Where did it come from? The History of Relativism

For context, if you haven’t already, please read “What is relativism? The damning philosophy of our day” first.

Relativists have often argued that morality and truth have historically been shaped by culture, human tradition, and human nature. Categorically, relativists believe that humanity has deemed what is right and wrong throughout its time on earth.

Relativists would argue that as a society becomes more sophisticated, it will increasingly recognize the truth of relativism. The problem with the so-called sophistication of relativism is the contradiction in the entire premise: “It is absolutely true that nothing is absolutely true.”

However, it was not modern-day sophistication that introduced relativism.

Relativism is old, and historically, we can look back on influential thinkers and identify when relativistic ideologies and frameworks began to take shape and influence cultural thought.

Christian absolutists could argue that the idea of relativism began in the garden when the devil introduced relativist philosophy for the first time: “Did God say that in the day you can eat of the forbidden fruit? I say you won’t.” For the sake of historical investigation, relativism has been in the philosophical framework for centuries.

THE SOPHISTS, THE EPICUREANS, AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Relativism, which came from the Sophists and spread to the Epicureans, eventually produced the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries and has been a philosophical tool to undermine God’s absolute authority ever since. Historically, the thought of undermining God’s absolute standard and authoriy is likely why relativism has been so appealing to an unbelieving and rebellious world.  

The Sophists, who were ancient Greek philosophers in the 5th century BCE, were the first to embrace relativism when Protagoras the Sophist said, “Man is the measure of all things.”

For a more contemporary example of how relativism has influenced culture, the Enlightenment (1685 – 1815) was an exaltation of reason over faith as absolute. The Enlightenment emphasized (1) reason, (2) natural law, (3) human progress, and (4) separation of Church and state.

Most of the Enlightenment was a response to the poorly handled religious authority of the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge that the Earth was round and not the center of the universe. The response to empirical evidence by the Catholic Church reduced cultural trust in religion to know the truth.

Then was the 19th-century Empiricism age, which was birthed by David Hume, an 18th-century philosopher and an empiricist who analyzed moral judgments as subjective feelings.

Philosophers such as Hume and Kant suggested that humans do not have the ability to understand the world as it is, which produced a skepticism that gave rise to relativism.

The Enlightenment was reason over faith; the age of empiricism was sensation over reason, and then came Romanticism, which was emotion over reason. Even though it is good practice to maintain a state of humility when discussing the nature of truth by understanding that no one person knows all of reality, it is not good practice to then become skeptical of knowing reality at all, which is the framework produced by the Enlightenment. Empiricism followed, reducing good and evil down to the subjective feelings of a person, which undermined the objective reality of good and evil.

What is interesting about the twisted nature of relativism is that most relativists would say that the relativist’s skepticism creates humility, and absolutists’ fixed standards of right, wrong, and truth create arrogance.

The difference between the two is quite the opposite. Relativism seduces those who do not want to submit to authoritative standards because they only feel comfortable submitting to their own (essentially, emotivism). This is why relativism can be dangerous, as taken to its logical end would be psychosis or sociopathy, which is an unworkable worldview for any society to live by with any semblance of order.

The death of truth in our society has created a moral decay in which “every debate ends with the barroom question, ‘says who?’” When we abandon the idea that one set of laws applies to every human being, all that remains is subjective, personal opinion. Absolutists, on the other hand, have submitted to God’s standard, which, when truly applied and lived out, produces humility.

RELATIVISM PAVED THE WAY FOR HITLER AND MUSSOLINI

 As previously stated, psychosis and sociopathy are produced by relativism when taken to their logical end.

We can historically see the fruits of relativistic societies, such as Nazi Germany, and influenced communist tyrants such as Mussolini.

“The modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”

(Mussolini, p. 374-377)

Historically, society cannot be governed by moral and ethical relativism, without eventually collapsing from gross moral decay. Relativism grants evil dictators and psychopaths to do as they wish because it is ‘right to them’ or even ‘right for the country.’ As a matter of fact, it is essential that relativism pave the way for genocidal regimes, to justify innocent mass killings based on race, sex, gender, etc, which is always objectively evil to the absolutist.

It is obvious that the emotive behind relativism is ultimately to ‘do away with God’ and His authority.

Relativism appeals to the first sin when Satan says to himself in Isaiah 13, “‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high.” Historically, mankind has wanted to be the determiners of good, evil, and truth…because having that kind of authority over reality would make someone ‘like a god.’ It is no wonder relativism has been appealing to mankind and societies throughout history, which is why, historically, the church has worked tirelessly to uproot it.

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…”

2 Corinthians 10:5

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What is ‘relativism’? The damning philosophy of our day