File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-01-31.000, message 69


Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 17:04:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Richard Wolff <rwolff-AT-minerva.cis.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: Relativism



	In reply to Schwartz, I cannot, of course, throw at him words of 
the sort her throws at me - for example, "wrong." To do that, as 
Schwartz's comments show, slips an absolute in despite lip service to the 
refusal of foundationalism.

	Schwartz rehearses the usual defenses of absolutist judgements on 
anything from efficiency to "error" to "plausibility". There is, sadly 
for Schwartz, no way out: either you accept the relativity of all 
judgement to the perspective/standpoint/commitments of the judger or else 
you imagine, seek, and - typically - find some non-relative (i.e. 
absolute) standard (i.e. perspective/standpoint/commitment) for judgements.
	
	Contrary to Scwartz's assertions, I have not the slightest 
problem in formulating judgements and acting in ways I find consistent 
with them. I just cannot and do not claim I am doing other than that. Nor 
will I accept others' claims that they are doing more than that - whether 
or not they claim their judgements (or critiques) are "immanent" or 
"grounded intersubjectively" or any of the host of other phrases used to 
comfort those who make judgements but want them to be "valid" absolutely.
	Contrary to Schwartz's assertions, I try hard to convince others 
to see my way because I need their help, cooperation, and comradeship to 
achieve the goals that make sense to me socially. I understand them to do 
likewise. Indeed, these postings are part of all that. But there is no 
need nor, in my view, any warrant to require or claim that my judgements 
are other than views for which I seek adherents - like others do for 
theirs. Depending on the social contexts, some views will and some views 
wont win such adherents. But none of this has anything to do with any 
claims about "grounds: for critique of judgement beyond the actual social 
realm of different, contesting, mutually changing perspectives.
	Contrary to Schwartz, I need not nor do I exclude his absolutist 
perspective on grounds it is "wrong" (the way he does mine). I see his 
perspective as different from mine, as having social consequences I do 
not like, and as worth opposing in discourse as I do. In contrast, he has 
to see my view as "wrong," in precisely the sense of something beyond 
"different from Schwartz" - in short as more than relatively wrong, as
abvsolutely wrong.
	My parting shot thus is: have we not had more than enough 
illustrations, left, right, and center, of awful consequences of such 
absolutist judgement styles.........to be at least a little suspicious of 
them and defenses of them, to be just a little open to alternative, 
different ways of conceptualizing difference?

R. Wolff

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