Can we Escape from Relativism?

One of the accusations most often thrown at postmodern social theory regards the question of relativism that I briefly touched upon under methodology above. And, overall, it is a fair accusation to make as Lyotard admitted when he imposed his own law of difference. How can we judge between competing positions without any criteria? Is there a right and wrong under postmodern thinking? And, critically, as planning implies some form of foresight in human affairs and collective choice, can there be a planning under postmodern thinking? The case for the prosecution has been put by Sayer who has summarised the postmodern perspective on agreement as being totally undermined by the view that knowledge is split into numerous self-contained, incommensurable, local discourses between which communication is impossible (1993: 323). As there is no appeal to any reality there can be no judgement either a priori or a posteriori. But we do in fact have commensurable theories and incommensurable ones simultaneously and, as Bhaskar has pointed out, to argue that there are two theories that clash and cannot be reconciled is to ignore what the theories are referring to. In other words, the postmodern focuses on the epistemological rather than the ontological question of truth. Now, this is a normative position and argument that basically comes down to a difference between ontological realism and a non-foundational epistemology. But the realists have a reasonable logical argument. As I have pointed out throughout this book, the claim that there is no foundational knowledge is a foundational claim itself. Truth has no correspondence to reality but is merely a matter of convention in postmodern eyes (Sayer, 1993: 324). However, like the foundational claim to non-foundation above, there is a binary opposite at work here in the extremes of realism and idealism. Looking beyond this semantic and normative ontological impasse, what are the practical implications of the postmodern penchant for relativism? The first point to make is that accepting that knowledge is provisional, socially constructed and fallible does not consequently entail leaping onto the postmodern relativist bandwagon. Neither does the opposite hold either. We do not have to sign up to the ideal of absolute truth or Platonic forms simply because we reject the idea of subjectivism. The extreme postmodern position points clearly towards an incommensurability of values, foundational principles and languages. But as a number of commentators have pointed out, the rejection of foundationalism does not automatically imply relativism – there are other less nihilistic alternatives. The postmodern can hold onto its fallible truths without relativism but it needs to accept that in the world in which we live anything does not go.