Date: Thu, 03 Nov 1994 19:04:20 +0200 From: Jukka Tapani Sarjala <juksar@utu.fi> To: h-verkko@sara.cc.utu.fi Subject: Re: On relativism
Martin Kusch wrote:
>Do relativists work less hard to find out things than
>'absolutists'?
I suppose they do not. My conception of a relativist is some kind of ideal type. But to be honest, I have met some relativists who have been keen on their own arguments about the historical and social determination of all knowledge (and about the relativity of our own), but who have at that very moment begun to declare, how the things REALLY are. The latter thing is OK, the former is not. As Esa Itkonen asked earlier: why do we have to deny that all of us are doomed to truth? Questions of truth and freedom are sometimes horrible questions as - to the best of my knowledge - Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have shown.
>(2) But what if the notion of absolute truth is itself bogus?
It has something to do with moral questions. To speak in the language of Kant: the notion of absolute truth is a 'regulative'. We think and act according to a universal norm. In science this regulative is extremely powerful. All of us have many experiences of it.
Jukka Sarjala