The problem with relativism is that that – well – it’s relative.
No really, hear me out.
When someone says, “what is right for you is not necessarily right for me” or “what is right for culture X is not necessarily right for culture Y” they turn the world on its head without even realizing it.
For how can you push back against evil without having a firm grasp on what evil is in the first place?
You need ethics to live – not morals.
Pragmatism and majority is not the same as right and wrong.
It turns out that a “civil” society has considered these notions deeply.
And to keep society civil – you have to live this way too – even while you quote Marx without understanding it as you sip Starbucks lattes from the comfort of your trust fund.
This brain trust had come to believe that the pragmatism of John Dewey, who had been the dominant intellectual force at Chicago in previous generations, “was vulgar, ‘relativistic,’ and self-refuting. As they pointed out over and over again, Dewey had no absolutes.” This lack made him useless: “Only an appeal to something eternal, absolute, and good—like the God of St Thomas, or the ‘nature of human beings’ described by Aristotle—would permit one to answer the Nazis, to justify one’s choice of social democracy over fascism.”
-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)
