Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 11:04:44 -0600
Subject: Recent postings on Kant and relativsim
From: Donald E Van Duyse <devanduyse-AT-juno.com>


In recent postings, correct me if I'm wrong, I've heard Foucault
associated with  "moral relativism." I would like some qualification
here. Isn't there a difference between "relativism" and "relativity?" Is
Foucault best read in the latter sense?

Definitions: 

Moral relativism argues that all moral assertions are equivocal, and one
moral assertion will serve, arbitrarily, as well as the next. There are
no grounds for choosing one perspective over another.  Morality, in other
words, is quite literally, an "ism," a flat, homogenous collection of
sayings that lack inherent value, and bear no meaningful relationship to
one another, except that which is imposed by individual bias or arbitrary
variables.

Moral relativity argues moral meanings are not fixed, nor are they
arbitrary, but instead, are meaningful only in context.  Moral assertions
are appreciated as "relational." How do moral perspectives emerge in
complex circumstances? How are moral meanings dynamically interrelated to
other events?

Relativism says blandly, "all meanings are equivocal." Relativity, on the
other hand, says meanings are complicated by related events, that's how
moral assertions arise. For relativity, the complexity of the whole is
always greater than the putative sum of its parts. For relativism, it's
the arbitrary naming of unrelated parts.

"And is it not a plausible suspicion that if 'to be' were pointless and
the universe void of meaning, we would never have achieved not only the
ability to imagine otherwise but even the ability to think precisely
this: that 'to be' is indeed pointless and the universe void of meaning."
(Leszek Kolakowski, Metaphysical Horror, pg. 120)

(Personally, I think if neo-Kantians stopped saving the world from the
straw-man of "relativism," accepted the well-deserved kick in the butt
from relativists like Foucault, and worked out their own explorations of
"relativity," their arguments might be better served---e.g. what might
Foucault, Chomsky, and the Critique of Pure Reason have to do with each
other?)

(Bryan, I don't know why you think homosexuality is immoral? It strikes
me as an odd assertion to make on a Foucault list. Do you have a double
ax to grind (Perhaps that of a Kantian and religious conservative?)