Ancient and Modern Approaches to the Problem of Relativism

In the introduction to a recent book on relativism, its authors, after reminding us that “relativism is an ancient philosophical doctrine, which made its first appearance in Western philosophy in the 5th century BCE, with Protagoras of Abdera,” and that this doctrine has been “refuted time and time again, only to repeatedly appear throughout the history of Western philosophy,” tell us that relativism is “once more a topic of heated debate in contemporary philosophy” (1).

In a now famous article, “Moral Argument and Liberal Toleration: Abortion and Homosexuality,” an article which has been reprinted in revised versions in two collections of essays and which forms the basis of the final chapter of his 2009 book, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (The original version of this article appears in California Law Review 77, 1989, 521–538. Sandel offers revised versions of it in Democracy’s Discontent, Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996, 91–119 and Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2005, 122–144, and a substantially revised version of it, now entitled “Justice and the Common Good” and dealing with same-sex marriage instead of homosexuality, as the final chapter of Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009, 244–269), Michael J. Sandel points out that recent Supreme Court decisions that are intended to uphold laws that promote the toleration of various lifestyles, such as homosexuality, have employed “sophisticated” arguments that attempt “to set aside or ‘bracket’ controversial moral and religious conceptions for purposes of justice” and insist instead “that the justification of laws be neutral among competing visions of the good life” (521).

This chapter will fall into two main parts. In the first and longer part, sections I through IV, we will map out, by means of a close reading of The First Treatise’s “Preface” and first two chapters, how Locke gradually unearths what he argues is the core of Filmer’s position, namely, Filmer’s belief that the source of the sovereignty of all princes is the biblical God, and, furthermore, that the first sovereign prince was Adam. In the second part, section V, we will offer a close reading of the first paragraph of chapter three.

In this chapter, we will offer a close reading of a very dense and difficult section of Plato’s Theaetetus (151d7–156a1). Socrates in this section first explains and then examines the doctrine of the most famous relativist of antiquity, Protagoras. Protagoras’ doctrine requires explanation, for, among other things, Protagoras held both an exoteric view and an esoteric view. Protagoras’ exoteric view was his famous claim that human beings are the measure or determiner of all things; this view was exoteric because Protagoras recognized that he could not rule out the possibility that the god Zeus could change all things at any time and hence that human beings could not have knowledge of these things and were in no way their measure.

Let us conclude by considering Socrates’ critique of Protagoras’ supposition in the context of our overall study. We recall first that Husserl showed that Locke’s naturalistic epistemology, when thought through, leads to relativism. Husserl then offered a phenomenological approach to this problem; one insight of this approach was that the world as we experience it is a world of spoken, interrelated things. Husserl’s approach, however, rested on the assumption that Locke’s epistemological starting point—that knowledge is possible, and that man is free to pursue it—could be taken for granted. As such, this approach remained open to a challenge by a believer in the biblical God, for such a believer could claim that man is not free and hence that no such pursuit is available.