[MD] Rorty's Relativism

[Matt Kundert]

Oh, no way!  That's so weird, because I always figured that 
book, Rereading the Sophists, was one of those 
lost-through-cracks academic books that no one will read.  
I happened to find it used years ago, and considering our 
mutual interest in Pirsig, I imagine we picked it up for the 
same reasons.

The books not bad--it is based on a lot of the same research 
I've since gone on to read and use in my stuff: most 
prominently and importantly, Eric Havelock's Preface to Plato, 
which Susan Jarrat (the author, if I remember correctly--all 
my books are packed up for moving) uses to discuss the 
mythos/logos and orality/literacy connections, which myself 
and Ron Kulp have become very interested in.

I still remember reading and discovering for the first time 
that the Greek word "historia," which is what our word 
"history" is rooted in, meant more like "inquiry."  Very 
intriguing.

Personally, I actually agree with Steve about using the word 
relativism, but--and this is partly for Steve--I wouldn't get 
too upset about it if people want to wrap themselves in a 
generally disparaged term as a way of reclaiming it.  After 
discussing with a person, and seeing what they mean by it, 
you can generally figure out if they _are_ something that 
should be disparaged, or rather actually something you refer 
to by simply a different term: which I think Marsha is, given 
years of discussion--I would call her a panrelationalist: 
everything relates to something else.  

What's the difference between that and relativism, everything 
is relative to something else?  Hell if I know, but this is 
rhetoric, this is all done in front of an audience (sometimes a 
big one called Humankind), and some words just have bad 
associations, and it's best when trying not to get off on the 
wrong foot with someone to use a less bombastic term.  For 
whatever reason, "relativism" just _is_ a bombastic term when 
used as a serious self-description--it will surprise people that 
you'd call yourself one.  Nothing we can do about their surprise, 
but sometimes bombs are what are called for to shake people 
out of old thinking, so I don't get too upset when people want 
to lob some rockets (Rorty made an amazing Malatov cocktail).

For rhetorical reasons, I stay well away from relativism to 
describe myself, and it sounds the same for Steve (and bear 
in mind, too, for Steve, that he's in the middle of a bouhaha 
with DMB about "relativism" and it is simply _assumed_ that 
relativism is bad, so Steve _has_ to treat it with steel gloves, 
or else DMB will take Steve to be conceding something stupid 
and laugh him off the rhetorical stage).

But there are many famous, great philosophers who called 
themselves "crazy," bombastic things, though the people who 
loved their writings stayed away from the same 
self-descriptions--Paul Feyerabend (who did almost as much 
as Thomas Kuhn to help shake up the philosophy of science 
from its SOM-terrors) called himself a relativist.  Nelson 
Goodman, who was at Harvard with Quine and Hilary Putnam, 
called himself an "irrealist"--designed to be even weirder than 
the two camps of "realist" and "anti-realist."  

But some philosophers make up their own isms to try and cut 
middle grounds in old debates (or cut themselves entirely out 
of), like Rorty with his exotic epistemological behaviorism 
(from Philosophy and Mirror of Nature, when he tried to 
combine the upshot of Quine and Sellars) or like Putnam in 
Reason, Truth, and History, when he defined Metaphysical 
Realism as what Steve has been calling the Absolutist/Objectivist 
pole and Relativism as the other side, and struck out some 
middle ground as his Internal Realism--realism is true _internal_ 
to a picture of reality (like, say, the MoQ).  Putnam's the guy 
who coined the phrase "God's-eye point of view," as in, there is 
no God's-eye point of view, so we should stop trying to break 
out of the internals of some picture of reality to an external view, 
like God would have.

I have to hand it to you, Marsha--you are hilarious in 
conversation sometimes, though it helps to not be the one 
talking to you (when it can be occasionally quite frustrating ;-).

Matt

p.s. I used to deliver ILL books all across the great state of 
Wisconsin, home of the Progressive Senator Without Peer, 
Russ Feingold.  It's a great tool people should use more.

> From: valkyr at att.net
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:00:51 -0400
> Subject: Re: [MD] Rorty's Relativism
> 
> 
> Steve,
> 
> Recently read, 'Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured', I'm a
> relativist and proud, and what you think I should or shouldn't call myself
> has little impact on what I do or do not call myself, especially since you
> will not define what the word does or doesn't mean as if the word is
> relative only to the value you experience.  But they are your thoughts,
> without meaning for me, so possibly if I add them to my annuals they might
> produce an increase in flower growth.  Some more interesting thoughts on the
> subject of relativism might be found in another book I plan to order through
> ILL, 'Protagoras and the Challenge of Relativism', by Ugo Zilioli, ISBN-10:
> 0754660788, ISBN-13: 978-0754660781. (Such expensive books to affirm that
> there is nothing to know and no one to know it!).  I like the idea of many
> truths.  Gazillions of truths, all related to each other, and I love them
> all, every last one of them, even the ones you cannot define.  What do you
> think about many truths? 
> 
> If you can be very still, I will paint you blue.
> 
> 
> Marsha  

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