A Red FLag Rises, Part V: Relativism

We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as eternal, ultimate and forever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. ~Friedrich Engels~ 

Today we will look at the second philosophical seed of Communism, and that is relativism.

Relativism can be considered as one of the great curses of modern thought. It adversely affects both reason and morals. It is, at root, the denial of the absolute. Relativism is not confined to realm of philosophy and the atmosphere of universities. It has (as philosophies in universities are wont to do) trickled down and become a commonplace with the common man. On any given day one is quite likely to hear among his or her neighbors, families, friends, or co-workers, the opinion that truth is individualistic, that there is no absolute, that whatever one believes is all that really matters, and a host of other ideas and phrases all exhibiting the philosophy of relativism. The commonness of this phenomenon has taken relativism from the realm of being an occasional scholarly disease to being an intellectual plague of epidemic proportions.

Their are several different forms of relativism, but we are concerned principally with two for the present: moral relativism, and historical relativism.

Communism is woven from top to bottom with moral and historical relativism, and it is not hard to find their source. The name of this source is Georg Hegel, the German philosopher with whom we have become increasingly familiar in these posts. Ironically, Hegel's philosophy shows strong absolutist tendencies, though his dialectic is fundamentally relativistic. It is, in fact, precisely upon this inconsistency that many scholars have criticized Hegel's work. Hegel's dialectic is rather automatically relativistic. Unlike Socratic dialectic, in which either the thesis or antithesis must be wrong, an idea clearly rooted in traditional absolutism, Hegelian dialectic leads to the creation of the synthesis, something new and different. This synthesis will have its own antithesis, and so forth, thus leading to a structure in which there is no right or wrong answer, but only helical change. It is worth noting here, for purposes of visualization, that the philosophies of Fichte, Hegel, etc., were neither cyclical nor linear, but helical. The visual of a helix clearly represents the idea of relativism--a progressive spiral of change with no absolute points.

Given, even hypothetically, infinite sources of energy and an infinite number of opposing forces, this dialectic should continue is course infinitely without ever arriving at an absolute conclusion. It is here, however, that Hegel reveals his absolutist side, by arriving at a clear stopping point, a final synthesis. Hegel believed that the process of historical dialectic would lead at last to a moment when man achieves, in pure spirit or mind, the god-like perfection of  perfect knowledge. Hegel considers no antithesis to this final synthesis. Thus his dialectic ends with an absolute. Again, Hegel has been criticized several times by later philosophers upon this very contradiction. Yet the same problem may be seen in both Feuerbach and Marx as well, and I think that we would find that many people who hold to the idea of relativism have certain absolutist goals, hopes, or ideals as well.

Marx certainly hoped for a perfect classless society in the future, itself an absolutist ideal. Like Hegel, he seems to have ended his dialectic with a final absolute. However, the rest of his view of history is very relativistic, and his moral viewpoint is defined by relativism as well.

In Marx's dialectical reading of history man cannot be said to be man; through his revolutions and dialectical struggles man is becoming man. The novelty of the synthesis makes relation to an absolute impossible. A thing is said to be improving as it approaches the perfection of its species. The perfection of thing is an absolute. Powerful is in relation to the perfection of absolute power. Prettier is in relation to the perfection of absolute beauty. And so forth. In the historical relativism of Hegelian dialectic, however, change is so radical that it bears no relation to an absolute. A person, thing, or idea does not become better (i.e. nearer to the perfection of its species), it becomes something altogether different-- a synthesis of opposing forces. Man, to Marx, is not becoming better, while remaining intrinsically human, but is radically changing, simply becoming. The god-like future man of Hegel is not merely a better man than you and I, it is a radically different man. Imagine for a moment a dialectical struggle between good and evil. The result of this struggle is not the victory of either good or evil, but rather the creation of something new, with which we have hitherto had no acquaintance. This new synthesis will also have its struggle with a new antithesis, and so on. Good and evil can no longer be understood in even hypothetically absolute terms, but merely as passing evolutionary rungs on a dialectical step ladder. Viewing history through this dialectical lens we are allowed no permanence, no absolutes; we are left only with change. History devoid of absolutes becomes relativistic.

It is no great leap from here to understand that everything absolute in our concepts also suffers from the helical pattern of Hegelian dialectic. Moral relativism is only an obvious consequence of these doctrines, and one that we shall examine more closely in a related post in the future.