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The Relativity of Knowledge and Relativism
By Chin-Tai Kim.
Published by The International Journal of the Humanities
| Format | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Article: Print | $US10.00 | |
| Article: Electronic | $US5.00 |
A well known fragment attributed to Protagoras says, “Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.” The fragment means that man determines a concept and criterion of objectivity and truth. But as the grammatical subject of the sentence, “man,”is variously taken to mean an individual person, a culture, the human species or the transcendental subject, the fragment comes to express, respectively, individualistic relativism, cultural relativism, species universalism, and transcendental idealism. Individualistic relativism and cultural relativism deny. while species relativism and transcendental relativism affirm, universally valid human norms of knowledge. But all of the four views admit the relativity of the objects of human awareness to subjective conditions. Even if objects of human awareness are things in themselves, as according to what Kant calls transcendental realism, the humnan subject’s passive representing function is necessary for their appearance to its awareness. An epistemological controversy and epistemological constructions presuppose a discourse in which the parties to the controversy participate with consensus on some rules of the discourse. Those epistemological views that assert or imply the impossibility of such a discourse are untenable. Radical epistemological reflection must come to realize its own limitations. It is argued that cultural relativism is the most reasonable of the four epistemological positions.
| Keywords: | Relativity of Knowledge, Relativism, Subjective Conditions of Knowledge, Universally Valid Epistemic Norms |
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International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 6, Issue 6, pp.83-90. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 572.831KB).
Prof. Chin-Tai Kim
Department of Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Shaker Heights, Ohio, USA