Whose Justice? Which Rationality? [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Section 2
Relativism

Like the Nietzschean critics of the arrogance of the
Enlightenment, MacIntyre accepts that there is no absolute standpoint from
which we can arrive at absolute moral truths. Each of us must view the world
from his own position in history and society. It is this admission that led
many critics of After Virtue to
accuse him of relativism or historicism, and it is largely in response to this
criticism that Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? was written.

Unlike the Nietzscheans, or genealogists as MacIntyre refers [6] to those often called post‑
modernists, MacIntyre does not accept
the claim that because we are bound to our finite perspectives conditioned by
history and social position, we are barred from certainty or absolute truth.
Rather, he holds that man has the ability to understand rival perspectives even
when one cannot be translated into the idiom of the other. On the basis of this
understanding, rational evaluation and judgment can be made with regard to the
strengths and weaknesses of the rival world views and ideologies.

MacIntyre extends this discussion in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? beyond
ethics, which was the focus of his attention in After Virtue, to the very principles of rationality, thus bringing
the insights of his ethical thought to bear on epistemology. There are two
major themes developed in Whose Justice?
Which Rationality?: first, there is a continuation of the critique of
liberalism found in After Virtue coupled
with an affirmation of a religious perspective; and second, there is a
rejection of relativism coupled with an insistence on the significance of
historical considerations for the adjudication of disputes across traditions.

When two traditions of thought are so different that
what is considered self‑evident or obvious in one tradition is considered
dubious or incomprehensible in the other, the very principles of reason come
under question. In contemporary Western thought, what are often considered to be
principles of reason are those which have proven indispensable to the natural
sciences and mathematics. If one wants to judge whether this view of
rationality is correct or that, for example, found in the works of Muslim
philosophers, one must be very careful to avoid begging the question by using
the very principles in one's evaluation that are under dispute. Relativists
have considered such controversies to be irresolvable. They claim that we are
stuck inside our own world views, unable to make judgments on any of them.
MacIntyre distinguishes two forms of relativism, which he terms relativist and
perspectivalist. The relativist claims that there can be no rationality as
such, but only rationality relative to the standards of some particular
tradition. The perspectivalist claims that the central beliefs of a tradition
are not to be considered as true or false, but as providing different,
complementary perspectives for envisaging the realities about which they speak
to us. MacIntyre argues that both the relativist and the perspectivalist are
wrong. They are wrong because they fail to admit the absolute timeless
character of the truth, and would replace truth by what is often called
warranted assertibility.7 Instead of truth, they hold that the best we can attain
is the right or warrant to assert various statements in various circumstances.

MacIntyre's solution to the problem of how to reach
absolute truth from a historically limited position is that attention to
history itself may reveal the superiority of one tradition over another with
respect to a given topic.

To have
passed through an epistemological crisis successfully enables the adherents of
a tradition of enquiry to rewrite its history in a more insightful way And such
a history of a particular tradition provides not only a way of identifying the
continuities in virtue of which that tradition of enquiry has survived and
flourished as one and the same tradition, but also of identifying more
accurately that structure of justification which underpins whatever claims to
truth are made within it, claims which are more and other than claims to
warranted assertibility. [7] The concept of warranted assertibility always has
application only at some particular time and place in respect of standards then
prevailing at some particular stage in the development of a tradition of
enquiry, and a claim that such and such is warrantedly assertible always,
therefore, has to make implicit or explicit references to such times and
places. The concept of truth, however, is timeless. [8]

MacIntyre argues that since a tradition can fail to
pull through an epistemological crisis on its own standards, the relativist is
wrong if he thinks that each tradition must always vindicate itself. MacIntyre
further argues that there are cases of cultural encounter in which one must
come to admit the superiority of an alien culture in some regard, because it
explains why the crisis occurred and does not suffer from the same defects
present in one's own culture. It is in this way that the people of Rome could
come to accept Christianity, and the people of Iran, Islam. Each people saw
that their own traditions had reached a point of crisis, a point at which
further progress could only be made by the adoption of a new religion. The
relativist claims that there is no way in which a tradition can enter into
rational debate with another, "But if this were so, then there could be no
good reason to give one's allegiance to the standpoint of any one tradition
rather to that of any other. [9] To the contrary, MacIntyre claims that the
question of which tradition to which one is to give one's allegiance is far
from arbitrary, and the intellectual struggle of all those who have changed
their minds about the correctness of an intellectual or spirit" tradition
is more than ample evidence that the question, "Which side are you
on?" is one which requires rational evaluation, however much other factors
may come into play. Perhaps MacIntyre is reflecting here on his own brief
membership in the Communist Party and subsequent rejection of Marxism and
conversion to Catholicism. One who adopts an intellectual position must always
ask himself if it can adequately respond to criticism, criticism which can
mount to produce what may be termed an epistemological crisis. "It is in
respect of their adequacy or inadequacy in their responses to epistemological
crises that traditions are vindicated or fail to be vindicated." [10]

MacIntyre also argues that the position of the
relativist is self‑defeating. The relativist pretends to issue his
challenge from a neutral ground where different traditions may be compared and
truth may be proclaimed relative to each of them. But this is as much a claim
to absolute truth as any other. This argument and others similar to it which
are to be found in Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? have provoked penetrating criticism. John Haldane has argued
that one need not assume that there is some neutral ground from which to issue
the relativist claim. [11] Within an intellectual tradition, one may observe
that there are other incommensurable traditions and decide that relativism best
explains this. MacIntyre accepts Haldane's point, admitting that the case
against relativism in Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? needs to be amended. At the same time, 'he points out
that within every major intellectual tradition, various claims are presented
about morals and rationality as absolutely true. The problem is then raised as
to how this anti‑relativistic commitment to truth can coexist with the
recognition of rival intellectual traditions with their different standards of
rationality and morality.

MacIntyre's solution is that common standards are to
be sought, even where none exist, by dialectical interchange between the rival
viewpoints. One tradition of inquiry will be in a position to uphold the truth
of its claims against rivals in which those claims are not recognized when it
develops the intellectual apparatus to explain the rival viewpoint, and why the
disagreement has arisen, and why the rival is incorrect. In other words,
through intellectual conflict between traditions, a tradition can vindicate
itself only when it can enrich its own conceptual resources sufficiently to
explain the errors of its rivals. This kind of conflict and progress is only
possible when there is a commitment to finding the truth. With relativism there
can be no intellectual advancement, because there is no attempt made to
adjudicate among different theoretical viewpoints, and without the attempt to
reach a more comprehensive position in which truth and falsity can be
distinguished, traditions cannot evolve rationally, nor can they maintain their
previous truth claims.

MacIntyre sees relativism as tempting those who
despair of intellectual advancement, and for the sake of intellectual
advancement, he sees it as a temptation that must be avoided.

MacIntyre dismisses the perspectivist position with
the rebuff, "theirs is not so much a conclusion about truth as an
exclusion from it and thereby from rational debate." [12] The perspectivalist,
like the reductive religious pluralist, states that rival traditions provide
different views of the same reality, and none can be considered absolutely true
or false. MacIntyre objects that the traditions really do conflict with one
another, and the fact that they are rivals itself bears testimony to their
substantive disagreements over what is true and false. The claim that there is
no ultimate truth of the matter is really just a way of avoiding the work that
needs to be done in order to determine exactly where and in what respects in
each of the rival traditions the truth lies, and when the differences in the
rivals is so deep that the very principles of rationality are called into
question, the rivalry produces an epistemological crisis, but even here, the
need and duty to provide a rational evaluation of the rivals remains.

MacIntyre contends that epistemological crisis
occurs when different traditions with different languages confront one another.
Those who learn to think in both languages come to the understanding that there
are things in one language for which the other does not have the expressive
resources, and thereby they discover a flaw in the deficient tradition. In this
way he shows how rational evaluation of different traditions is possible,
although this evaluation itself must begin from within a specific tradition.
His emphasis on the fact that the starting point of our inquiry is tradition‑bound
is comparable to a common theme among writers in the hermeneutic tradition,
such as Gadamer. The fantasy of universal standards of reason to which all
rational beings must submit by virtue of being rational has been abandoned.
This separates MacIntyre from traditional writers, as Thomas McCarthy has
observed:

Even arguments like Alasdair MacIntyre's for the
superiority of premodern traditions are not themselves traditional arguments
but the traditionalistic arguments of hyperreflexive modems. [13]

What distinguishes MacIntyre from others who share
his sensitivity to context dependency is his robust sense of the truth. The
incommensurability of competing traditions, according to MacIntyre, is not as
absolute as some have imagined. Logic retains authority, even if its principles
are disputed, and what is sought is truth, and although he rejects
correspondence theories of truth that would pair judgments to facts (because he
considers the concept of fact to be an invention of seventeenth‑century
European thought), the theory of truth to which he gives his allegiance is
still a correspondence theory. [14] In response to a sympathetic comparison
between his position and views current among certain philosophers of science,
MacIntyre objects:

I had hoped that what I had said
about truth in enquiry in Chapter 18 of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
would have made it adequately clear that I regard any attempt to eliminate the
notion of truth from that of enquiry as bound to fail. It is in part for this
reason that I regard the Nietzschean tradition as always in danger of lapsing
into fatal incoherence. [15]

MacIntyre's solution to the problem of relativism is
especially important for Muslims because it offers a way to break the deadlock
between Muslim intellectuals who, over impressed with the intellectual
traditions of the West, deny that Islam asserts any absolute truths that man is
capable of grasping, and those Mama' who insist on the self‑evidence of
the fundamental troths of their own traditions without seeing that such claims
are ineffective against rival systems of thought in which there are profound
differences about what, if anything, is to be considered self‑evident.
The solution MacIntyre offers is one in which there is hope that the absolute
truths of Islam can be rationally defended against opponents as certain, but
only by developing the Islamic intellectual traditions to the point that they
are able to explain the successes as well as the failures of their rivals.

Notes:

[6]. In his Three
Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry:
Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1990).

[7]. Whose
Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 169.

[8].
Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 363.

[9].
Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 366.

[10].
Ibid.

[11]. See John Haldane, "MacIntyre's Thomist
Revival: What Next?" in After
MacIntyre, pp. 96‑99, and MacIntyre's response in the same volume,
pp. 294‑297. Haldane is Director of the Center for Philosophy and Public
Affairs at the University of St. Andrews.

[12]. Whose Justice? Which
Rationality?, p.
368.

[13]. Thomas McCarthy, "Philosophy and Critical
Theory," in David Couzens Hoy and Thomas McCarthy, Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 47. McCarthy is an
expert in contemporary German philosophy and social thought at Northwestern
University.

[14].
See Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p.
356f.

[15]. After MacIntyre, p. 297 298. Here Madntyre is responding to the
Hegel scholar, Robert Stern of the University of Sheffield.