ABSTRACT
I Philosophers have a number of knock-down arguments against relativism in its more extreme or unguarded forms. One such response is to point out simply that relativists undermine their own position as soon as they state it as a matter of consistent doctrine. To say that ‘all truths are relative’ (or other variations on that theme) is inherently to claim that relativism is in some sense true, or closer to the truth than competing ideas of how to get there. Then again, the question ‘relative to what?’ is one that has to be sidestepped if the argument is not to contradict its own premisses. The very word implies that our truthclaims, though lacking any ultimate authority, still must be relative to something against which we measure the sheer multiplicity of viewpoints, languages, conceptual schemes, and so on. Of course, it is open to the relativist to argue that no such ultimate relation holds, that viewpoints are relative only to each other and not to some imaginary God’s-eye perspective which would finally put them in order. But still there is a problem as to where the relativist gets the authority for making any such claim. It is hard to see where his or her statements could issue from, if not from a standpoint somehow above all the shifting perspectives on offer.
