Relativism

relativisme

Worked through in 3 videos · 4 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani grants that relativism is useful against dogmatism. Yet since Protagoras's scepticism, he sees it above all as a denial of any universal that shuts each person inside their own bubble. In his view, liberalism encourages this attitude1. He sums it up with the formula "what holds for us does not hold among the Bantu": cultural traditions should supposedly be respected without being judged2. Groups are then isolated like species3. He also gives it a political reading. Relativism presents itself as progress in thought, but it serves capital, because it keeps identity quarrels going rather than the union of proletarians4. In petty-bourgeois ideology, it alternates with neopositivism, as political parties alternate, and both have reason as their common enemy5. To move beyond it, he proposes bringing in the temporal dimension: what is taken for a difference in space is in fact a difference in time6.

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Season 12 · 28 Feb 2024Clouscard by you: answers to your questions

41:35Juxtaposing cultures like isolated animal species leads to dividing humanity into species.
1:20:25Relativism is sublated through the temporal dimension: what is taken for a difference in space is a difference in time.

Series · 2 May 2019Michel Foucault

26:28Believing that the universal belongs only to the West; presented as a progress of thought, it serves to divide: "workers of all countries, tear each other apart."

Talks · 9 Mar 2017Is history a subject?

59:52For relativism, the individual is the measure of all things: there is only the particular and no universal. Free enterprise encourages it.