The Cult of Relativism

I'm currently reading an interesting book on the broad topic of relativism by Paul O'Grady (Trinity College Dublin). This is both because relativism seems to be in vogue in philosophy at the moment, and because it contains very accessible discussions of some issues I deal with in my thesis.

His Preface won me over immediately, so at the risk of violating copyright (I'm sure he won't mind, I thoroughly recommend anyone interested buy the book!), here's a short quotation:

Philosophy is an abstract and theoretical discipline. Because of this, many outside it (and not a few within it) think that it has little impact on the everyday life of people. This has been especially accented in recent years, as increasing standards of professionalisation mean that philosophers tend to write explicitly just for others in their field and leave the general public in the dark. Nevertheless, philosophy has always had an impact on human culture, shaping currents and tendencies, supplying ideologies, vocabularies and concepts and offering ideals that penetrate to all aspects of society. For example, the works of Aristotle and Aquinas influenced a great number of people over many centuries through the mediation of the Catholic Church. The dialectics of Hegel, turned on their head by Marx, reached a multitude through various socialist movements. The existentialists' analysis of nihilism, meaninglessness and boredom pervaded the literature and cinematic culture of the twentieth century. (From 'Relativism' by Paul O'Grady, Chesham: Acumen, 2002, page ix)

After forgetting all about this for some weeks, I was listening to a show on Radio 4 recently about Pope Benedictus. One of his catchphrases when he was first inaugurated (or whatever is the appropriate obscure ecclesiastical term) was that the world was in the grip of a 'dictatorship of relativism'. The programme went on to explain that Benedict's problem with relativism (apart from its being inconsistent with Catholicism I imagine) is that its natural companion is totalitarianism (hence the 'dictatorship' reference). Supposedly this harked back to Benedict's reaction to German National Socialism in his youth. This caused me to remember Dr. O'Grady's preface.

Here are three very rough premises. (1) Relativism is in vogue philosophically, (2) philosophical ideas eventually filter down into culture at large, (3) relativism's natural companion is totalitarianism. The rough conclusion is that culturally, society is heading in a very worrying direction, towards some kind of totalitarian way of thinking - or at least a way of thinking whose 'natural companion' is some such political system. (Maybe the dying interest in democracy in many countries is a symptom of this?)

This 'natural companion' business - apart form being horribly vague - seems counter-intuitive to me, and I wonder what other people think about this. In a dictatorship, the people - assuming they are genuinely loyal to the state - put all their faith in the words and actions of one person. That person is the political and perhaps even the moral and spiritual authority. But how is this like relativism?

My own encounters with relativism both in the classroom and round the dinner table have been of a doctrine that's either (as someone I know calls it) a 'lazy man's answer' to excessively difficult problems or of an apparently benign diffusing of tensions between people who radically disagree on some highly emotive issue. The first manifestation is like this: you get someone who finds it hard to see how there can be a right answer to a problem saying 'it's all relative innit?'. The second is like this: John and Cynthia are violently disagreeing about politics/religion/morality or whatever, and someone says 'well what works for you John won't necessarily work for Cynthia, everyone is entitled to their own opinion'.

Now obviously I don't think these experiences exhaust the social manifestations of relativism (neither do I think their being pretty harmless is any kind of argument in favour of them), but I find it hard to draw a line between these apparently benign phenomena and the totalitarian state. Can anyone help me?

Moreover, consider this analogy. Christians, I take it, by and large, are not relativists, but absolutists. Christians generally hold that there is one true moral code, namely the one codified in Christ's teachings. But if God were the leader of the state, wouldn't it be a totalitarian one? I mean, at least in the sense that what the leader says goes on any given question. Matters wouldn't be up for a vote or a discussion, this is God after all.

Then there's the Euthyphro contrast, which without boring the pants off you - which I may have already done by now - goes thus: are actions good because God commands them? Or does God command actions because they are good? If you lump for the latter, then you don't get relativism. Moral and political truths aren't relative to whatever the dictator says this week. Instead, the dictator is just exceptionally good at picking up on moral truths, better perhaps than anyone else, and therefore fit to be a leader.

Suffice to conclude I'm confused about these questions: is relativism as a cultural phenomenon a bad thing? If so, is it really because it somehow leads us to totalitarianism? Comments gratefully received.