If Philosophy is to be of use (which in this modern philistine time means ‘practical use’) then the pursuit of wisdom must be seen to have tranformative power. From a political point of view transformative power can be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands and of course ‘wrong hands’ is defined as those belonging to individuals or groups who disagree with received wisdom - the latter being what governments dictate.
From the philosophical perspective, of course, there can be no ‘wrong hands’ or ‘right hands’; there can only be ‘confused minds’ and ‘clear minds’. The task of philosophy is, therefore, to transform confused minds into clear minds, but whilst having clarity of mind is a morally and intellectually virtuous state to be in, it is, from the political perspective, a dangerous state of mind because a politically suspect state of mind. If we believe that truth, justice and honesty are important human virtues then clarity of mind will help achieve greater degrees of these things; and if we believe that these virtues are so because they contribute towards the creation of commonwealth, then it follows that philosophy contributes towards commonwealth and this makes doing philosophy highly political. The practical use of philosophy is to bring about radical moral and intellectual changes in individuals so that they might more successfully contribute to the health of the polis. I conclude that as a discipline philosophy has an absolutely necessary role in society as a warden of political health and midwife to all the virtues of community.
Hence, from time to time, philosophy will take out its scalpel and cut from the political body all diseased flesh and viscera. Uncritical relativism is a form of intellectual infection and its influence has spread deeply and widely throughout the contemporary political body and it is this pernicious influence that is partly responsible (perhaps wholly responsible) for the philistine nature of our present society. However, like a cancer it can be excised and yet return again in a different place and in a different form. Simple-minded relativism has been with us for more than two thousand years even though Plato did a sterling job countering its arguments; and it is with us still. Protagoras declared that "Man is the measure of all things; of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not." It is a wonderful invitation for epistemological, moral and metaphysical laissez-faire; that is, for social and intellectual life lived in quicksand.
Protagoras was concerned with perceptual knowledge and with variations between human individuals and this led him to think that whatever any given individual believed was ipso facto true (for him). This strikes the more thoughtful person as being absurd and Socrates had little trouble in pointing out the absurdity; the individual has to understand what it is to make perceptual mistakes, whether these are detected by himself or by others. This ‘true for me’ relativism is astonishingly crude and ubiquitous; it can be found in every conversation discussing issues of ethics, aesthetics or knowledge. ‘True for me!’ We need only ask whether the claim that ‘X is true for me’ is itself merely true for me or otherwise. Is ‘Man is the measure of all things’ a relative or absolute proposition? The mistake with this kind of crude relativism lies in not seeing that the relativization attaches to the content of the belief rather than the truth-predicate. Given that there are such things as local relativisms, such as is implied in ‘this tastes good to me, what are you complaining about?’ the judgement that taste is relative appears itself to be beyond the relative; it would seem that here one is making an absolute judgement.
It is often forgotten that our interpretations of reality involve conceptual frameworks and this fact can carelessly lead us into believing that there is nothing beyond the act of interpretation. Here the scheme of understanding becomes the all-important fact and the idea that there is a reality independent of us, standing beyond the act of understanding, is rejected. This is full-blooded relativism and the simple life in this mode consists of mere successions of interpretations, each valid according to its own set of criteria. Whether something is true or not depends, therefore, upon the conceptual scheme in which the truth claim is made. It is suggested, for example, that a truth expressed in one conceptual frame cannot be expressed in another. So we find ourselves with the following problem: any argument about the truth of the relativist thesis has to be made within the confines of a specific conceptual scheme and the truth of any conclusions arising out of the debate will be dependent upon the framework within which the debate took place! So we might ask: does the truth of relativism transcend the framework within which relativism expresses itself? If it does then the proposition ‘relativism is true’ is false! It should now be easy to see how people can become confused about the notion of truth; there are so many clear cases where the truth of something is relative to something else (a culture or individual taste) that it is thoughtlessly and easily assumed everything is relative.
Relativism often rears its simplistic head in the form of A level students and undergraduates, in fact in the thoughts of anyone who perceives reason as a threat to personal freedom. This is often the case because the contemporary liberal desire to be tolerant is the desire to be socially acceptable, and because toleration and relativism are often foolishly conflated, to be a relativist is thought to entail living in good faith — to be a bona fide citizen of the commonwealth. We live in an increasingly culturally diverse society and we have been brought up to believe (some of us) that respect for others’ ideas and customs is a good thing — the mark of a civilised man. And rightly so; to have a pluralistic and relaxed appreciation of human diversity is indeed one of the marks of a civilised man. The civilised man will, for example, have to take the tolerant position when dealing with the following:
During Darius’ reign, he invited some Greeks who were present at a conference, and asked them how much money it would take for them to be prepared to eat the corpses of their fathers; they replied that they would not do that for any sum of money. Next, Darius summoned some members of the Indian tribe known as Gallatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them in the presence of the Greeks, with an interpreter present so that they could understand what was being said, how much money it would take for them to be willing to cremate their fathers’ corpses; they cried out in horror and told him not to say such appalling things. So these practices have become enshrined as customs just as they are, and I think Pindar was right to have said in his poem that custom is king of all.
Histories. Bk 111. Herodotus
The law of custom appears to be something we ought to respect, but the fact that this law is merely conventional undermines its authority and it is therefore tempting to sometimes flout it; the person who shows honour to his elders by eating them might well look askance at the person who prefers to build them a granny flat; the granny flat builders might even be energetically chastised by the elder eaters for showing such dishonour!
The important thing to note here is that the concept of honour underlies the local custom regardless of its expression. With this observation the impact of relativism is diminished and points to a transcultural standard viz., the standard may be expressed through a variety of local customs which means that although we might find a particular expression anathema we can, nevertheless, understand it as an expression of that standard. This fact makes inter-cultural discourse possible. These transcultural standards are important because they help define a culture as being specifically human. We have, then, a universal rule and a specific and unique expression of that rule. Examples of such universal rules would be: truth-telling, promise-keeping, rules governing the distinction between public and private property, rules about the use of violence, rules distinguishing between legal and illegal killing etc. A human society which had no such rules would in a very real sense be sub-human. We are rule-governed creatures and since these rules are fundamental they go some distance towards countering simple relativist arguments; but not the whole distance — although there must be rules and standards it is still possible to question the validity of particular standards. As we have seen, one society might treat its elderly in a manner unacceptable to another. If the degree of unacceptability is sufficiently great we might even feel morally obliged to do something about it. (1) We might then ask: where does the moral authority that fires our indignation come from? Why do we feel obliged to set things right?
What we are looking for is an undisputed moral basis for indignation and with this under our belts we can feel free to impose this absolute upon any who reject or flout it. More often than not we look to the concepts of ‘rights’ and ‘justice’ to fill the part. The rights as set forth in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights seem a completely reasonable set of what might be taken to be absolute assertions concerning the correct and proper treatment of human beings. The liberal West asserts what it takes to be its civilised nature through these rights. But how absolute are they? Might not our views on what constitute rights change? History shows that our ideas about rights (and wrongs) do indeed change. How sure can we be that our present notions are the right notions? Of course when we take drastic action to deter others from flouting what we take to be universal standards we have to be sure; nevertheless, despite our certainty there remains the intellectual suspicion that what it all amounts to is that I am persuaded by this moral stance which is in the end merely a convention. There is, that is, a relativist voice gibbering, monkey-fashion, in us all!
Is it possible to stop the gibbering?
The main problem with relativism is that in the end it leads logically to subjectivism which is the enemy of discourse. (2) Subjectivism makes intelligent discourse impossible because it asserts nothing over and above the expression of individual opinion and it is at this point that society finds itself in danger of sinking into the philistine frame of mind characterised (after Matthew Arnold) by ignorant, narrow-minded tendencies and deficient of any great ideas. If I hold an opinion and assert it then I am deliberately entering into the dynamic arena of discourse where I expect to give reasons in support of my conclusions, acknowledge assumptions I may have made, and have my views generally analysed and challenged. I do this deliberately because I believe my opinion is incomplete and may be reasserted in a clearer and logically more rigorous form. I may even drop the opinion altogether because it has proved to be incoherent. The subjectivist, on the other hand, understands none of this dynamic. For him there is no dynamic — there is only assertion and this assertion has nothing to do with the pursuit of truth or quality of thought.. When the subjectivist says: "x is right" all that is meant is that x is approved of; similarly with "x ought not to have done that" becomes "I (the speaker) do not approve of what x did". In other words subjectivist assertions say nothing of the outside world for they point at nothing outside of the mind of the speaker — they tell me about the subject, not the object.
Now this is a serious state of affairs if it is true. Simple minded subjectivism of this sort puts individual feelings at the core of human interaction; it turns the commonwealth into a community of ‘anything-goes-with-equal-validity’ — that is, a profoundly un-reasonable society, being a society in which reason and reasoning sit uncomfortably in the open. The philistine culture of low quality that results makes reasoning something vulgar and impolite. God forbid that an opinion be taken seriously in the sense of being taken to point to something outside of the speaker’s mind! Defending one’s opinion with rational argument becomes as much a solecism as lighting up a cigarette in a non-smoking restaurant.
How is it that something like subjectivism should ever take hold of an individual’s mind and then by thoughtless consent a society’s mind? The answer lies partly in mental laziness, but more importantly and subversively in distinguishing between fact and value. Nature is a physical continuum consisting of physical laws and principles operating upon physical matter, and it through the understanding of these laws and principles that we derive objective facts about the world in which we live our lives. Facts cannot tell us how to live our lives but only about the conditions in which we live them. How we should live our lives is therefore a matter of value, not of fact, and so value is not objective in the same way as, for example, the human genome is objective. In contradistinction values are subjective — they are about the way feel about things and that is all. You feel that way about x, I feel a different way about x — and because both ways are not objective in the right way (scientific) both are equally valid — they are merely points of view, or ways of experiencing the world according the conceptual framework we operate within, and more vaguely the life experience we just happen to have had. You have your life-view, I’ve got mine, and that’s it.
This, of course, is the simple subjectivism of the popular sort — but it is this sort that fails to see beyond the truth that the world of value (ethics, aesthetics) is primarily a matter of ‘feeling’ rather than ‘reason’; reason tells us what to do with feeling but it is ultimately feeling’s slave. This is the subjectivism that grips the unwary mind and causes that mind to see equal value in all things external to it. And once gripped by this idea it is difficult to extricate oneself from its hold. Pointing out obvious flaws in the simple subjectivist thesis may not be enough to get a gripped mind to ‘see’ its mistaken point of view — the attractiveness of the idea, its political correctness, the way we feel about it - these may be too potent for reason to successfully besiege the subjectivist fortress.
Pointing out to a simple subjectivist that we do in fact make mistaken ethical judgments in real life may not be enough to shake his confidence in what he takes to be his ethical and aesthetic infallibility. Pointing out to him that it is in fact possible to disagree (substantively) about issues of value, may only serve to confuse his mind further.
This confusion of mind more often than not is a product of intellectual apathy — a refusal to take thought, or any kind of cogitation, seriously. If a sufficient number of individuals fail to live rational lives — in the sense of failing to think about their thinking — then the society they create is almost bound to be confused about its own worth. It is necessary to follow Hume’s advice: before a moral judgement can be given a proper discernment of its object "…it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distinct comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained." (3)
Let us, that is, look first at the world, see how it really is, gather in all the relevant facts, become informed — and then, and only then, draw our moral and aesthetic judgements. In other words I must note how my initial feeling about the matter before me has been changed (if at all) by my fact-finding and subsequent cogitation. The world of the thoughtful moralist and aesthete is thereby rendered characteristically complex and multi-coloured whilst that of the thoughtless boor remains simple, narrow-minded, ignorant and superficial — monochromatic.
To be a simple subjectivist means that one does not adequately recognise the force of reason, and to not recognise this force adequately is to deny the possibility of improving the commonwealth. Ignorance, and an indifference to learning and knowledge, tends to accompany the minds of those in the crude subjectivist grip, and these characteristics tend also to qualify the philistine mentality. Crude subjectivism and a certain boorishness of mind therefore seem to be linked. But we cannot be civilised if we are preoccupied with boorish matters and with the crude notion that quality is somehow elitist and therefore incorrect, in the sense of being anti-liberal. The fact/value distinction is certainly an important one but it is important also to have an intelligent understanding of it. One might even argue that without such understanding and sufficient reasoning to accompany his assertions a simple subjectivist is not in a position to live what we should take to be a proper moral life at all. (4) What is required of citizens of the commonwealth is [a] recognition that there is a logic to moral and aesthetic arguments, [b] a competency in reasoning and [c] a desire to use reason to further the political objective — the creation of quality. In other words, qua citizens, we must desire to think things through — to cease the gibbering. Philosophy, then, has this practical use: it transforms us into thoughtful, political agents, and this surely can only be a good thing.
So, if it is true that we should value quality (of thought, of moral behaviour, of artistic creativity), and if it is true that our society increasingly does not value such quality; and if it is true that simple subjectivism encourages a false understanding of the complexities of matters moral and aesthetic, and that such false understanding encourages a cultural boorishness, then simple subjectivist ideas should be expunged whenever they are found.
Philosophy helps expunge the incoherent and intellectually dubious; it follows that philosophy therefore helps safeguard the health of the commonwealth (and thereby satisfies the public purse criterion that it must have practical value). Of course it should also be noted that philosophy is needed to evaluate the above argument. Should we, in fact, value quality? Well that’s a philosophical question; now let me see…
NOTES
(1) All sorts of military action is often justified by attempting to take the moral high ground.
(2) Subjectivism states that truth resides in the opinion of the individual in the sense that moral judgments are understood as simply individual avowals of feelings; the subject is all.
(3) Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals 1752
(4) It is possible to extend this point by suggesting that an individual who has not mastered a certain competence in reasoning is unable to take a responsible political role in society. The profoundly non-liberal question might then be asked: should such an individual be allowed to take such a role?