The truth in relativism?

[This post is a follow-up to this comment and subsequent comments here and here. Knowing this won't make what follows crystal clear, but it might help.]

Bertrand Russell writes (about Plato's political philosophy):

Two general questions arise in confronting Plato with modern ideas. The first is: Is there such a thing as "wisdom"? The second is: Granted that there is such a thing, can any constitution be devised that will give it political power?

"Wisdom," in the sense supposed, would not be any kind of specialized skill, such as is possessed by the shoemaker or the physician or the military tactician. It must be something more generalized than this, since its possession is supposed to make a man capable of governing wisely. I think Plato would have said that it consists in knowledge of the good, and would have supplemented this definition with the Socratic doctrine that no man sins wittingly, from which it follows that whoever knows what is good does what is right. To us, such a view seems remote from reality.

That seems right. As does this:

It should be observed, further, that the view which substitutes the consensus of opinion for an objective standard has certain consequences that few would accept. What are we to say of scientific innovators like Galileo, who advocate an opinion with which few agree, but finally win the support of almost everybody? They do so by means of arguments, not by emotional appeals or state propaganda or the use of force. This implies a criterion other than the general opinion. In ethical matters, there is something analogous in the case of the great religious teachers. Christ taught that it is not wrong to pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, but that it is wrong to hate your enemies. Such ethical innovations obviously imply some standard other than majority opinion, but the standard, whatever it is, is not objective fact, as in a scientific question. This problem is a difficult one, and I do not profess to be able to solve it.

The first of these passages raises a question about what a philosopher might be. Surely not a lover of wisdom if wisdom does not exist. The first sentence of the second passage points out that the consensus of opinion is against the idea that the consensus of opinion is the standard of truth/rightness (i.e. the idea that I think of as relativism). In other words, as is well known, simple relativism undermines itself.

Rejecting platonism in favor of something like relativism leads to the idea that there is a standard other than majority opinion, but not an objective fact of the kind found in science. I think this is right. And it suggests also that philosophy is, or at least perhaps might be, the teasing out of this kind implication and the clarification of its not being an instance of various kinds of mistake (such as platonism and relativism) despite appearances to the contrary. This "something like relativism" rejects views that "seem to us remote from reality" and that "few would accept." Not in a superficial way though. It does not, for instance, simply take platonism and then substitute the consensus of opinion for an objective standard. That would lead to a conservatism that few would accept. Instead it investigates our language from the inside, looking not so much at opinions as they might be reported to outside observers but at what we say and would say. And we can know what we would say because the 'we' in question includes us. Of course sometimes we might be divided, and then one can only speak for those who think like oneself, but this need not be a big problem in many cases.

This is what I mean when I say that relativism properly thought through leads to ordinary language philosophy. I can't say that I have properly thought this through myself, though, so I could be wrong. Or it might have been said much better long ago. Or both.

A kind of timeless present

In comments here Philip Cartwright rants writes:

This brings us to the link between history and philosophy. You've right that they're not the same thing, but the more I consider it the more I think it distorts philosophical ideas to suppose they can be studied as a single discussion taking place in a kind of timeless present. That notion (for me) is itself one of the ideologically-loaded assumptions of philosophy. 

On the one hand, I agree. I think it's relevant when studying Plato's thoughts on politics to know that a relatively democratic Athens executed Socrates and lost in a terrible war to the undemocratic Sparta. I think it's important when studying Aristotle to know that when he says plants have souls he doesn't mean by 'soul' what we might think he means. It's worth knowing who and what people are responding to when we read their works, and worth knowing the language they are writing in, both in terms of being careful about translation and in terms of knowing technical terms and so on.

On the other hand, what are you going to do? If we are interested in more, or something other, than intellectual history, then we have to read these works as part of a conversation with us. And we are stuck in the present. I can't make myself a 17th century Frenchman in order to understand Descartes. I can't make myself share his concerns. This limits the extent to which I can understand him and his work, if only in the sense that I will not be able to relate to it as a well educated 17th century Frenchman might. But it doesn't follow than I cannot get anything out of his work.

With (or even without) a little knowledge of the Reformation and the beginnings of modern science I can find concerns either of my own or at least that I can imagine myself having expressed in his work, and take seriously his attempts to deal with them. Understanding Descartes does not mean being Descartes, so I think it's a mistake to think either that we simply cannot understand him because he belongs to another time and place or that we can understand him if only we immerse ourselves sufficiently in that time and place. A field trip to La Flèche will do the trick! No, it won't. But it is worth keeping in mind that he comes from another time and place (though not, I think, another world) partly to keep ourselves alive to the possibility that we might be misunderstanding (especially if he seems to have made a stupid mistake) and partly to increase ourselves (to fend off smallness) by imagining ourselves in very different circumstances (increasing our sense of possibility) and by coming to see how like us temporal and spatial foreigners can be (yes Descartes lived a long time ago, no he wasn't therefore stupid). 

It's not so much that Plato thought as he did because of the history of Athens (after all, not every Athenian believed in his ideal republic) but that we might not think as we do about politics if our recent history had been otherwise. I doubt it's healthy to reduce others to mere products of their times, but it probably is healthy to see ourselves more that way, i.e. as products of our times. As long we don't just fatalistically and conservatively accept this as a destiny there is no point trying to overcome. It's also probably healthy to see others as others, not simply as easily 'relatable' versions of ourselves, but I imagine the strangeness is most effectively experienced after the familiarity or by way of finding that relatability breaks down here and there.      

Presumably quoting or paraphrasing Wittgenstein, Bouwsma says (September 14th 1950):

About this time we sat on a bench and he began to talk about reading Plato.  Plato's arguments!  His pretence of discussion!  The Socratic irony!  The Socratic method!  The arguments were bad, the pretense of discussion too obvious, the Socratic irony distasteful---why can't a man be forthright and say what's on his mind?  As for the Socratic method in the dialogues, it simply isn't there.  The interlocutors are ninnies, never have any arguments of their own, say "Yes" and "No" as Socrates pleases they should.  They are a stupid lot.  No one really contends against Socrates.  Perhaps Plato is no good, perhaps he's very good.  How should I know?  But if he is good, he's doing something which is foreign to us.  We do not understand.  Perhaps if I could read Greek!

That's one way to read Plato: you read and try to make sense, but in the end conclude that he is too foreign for us to judge his work. But Wittgenstein draws this conclusion because he can't find anything good in Plato's philosophy (he likes the myths, but not the arguments). If you can't judge something to be nice don't judge it to be anything at all. If you can find something good in Plato, presumably then, Wittgenstein would have no objection to your judging that Plato is good. Other things being equal, etc.

Here's more Bouwsma (on Wittgenstein on Descartes):

On Thursday evening we met at Black's. It was my turn to introduce the subject. I introduced: Cogito, ergo sum. After I had finished, W. took it up. "Of course, if _______ now told me such a thing, I should say: Rubbish! But the real question is something different. How did Descartes come to do this?" I asked, did he mean what leads up to it in Descartes' thinking, and the answer was: "No. One must do this for oneself."

I'm not sure exactly what this means. Presumably you couldn't ignore the text completely and still claim to know how Descartes came to do this. You need the text to tell you what this is. But you need more than just the text. You need to bring yourself in, your own thinking. Thinking of Descartes as a mere product of his times is a) irrelevant to doing this, b) possibly harmful, in the sense that it would undermine your ability to imagine yourself into his words (where imagining involves not picturing but actual thinking, i.e. meaning the thoughts you think), and c) the kind of bad faith that Sartre associates with Antisemitism and other kinds of racism (because it denies the free will of the person in question). Knowing some history, etc. might help in identifying the this but it won't help otherwise. You're on your own there. And in the present, always.

Plato's cave

Nice video adaptations here and here.

Compare the idea that for the unenlightened to understand nirvana is like tadpoles trying to understand what it means to live on dry land. Also compare Matthew 13:44:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

And then there's Wittgenstein's idea that nothing is hidden; yet we do not see. Which may or may not be related, of course. (Or rather: may be related more or less directly.)