[MD] suspended in language

[Matt Kundert]

Marsha said:
I just received my own copy of the Zilioli book, 
'Protagoras and the Challenge of Relativism'.  It is 
excellent and I really needed to have my own book to 
mark up with marginal notes.  I also ordered 'The Truth 
About Relativism' by Joseph Margolis and 'The Origins of 
Democratic Thinking: The Invention of Politics in Classical 
Athens' by Cynthia Farrar.  But I remembered your 
cautionary statement "Relativism can be a lonely place, 
and not just because Plato made Protagoras out to be a 
bad guy."  I really think the MoQ is relativistic.  My thinking 
is that by understanding we're all in the same relativistic 
(epistemologically and ontologically) boat, can only bring 
about feelings of compassion.

Matt:
Ian interceded with a "the problem with total relativism" 
comment, and I think that's a useful frame for me to try 
and repackage the kind of comments Steve and I were 
making a month or so ago about relativism.  The point I 
think Steve was trying to make at the time was that the 
-ism that goes by the name "relativism" may not be a 
word worth saving in the traditions of philosophy.  For 
instance, whatever Ian means by "total relativism" isn't 
a real philosophical position--some people may _think_ 
they're inhabiting a live philosophical position that can 
be lived, and some may inhabit that _rhetorical_ position, 
but I don't think it is a live position.  The reason is 
because I think Ian is right: whatever "total relativism" 
is would lead to a radical "individual in isolation."  
However, what further needs to be stated is that there is 
no such thing as an individual in radical isolation (having 
to do with the fundamental sociality of language, and 
hence every human being).  No individual, for very 
particular philosophical arguments, is bereft of a 
community--in fact, an "individual" can only come into 
being within a "community."  Because of that, no real 
thing like "radical individualism," and likewise its twin 
"relativism."

My suspicion is that what you _refer_ to as "relativism" 
is what I would (and I think Steve would) refer to as 
maybe "relationalism," or something.  As a latter-day, 
reincarnated Sophist, and hence rhetorician, I think it 
would be good rhetorical policy to laud Protagoras as a 
hero, but perhaps not "relativism" as a flag in the ground.

So when you say, "I really think the MoQ is relativistic," 
my only thought is that I don't know what relativism is 
except a scarecrow Plato made up to scare people into 
being Platonists.  But since we've knocked Plato out of 
the way, we don't need to keep playing with the same 
people he made up.  And your last sentence, I think, is 
exactly right--if allowing my own -ism preference, I 
think mutual understanding of our fallible natures 
("fallibilism" being another -ism that means something 
similar in this context) would help breed compassion, 
which is better for democracy, and humanity.  I think 
that thought you are chasing down has heretofore been 
underappreciated, and it's about time we started to (and 
I think more are)--though I still wouldn't raise the flag of 
"relativism" up the mizzenmast.

My own non-Pirsig hero, Richard Rorty, began his book 
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by stating that by 
"liberal" he meant a person who thought "cruelty is the 
worst thing one can do."  That definition of liberal was 
stolen from Judith Shklar, a very well-known political 
philosopher who taught for a number of years at Harvard 
(from her book Ordinary Vices).  Shklar was first 
introduced to me through her slim but important volume 
called The Faces of Injustice, in which she suggested that 
there was something odd about how philosophy is usually 
done by men, and that we have all these proliferating 
"theories of justice."  Why no theories of _injustice_?  
Shklar thought we needed to begin there, and beginning 
there was not to begin with concepts, but individual people 
having individual injustices done to them.

And hey, Rorty was called a relativist most of his career.  
So that's something.

I'd also thought I'd mention to you, Marsha, that there is 
apparently a recent trend in academic studies that finds 
at the beating heart of democracy _emotions_ and the 
sentimental novel, so often a whipping-post in "literary" 
appreciations of quality.  Hawthorne famously says in a 
letter somewhere that to be popular (at the time) you 
had to write sentimental trash like these legions of 
women, and he rather die than that (something to that 
effect).  The re-valuation of the sentimental novel (Uncle 
Tom's Cabin being by far the most famous) has been 
going on since the 80s (particularly Jane Tompkins' 
Sensational Fiction), and it's really starting to come to a 
confluence with philosophical re-valuations of the emotions 
(like with Marsha Nussbaum) and political philosophies.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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