Hi Marsha,
Marsha:
... To me 'Man is the measure of all
things.' means that Protagoras, and the early Sophists, were
relativists and
RMP agrees with them. Not the "source" of all things, but the
measurer of
all things, meaning measured relative to their experience of them,
participators. From Wiki: 'The term (relativism) often refers to
truth
relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute
truths, i.e.,
that truth is always relative to some particular frame of
reference, such as
a language or a culture.' And not an ethical relativism where
anything
goes, but one where man should participate using intelligence to
determine
the best course of action, arête.
Steve:
I think we should always defend ourselves against the charge of
relativism since it is used as an epithet and a way of dismissing
someone without having to address their arguments. While we can like
the slogan "man is the measure of all things" because it captures the
notion that unlike theists and rationalists we are not looking for a
great, non-human, ahistorical power to tell us right from wrong, we
also still deny being relativists because we deny the absolute-
relative distinctions on the same groups that we deny the objective-
subjective distinction. It's the same thing as not wanting to be
called a subjectivist.
Pirsig later brings back the terms subjective and objective without
their metaphysical baggage where subjective is just taken to mean
social and intellectual patterns or "things that are hard to get
agreement about" and objective is taken to mean inorganic and
biological patterns or "things that are easy to get agreement about."
Absolute and relative could be retooled in the same way, but I still
think that we should avoid using such terms because doing so implies
accepting an SOM premise that we don't accept. We can just say that
some morals are easy to get agreement on and others not so much, and
we can argue our case for the morality of our position. When someone
has to say "well, some things are just wrong" or "it's wrong because
God says so," we don't have to take them to be absolutists so much as
having exhausted their conversational resources for making a case for
their point of view.
Best,
Steve
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