Relatively Speaking

There's a fascinating discussion underway at FIRST THINGS on whether relativism is indeed a philosophy seriously espoused anymore. Robert Miller lead off with a post on March 20th titled Right Reason in the Public Square, which he followed up with Right Reason in the Public Square, Part II the next day.

He finished the trilogy today with It's Not All Relative:

So, in practice, there are no virtually no relativists. What we do find are people who disagree--even radically disagree--with Catholic moral doctrine in various different ways because such people are consequentialists, deontologists, social contractarians, Rawlsians, divine-command theorists, or advocates of various other moral systems, all of which differ radically from the virtue-theoretic, natural-law reasoning of the Catholic moral tradition.

Few of these people, however, can plausibly be called relativists, and almost none of them reject rational argumentation wholesale.

When Catholic thinkers encounter bad arguments or arguments from premises radically different from their own and then say that the people making such arguments are relativists who reject the use of reason, they therefore make a very serious mistake. It's quite possible to disagree, even radically disagree, with the Catholic position on the foundations of ethics and continue to believe that some moral judgments are objectively true and others objectively false. The Catholic view is not the only objective one in ethics. Labeling everyone who disagrees radically with the Catholic position a relativist is thus unfair to most such people and makes the Catholic thinker who does it appear uninformed. It also tends to cut off rational argument that could be pursued if the Catholic thinker engaged the real position of his interlocutor. This is a mistake we need to avoid if we want to participate in the discussion in the public square.

But just when you thought it was safe to remove the word "relativism" from your rhetorical quiver, Stephen Barr weighs in with An Opinion About Opinions:

Often, I suspect, when people assert that they or others have "rights" they are not making claims about an objective moral order that grounds those rights. What they have in mind is the idea that, in many areas of behavior, it is impossible really to know what is right and wrong (since their is no scientific way to settle the matter), and indeed there may not be an objective right and wrong, and consequently no one is in position to make rules for everyone else on those questions. They say "I have a right" but really mean "It's none of your business," "It is my private concern," "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries." Rawls? Never heard of him; just mind your own damn business and stop trying to impose your rules on me. That's what they mean by rights. Of course, implicit in these "arguments" may be the premise that people ought to mind their own business. But that simply shows that it is impossible to be an absolute relativist.

Admittedly, everyone sees murder and embezzlement as wrong, because they do observable and even quantifiable damage. But, where the damage is not measurable, as in supposedly "victimless crimes" or behavior "between consenting adults," people are very apt nowadays to write off the possibility of really saying anything objectively true about the morality of the deeds in question.

It may well be that in their heart of hearts such people still think there are objective moral norms. But they are not as confident about it, and certainly not confident enough to argue in the public square. In other words, even if not relativist in their hearts, they are intimidated by relativism to keep their mouths shut. And this, as Pope Benedict said, is a kind of dictatorship of relativism. A dictatorship can be enforced by a small number of people on a much larger, but cowed, population. Consistent and convinced relativists may be few, but the moral outlook of the many has been considerably softened up by the assaults of relativism.

Of course, this is just my opinion.