Quotes About Relativism

If we assume, however, that the desire to achieve optimal experience is the foremost goal of every human being, the difficulties of interpretation raised by cultural relativism become less severe. Each social system can then be evaluated in terms of how much psychic entropy it causes, measuring that disorder not with reference to the ideal order of one or another belief system, but with reference to the goals of the members of that society.

Nothing is absolute any longer, Mr. Panofsky. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.…" "Still, that is no answer." "What if there are no answers? Or if the answers offered are not suitable – what then? Perhaps there are only more questions.

The much-discussed contemporary phenomenon of cultural and theological relativism is itself in this sense simply the dark side of positivism.

Ironically, moral relativists often even pride themselves on being morally superior to others.

Materialists thereby deny the reality of mind (while they use their minds to advance materialism), determinists deny the reality of human choice (while they choose determinism), and relativists deny the fact of right and wrong (while they judge you if you disagree).

liberalism denies that there is any fixed or universal human nature.

No one is a consistent moral relativist.

People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics." 37 In short, they apply their postmodern skepticism selectively

Hegel taught that no idea is true in an absolute or timeless sense.

When a postmodernist asserts that there is no universally valid truth, he is implicitly claiming that his own assertion is universally valid and true. To make the statement, he has to occupy the transcendental position that postmodernism says is not there to be occupied. Thus every time a postmodernist states his position, he contradicts it. The position is self-refuting.

Relativism is the solution of one who is incapable of putting things in order.

When one is confronted by diverse "cultures," there are two symmetrically erroneous attitudes: to admit only one cultural standard, and to grant all standards the same rank. Neither the overweening imperialism of the European historian of yesterday, nor the shameful relativism of the European historian of today.

Relativism is the solution of one who is incapable of putting things in order. Truths do not contradict each other except when they fall out of order.

It is quite likely that a medieval European would decry our own culture in such terms for its failure to venerate the Blessed Virgin with sufficient fervor. Indeed, a wellbred Aztec would doubtless find us odd and emotionally stunted in our deplorable lack of enthusiasm for massive orgies of human sacrifice. We must therefore ask, in good cultural relativist fashion, whether Kellert is merely glorifying his own intense prejudices by describing them as human universals.

Truth is dead, and everything is relative at best and at worst a matter of the will to power. Nothing is what it appears to be. If truth was once the stated goal of intellectuals, it is now easy to read between their scholarly lines and see the petty egos and the dirty ambitions behind the lofty aspirations for truth. Truth is finally undecidable, as the postmodern philosophers express it. At best, truth is simply the compliment you pay to sentences that you happen to agree with.

Subtle but significant superego pathology may easily go undetected throughout psychoanalytic training and only emerge later in trivialization, cynical relativism, messianic deterioration, and rigidly dogmatic and paranoid stances regarding psychoanalysis.

Moral relativism and rights don't mix. Relativism undermines any appeal to rights: If rights exist, relativism is false; if rights exist, where do they come from? Again, we're pointed in the direction of a good God in whose image humans have been made—and thus who sets the parameters regarding our sexuality.

The law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law; it is absolute because it concerns everything concrete. The paradox of final revelation, overcoming the conflict between absolutism and relativism, is love.

Cynical relativism is not wrecked by its self contradictions. Its nemesis is the empty space it produces, the complete vacuum into which new absolutisms poor.