Friday, November 20, 2015
Relativism and Sartre
So today in class we began our discussion on Relativism. And to be quite honest, I was rather confused…But what I gathered from Dr. Johnson's explanation was that Relativists believe we have a choice to believe whatever we want about just about anything, even if it directly contradicts the three Non-relatives: Absolutism, Universalism, and Objectivism. It seemed like Relativists are mainly focused on expressing their own personal opinions even when they are not true. This belief that we are entitled to our opinions no matter what made me think about Sartre's philosophy that we are always free. The same way that we are always able to make choices and/or negate all other options for decision making, Relativists believe we are always able to stand behind whatever opinion or philosophy we desire, even if it is in direct contrast with Absolutism, Universalism, or Objectivism. Dr. Johnson also talked about how we utilize a bit of both in our everyday life, which makes a lot of sense in my perspective.
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I was also very confused about Relativism. I'm not entirely sure if being a Relativist means that you are able to will any idea as true. I think it is more about being able to bend rules to fit certain situations. There is no one rule that applies to every situation. For example, lying is bad could be a rule that is always true. But Relativists will say that this rule will depend on the context. The rule is "relative" to the situation. So lying can be bad if you hurt someone, but it could be okay if you do it to avoid hurting someone (saying a friend doesn't look fat in those jeans). Or maybe I completely missed the point of Relativism. I wasn't entirely sure how relativism contradicted non relativist ideas though. In some of her examples of relativist arguments she used facts and facts are absolutely true. Obviously I am just as confused.
ReplyDeleteI think being a relativist means that there has to be at least a minimal amount of understanding about the non-relativist mode of thinking. For you to know some general facts about life, you have to understand some absolute, universal, and objective things. For example for anyone to know that the law of gravity exist, they have to know that this is an absolute and universal concept. No relativist can argue that there is something other than gravity that is holding people down because it would be false. Also, a relativist cannot argue a point unless they know what the non-relativist is basing their argument off of. This is with any argument. In order to argue for your position, you have to know about other positions and show the reasons why this is not true to show that your argument is true.
ReplyDeleteI feel like relativists don't necessarily believe everything to be true, but they feel like if you can make a valid point about a certain topic, it can be considered to be true. In other words, being able to stand behind a statement and make a strong argument to defend it can classify it as a true statement. The most important thing is to make sure you never say that both you and the other person are right for the sake of ending an argument!
ReplyDeleteTaylor and Micheal make great points in their comments. I do believe that relativists do hold back their ideas if they feel like it can not fulfill the three concepts: absolute, universal, and objective. As Dr. Johnson said in class a person can not use the argument that God said so. So relativism is mainly emphasizing that you prove a statement to be more true than your opponent's belief/argument.
ReplyDeleteRelativism for sure has been the hardest one to grasp so far. I understand when she explained about the people that use "lazy relativism", I've used it myself to before and I'm sure we all have so we can avoid a conflict with someone, but other than that, I was definitely lost. However, what I perceived from it was that, just like you, we are entitled to have our own beliefs, though, yes there are ways to prove some right and wrong, because there is always a right and wrong answer, but our opinions are our own judgements. Yes, they can be changed, but everyone has to start somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI also found our discussions on relativism very difficult to follow. I was able to understand the idea of Lazy Relativism, and the concepts of the three non-relatives, but the class discussion went in such a way that I could not follow exactly what was going on. I feel that the topic is very interesting, but could use more defining from Dr. Johnson, especially because there is no reading to base it off of.
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