180337 PS Varieties of Relativism (2009W)

Commentary: Over the past few decades, relativism has been a hot and trendy topic, especially within American universities. On the one hand, it is claimed that a large group of university professors-often inhabiting much maligned literature departments-have uncritically accepted and are now dogmatically preaching the relativist mantra in the name of promoting a post-colonial ethic of cultural diversity and mutual acceptance. On the other hand, philosophy professors, especially those trained in the so-called analytic tradition, are often dismayed by the fact that their academic colleagues seem to be promulgating a doctrine that, on their account, few thoughtful individuals would accept, namely the relativist claim that all views are equally valid. As we will see, the debate becomes particularly contentious once this claim is used to undermine the authority of the natural sciences.
In this course, we will turn to a group of philosophers who are often taken, justifiably or not, to have subscribed to some form of relativism-Protagoras, Nietzsche, and Rorty (and possibly Goodman and Feyerabend). Here we will try to figure out just what sort of relativism, if any, these thinkers are promoting, examine the degree to which their positions either underwrite or diverge from the understanding of relativism mentioned above, and work through the philosophical difficulties that emerge in each case. The course will conclude with a close and critical reading of Paul Boghossian's recent account of why relativism is misguided.
Didactic Method: The class will be a combination of lecture and discussion. Typically, one or two class periods will be devoted to a lecture-based introduction to the author at hand. The following period will then be devoted to class discussion. In order to facilitate class discussion, students will be asked to write a one-page response paper to a specific question due at the beginning of each discussion-based class.