“It’s All Relative” and Other Such Absolute Statements:

Assessing Relativism
By Paul Copan - PAUL COPAN is professor and Pledger family chair of philosophy and ethics at
Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida.

You have probably heard all kinds of relativistic statements: “That’s just true for
you but not for me,” or “That’s just your reality,” or “Who are you to say that
someone else is wrong?” Some might consider you arrogant or even dangerous
for believing in “truth” or “moral standards.” Relativists even get angry with non-
relativists, which is strange if you think about it. Pope John Paul II called this
phenomenon “the dictatorship of relativism.”

Here’s some scary news.1 In one survey, 83 percent of American teenagers

claimed moral truth depends on circumstances; only 6 percent of teens said
objective moral values exist; 75 percent of adults (18 to 35) claimed to embrace
moral relativism. What’s even scarier is that statistic is more than 10 years old.

In this article, I address two major problems with relativism — it is self-refuting

or self-contradictory and it is selective. In the second half of this article, I offer
some practical responses to relativism.

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PROBLEMS WITH RELATIVISM
1. Relativism Is Self-Refuting: Relativists Believe Their View Is True for Everyone

Before we can assess relativism, let’s get our terms straight. What do we mean
by relativism and truth? While we are at it, look at two loaded and misunderstood
terms — tolerance and judging.

a. Defining Relativism and Truth: Relativism is the view that a belief or

philosophy of life can be true for one person but not for another. When it comes
to morality, one person’s or culture’s moral beliefs may be “right” for them but
not necessarily for another. Truth is relative — that is, dependent on my own
feelings, preferences, time of history, or culture.

The opposite of relative is absolute or objective. Truth does not depend on what
people believe or what period of history in which they are living. Even if everyone
believed the earth is flat, it would still be round.

What then is truth? Truth is a match-up with reality. If a belief, story, idea, or
statement does not match up with reality, with the way things really are, then it’s
false. “The moon is made of cheese” is false because it does not match up with
reality. Only reality confers truth or falsity. A true statement is faithful to reality.

b. Why Relativists Are Absolutists: Despite the relativist’s claims, the average
relativist believes the following to be true for everyone — not just for him/her:

 You should not say that someone else is wrong.

 All views are equally acceptable.
 You should not impose morality on others.
 You ought to be “tolerant” and should not “judge.”
 You ought to be open-minded.

Consider some typical relativistic slogans and assertions, which turn out to be an
exercise in self-refutation:

 Truth is just a matter of perspective: Is this true (“if

you disagree with my perspective, you are wrong”), or
is it just another trivial perspective?
 There are no facts, only interpretations: Is that just a
fact, or is that just your interpretation?

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  You can do whatever you want, just as long as you do
not hurt anyone: Why is it wrong to hurt someone?
Isn’t this a moral standard that we should not violate?
 You can do whatever you want, just as long as it is
between two consenting adults: Why the absolute rule
about consenting adults?

c. Relativism, Tolerance, and Judging: Have you ever been in a conversation

where someone charged you with being “intolerant”? Or perhaps someone
condescendingly asks: “Who are you to judge someone else?” Suggestion: Don’t
immediately address the accusation, but ask for a definition. Find out what the
relativist means by tolerance or judge. As it turns out, relativists use terms they
cannot live up to themselves. They make themselves the exception to their own
rules.

The classical understanding of tolerance is putting up with what one takes to be

erroneous or false.2 We do not tolerate chocolate or ice cream. We enjoy them.
Today, however, tolerance has come to mean “accepting all views as true or
equally legitimate.” So, to disagree with another is arrogant.

What about the term judging? Relativists like to cite: “Do not judge, or you too
will be judged.” They say that means saying that someone else is wrong. But is
this that what this means? Not at all. It makes no sense: if someone accuses you
of “judging,” isn’t that person judging you for judging someone else?

2. RELATIVISM IS SELECTIVE: PEOPLE ARE USUALLY RELATIVISTS ABOUT

GOD/RELIGION AND ETHICS.

a. Relativists are not relativists about trivial facts that do not challenge
their personal autonomy: People are not relativistic about stop signs, about
the roundness of the earth, about who won the Super Bowl, or about the stock
market. People are not relativists about labels on prescription bottles (“that’s true
for the pharmacist but not for me”). They do not claim that “Paris may be in
France for some people but not for others.”

People are primarily relativists about God and morality. Clearly, the existence of
God — the Cosmic Authority — is a game-changer. He has a claim on our lives. If
the relativist’s motivation is personal autonomy or “freedom” rather than truth,
then God is a perceived threat who constricts them. Now, bad motivations don’t
disprove relativism. They remind us not to assume relativists just need basic
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logic lessons to “fix” them. No, they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say,
“Whatever” — and walk away.

b. Relativists Become Moral Absolutists When It Comes to Their Rights

and Their Property. When it comes to ethics, if people think that torturing
babies for fun or raping is “right for some people but not others,” they have not
reflected very deeply on the basis for morality. Such people do not need an
argument; they need help.

Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland has written about an illuminating encounter

with a student at the University of Vermont.3 Moreland was speaking in a dorm,
and a relativistic student who lived there told him, “Whatever is true for you is
true for you and whatever is true for me is true for me. If something works for
you because you believe it, that’s great. But no one should force his or her views
on other people since everything is relative.” As Moreland left, he unplugged the
student’s stereo and started out the door with it.

The student protested: “Hey, what are you doing? … You can’t do that.”

Moreland replied, “You’re not going to force on me the belief that it is wrong to
steal your stereo, are you?” He then went on to point out to the student that,
when it’s convenient, people say they don’t care about sexual morality or
cheating on exams. But they become moral absolutists in a hurry when someone
steals their things or violates their rights. That is, they are selective moral
relativists.

Speaking at an open forum in Oswego, New York, one wintry night, I addressed a
young woman’s charge that I was “ethnocentric.” (Of course, she believed that it
was morally wrong for anyone to be ethnocentric.) Why? Because I believed my
morality should be imposed on everyone else.

I replied, “If you were walking down a dark alley where an attacker was waiting
to rape you, but there was also a bystander who would be willing to help, would
you want the bystander to impose his morality on your attacker?”

Noticeably shaking, she shot back, “You’re distorting what I’m saying.”

I said, “Not at all. My point is that it’s easy to be a relativist when evil is out there
and not bothering me. But when someone violates my rights — when someone
violates me — then I recognize this is wrong.”

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At Kennesaw State University near Atlanta, my lecture topic was: “When Racism
and Bigotry Are Okay.”4 The school newspaper did not want to advertise my
“intolerant” talk. Thankfully, an editor explained, “You can’t be a relativist and
oppose racism and bigotry. If so, you are not really a relativist.

Let’s draw some strands together. First, relativism is a belief of convenience; it

makes no intellectual or moral demands on us. Why struggle with intellectual or
moral challenges? Relativism is really just lazy thinking.

Second, truth is inescapable. While in high school my daughter, Valerie, didn’t

raise her hand when the teacher asked the class, “How many of you believe
there’s no such thing as truth?” When her teacher asked why Valerie didn’t raise
her hand, she said, “If you say there’s no truth, you’re basically saying that it’s
true that there is no truth. To deny the truth is to affirm it.”

Third, knowledge is inescapable. People who say “you can’t know” apparently
know that you can’t know. Even skeptics — who question whether you can know
— still seem to know their minds should follow logical laws and that their minds
are not systematically deceiving them.

Fourth, even if we are limited and biased, this does not mean we cannot know
truly. Why think we have to know with 100 percent certainty? If people insist on
this, how can they know — or show — that knowledge requires 100 percent
certainty? They can’t.

Fifth, we find ourselves bumping up against reality all the time — traffic jams,
cancer, AIDS in Africa. We have no control over these realities. These things are
not just true for some people but not for others. If so, relativism becomes an
easy way to get rid of the world’s leading problems: “AIDS or pollution may be a
problem for some people but not for me.” No, relativism is simply out of touch
with reality.

Notes

1. Barna Group, “Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truth on Feelings,” 12 February 2002, (accessed May
2, 2013).

2. Maurice Cranston, “Toleration,” in Paul Edwards, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 8 (New York:
Macmillan/Free Press, 1967), 143.

3. J.P. Moreland, Love Your God With All Your Mind (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997), 153,54.

4. While my topic was provocative, the substance of the lecture condemned racism/bigotry on the basis
of moral absolutes.