische Widerspruch.”)
A related objection against relativism is raised by Putnam. Whereas Husserl points to the surreptitious supposition of non-relative truths about the subjective constitution, Putnam notes that many relativists assume that whether a given judgment is true relative to a given constitution is itself non-relative: “[The relativist] just takes it for granted, of course, that whether X is true (or justified) relative to these [views, standards, presuppositions] is itself something ‘absolute’” (Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], 121). But it seems to me that a conception of the non-relative subject as constituting the objective is more basic to relativism than the presupposition criticized by Putnam, and in fact gives rise to it.
This is of course the type of position advanced by Kant in the Transcendental Deduction, where he asserts that I can know myself only as I appear to myself (i.e., as an object-consciousness constituted in time, the ‘contingent’ subjective form of intuition) and not as I am in myself. (Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. III, Royal Prussian Academy of Science Edition [Berlin: G. Reimer, 1911], B 155.)
Hua XVIII 125 (P AIB 117). (“Was wahr ist, ist absolut, ist‘an sich’ wahr; die Wahrheit ist identisch eine, ob sie Menschen oder Unmenschen, Engel oder Götter urteilend erfassen.”)
Ibid., 144 (P AIB 139). (“So drücken die logischen Grundsätze nichts weiter aus, als gewisse Wahrheiten, die im bloßen Sinn [Inhalt] gewisser Begriffe, wie Wahrheit, Falschheit, Urteil [Satz] u. dgl. gründen.”)
Ibid., 126, P AIB 118. (“Nennen sie z.B. Bäume, was wir Sätze nennen, dann gelten die Aussagen, in die wir Grundsätze fassen, natürlich nicht; aber sie verlieren dann ja auch den Sinn, in dem wir sie behaupten. Somit kommt der Relativismus darauf hinaus, daß er den Sinn des Wortes Wahrheit total ändert, aber doch Anspruch erhebt, von Wahrheit in dem Sinne zu sprechen, der durch die logischen Grundsätze festgelegt ist, und den wir alle, wo von Wahrheit die Rede ist, ausschließlich meinen.”)
Despite the ad hominem and unconvincing character of an argument which simply presupposes as ‘proper’ or ‘valid’ the very concept of truth which relativism puts into question (thus ‘refuting’ relativism by denying that the absolute character of truth is open to intelligible debate), similar appeals to the ‘traditional’ or ‘original’ or ‘our’ conception of truth are not uncommon within contemporary critiques of relativism, such as that of Putnam. Indeed, many self-styled relativists appear to find compelling the claim that some form of the traditional conception of truth has priority, adapting their positions accordingly. For example, Barnes and Bloor proclaim themselves relativists, but reject as unacceptable any form of relativism which leads to the conclusion that a proposition could be true for one society but false for another, and hence both true and false. Nor do they trouble themselves to make out a defense for the absurdity of relativism in this form, but simply take the validity of the non-relative conception of truth and of the law of non-contradiction to be self-evident. (See Barry Barnes and David Bloor, “Relativism, Rationalism, and the Sociology of Knowledge,” in Rationality and Relativism, edited by Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes [Cambridge: MIT Press] 1984, especially 22-3.)
Hua XVIII 126 (P AIB 118).
See ibid., 134 (P AIB 127); and Christoph Sigwart, Logik I, second revised edition (Freiburg: J.C.B. Mohr, 1889), 248.
Hua XVIII 134 (P AIB 128). (“Das Urteil, das die Gravitationsformel ausdrückt, wäre vor Newton nicht wahr gewesen. Und so wäre es, genau besehen, eigentlich widerspruchsvoll und überhaupt falsch: Offenbar gehört ja die unbedingte Geltung für alle Zeit mit zur Intention seiner Behauptung.”)
Indeed, the impossibility of an actual demonstration of the validity of a conception of truth, and the adequacy of self-consistency and adherence to ‘intuitions’ and previous tradition, is the unexpressed but consensus view within contemporary discussions of relativism. For within such discussions, definitions and characterizations of truth are generally either merely asserted, or at most shown not to be self-contradictory, and positive justifications are neither provided nor even attempted.
Thus the phenomenological justification of the concept of truth is indeed circular, in that what is demonstrated is only the coherence of a given concept, although this coherence is of a particular sort. The concept is to be derived from actual intentional acts, and not simply posited by an abstract theory. Further, the concept must be consistent with the formal and intuitive character of actual experience (fulfillment), and not merely with some arbitrary system of principles or beliefs.
Even in the absence of strong preconceptions about the ‘true’ definition of relativism, finding self-proclaimed relativists is not an easy task. Certainly none of those Husserl charged with relativism (whether psychologists, historicists, or neo-Kantians) would have acknowledged that label. Thus in this section I take the δευτερoς πλoυς of considering contemporary proponents.
Carr, 221.
Barnes and Bloor, 23.
Ibid., 27.
In this argument, I have simply applied the Husserlian phenomenological requirement that our philosophical elucidation of truth should correspond to the concept employed in actual intentional acts.
A position of this sort is elaborated by C. Behan McCullagh, who maintains “not that truth is determined by convention but that what we mean by ‘true’ and what we judge to be true is determined by convention” (McCullagh, 334). This also seems to be the view of Charles Larmore in “Tradition, Objectivity and Hermeneutics”, in Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, edited by Brice Wachterhauser (Albany: State University of New York Press) 1986, 147-167. Although Larmore too argues for the combination of a contextualist theory of justification with a metaphysical realist interpretation of truth, unlike McCullagh Larmore considers such a position to be anti-relativist.
For a more detailed development of this argument, see Chapter Three, pp. 62 ff. below.
Joseph Margolis, “Historicism, Universalism, and the Threat of Relativism,” The Monist 67:3 (July, 1984), 320.
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Soffer, G. (1991). The Critique of Relativism in the Prolegomena to the Logical Investigations . In: Husserl and the Question of Relativism. Phaenomenologica, vol 122. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3178-0_1
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