Arts & International Affairs: Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2018 | Page 82

VALUES AND PLURALISM IN INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL RELATIONS
“When, however, this levelling out, this relativism, is articulated in terms of entire cultures,
it then places a cognitively cumulative culture on the very same level as stagnant
and self-revering ones” (1984:251).
So, does the idea that acknowledging the relativity of one’s beliefs makes judgement logically
impossible or incoherent? On this view, if I accept that my normative beliefs are
the product of my culture, and if I accept that other, different beliefs are the products of
other, different cultures, then I have no logical basis for claiming that my beliefs are either
superior (or inferior) to anyone else’s. The lack of a universal standard of evaluation
makes judgement impossible. This is a nihilistic position.
So is the idea of Nietzsche and others that recognising the relativity of our moral beliefs
will slowly sap our willingness to act in accordance with them. If that is true, once we
lose the idea that certain moral duties are universal obligations, and instead come to
believe that they are merely contingent and context-relative ways of life, some combination
of selfishness, ignorance, and apathy will lead us either into brutality or into a numb
mediocrity. Discouraging.
Practical Cooperation
Practically, I have no choice but to proceed with my existing normative beliefs, whatever
they are. However, the recognition that our beliefs are relative, does not do away with
the human and social needs that those beliefs addressed. Forms of life are never logically
consistent systems, but are accretions of habits, practices, games, mistakes, misunderstandings,
and so on. Just as recognising our inability to know whether our perceptions
are accurate, or our knowledge true, does not make it either necessary or possible for us
to do away with them, so, too, recognising that our beliefs are contingent does not make
it necessary or possible for us to discard them. I cannot pursue what I recognise as a decent
life without having some beliefs about the subjects of morality, and I am not free to
jettison or replace wholesale my existing conception of a decent human life.
My acknowledgement of the relativity of my beliefs or values may inspire me to reflect
on their content, but it may not. What it will not, and cannot, do is to cast me loose from
all beliefs. And since judgement is comparing my beliefs against my experience, if I have
beliefs, I will continue to make judgements, including moral judgements.
Wittgenstein called upon us to be awake to the normative dimensions of our forms of
life, to pay attention to the language-games that we actually play, to refuse to be unconsciously
captured by any particular picture of how things “must be.” The goal is to strike
the difficult balance between the inescapable necessity of having and acting on values
and beliefs, and the intellectual rigour and flexibility that come from never believing
that things must be as we currently think they are. Wittgenstein calls upon us to actually
live our ethical and political lives, whatever their content, and to do so with our eyes
open.
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