Relativism and The Principle of Sufficient Reason; or Felix Oppenheim vs Leo Strauss

    Absolutists often adopt another line of attack against their relativist foes; they brand relativism as socially harmful if not outright subversive. Even if this were the case, this would obviously be no objection against the validity of the relativist thesis. To argue this way would be like questioning the validity of nuclear physics by pointing to the H-bomb.

    I myself would fall into a similar trap were I to say that relativism must be beneficial because it is true. While I share J. S. Mill's high regard for the propagation of knowledge, I realize that this endeavor may come into conflict with other social goals which I consider at least as important or even more desirable.

    To claim that relativism is harmful makes no sense unless one specifies: harmful to the pursuit of what goal? Curiously, but not surprisingly, absolutists tend to consider relativism incompatible with whatever goals they adjudge demonstrably valuable. Thus value-absolutists who are also political absolutists (i.e., who claim that the values underlying political absolutism are the "true" values) maintain that relativism is dangerous because it promotes democratic values. Absolutists who believe that the de way of life can be proved to be the best often hold that a subjectivist be a "true" democrat. The latter thesis is based on arguments such as the following: if good and evil is not a matter of objective knowledge, then everything is a matter of indifference. The relativist must therefore be tolerant of every ethical viewpoint, even of doctrines which command the overthrow of democracy. Or still worse: if there is no justice, it does not matter how one acts; so one may just as well climb on the bandwagon. Thus relativism becomes akin to nihilism, cynicism, and opportunism.8

    Actually, it is not relativism but a certain naturalistic brand of absolutism which leads to such conclusions. If what is considered just in a given society determines what is just in that society, then apartheid is demonstrably as just in South Africa as segregation is unjust in certain parts of the United States, while in other sections where opinion on racial issues is divided everyone may do as he pleases.

Relativism is an epistemological theory which denies that anything can be shown to be intrinsically good or bad - or indifferent. The relativist theory that science cannot determine whether racial discrimination is intrinsically just or unjust also denies the status of a scientific statement to the view that discrimination is right here and wrong there, or that it is neither right nor wrong. A relativist may, without inconsistency, favor discrimination or equality, and practice intolerance, tolerance, or over-tolerance.

At this point, absolutists are likely to shift the argument from the logical to the psychological level and maintain that it is psychologically impossible to commit oneself whole-heartedly to any set of values unless one is convinced that it corresponds to the objectively valuable.10 This thesis can easily be refuted by the evidence of the history of ideas. For example, while it is true that in England and the United States liberalism and even socialism have traditionally been linked to the value-absolutism of Protestantism and natural law, in continental Europe these same ideas have been promoted principally by relativists. Yet there too the values of liberty and human dignity have had their heroes and even their martyrs.

Perhaps most people have a healthy unconcern for philosophical problems. One tends to commit oneself to certain ultimate goals because one feels strongly about them, and does not ask whether they can be proved to be the "true" values.--Felix Oppenheim (1955) "In defense of relativism." Western Political Quarterly 8.3 (1955): 415-416.

After my last Digression, Daniel Dennett pointed out to me that Felix Oppenheim was the son of Paul Oppenheim of Hempel & Oppenheim (1948) fame. One might add Oppenheim & Putnam (1958) fame and (inter alia) Bedau & Oppenheim (1961) fame, too. The story of Paul Oppenheim's collaboration with those who passed through Princeton is worth telling. Turns out Felix Oppenheim had a son, Paul, who also went to Tufts and studied with Dennett (well before my time).

This post originates in my interest in finding critical engagements with Leo Strauss within analytic philosophy in the post-WWII era (triggered by (recall here; here; here; and especially this one) an invite by Sander Verhaegh). So, here I am interested in Felix Oppenheim's criticism of Leo Strauss. For, as he notes himself in notes 8&10 (which I left in), Strauss' (1953) Natural Right and History (hereafter NRH) is the explicit target (alongside John H. Hallowell's (1954) The Moral Foundations of Democracy, which is identified in note 9). Strauss' NRH originates in the 1949 Walgreen lectures (delivered at The University of Chicago); some of these were published thereafter separately as expanded journal articles and then reincorporated into NRH.

But before I get to Strauss' position, and Oppenheim's criticism of it, it's probably useful to say a bit about the nature of Oppenheim's relativism. (Somewhat sadly, Oppenheim goes unmentioned in the SEP entry on relativism.)* In this 1955 essay, Oppenheim is committed to the claim that "words such as "good," "desirable," and "valuable" do not designate properties of things or events or actions, but express the speaker's subjective preferences." (411) To be sure his "relativism is opposed to value-objectivism, not to objectivism in science. If "objectivity" means possibility of objective, i.e., intersubjective, verification, relativism denies the objectivity of intrinsic value-judgments, but not the objectivity of empirical statements." (411)**

An auxiliary claim that matters a lot to Oppenheim's argument (and which is visible in the material I quoted above) is that "logically, there is no necessary connection between any particular value-judgment and either absolutism or relativism." (412) I suspect this is key to Oppenheim's argument against Strauss.

There is, of course, a lot to be said about the widespread popularity of a whole variety of kinds of relativisms mid-century within the golden age of analytic philosophy (and also without), and the subsequent demise in popularity of such doctrines among the professionals. But let's turn to Strauss. 

The whole quoted passage at the top of my post is from a section titled, "RELATIVISM Is NOT "SUBVERSIVE."" (I return to that title below.) In it, Oppenheim explicitly takes aim at two of Strauss claims. Both of these claims can be found in the "Introduction" of Strauss's NRH. It's important to mention that because in that context Strauss does not offer his detailed arguments for the claims (so they will seem rather arbitrary). And it is a bit peculiar that Oppenheim ignores here the rest of Strauss' arguments developed later in the book.

Even so, there is something interesting to be said about the state of the debate between Strauss and Oppenheim. The first Strauss passage [I] is quoted in note 8. 

[I] 8 "If our principles have no other support than our blind preferences, everything a man is willing to dare will be permissible. The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism - nay, it is identical with nihilism." [Oppenheim cites p. 5 from the 1953 edition NRH; in my 1965 edition it is p. 4]

It's worth noting that Strauss does not claim here that relativism leads to "cynicism or opportunism." Even so, it is not obvious why nihilism follows from the rejection of natural right of from thinking that our principles are derived from our preferences.

The second [II] is quoted in note 10:

[II] 10"Once we realize that the principles of our actions have no other support than our blind choice, we really do not believe in them any more. We cannot wholeheartedly act upon them any more. We cannot live any more as responsible beings. [Oppenheim cites p. 6 in the 1953 edition NRH; as it is in the 1965 ed.]

In fact, Strauss's second quote [II] helps start to explain why Strauss thinks nihilism follows from the kind of relativism somebody like Oppenheim defends. Obviously, it's not obvious why Strauss seems to be committed to such a dramatic slippery slope argument. But it becomes intelligible if we recognize that, fundamentally, there is a suppressed premise that something needs to ground the principles of our actions or these grounds (and so on) to halt the slide down the slope. So, lurking in Strauss' position is a kind of appeal to some version of the PSR.

That Strauss is committed to this is not obvious in context of the introduction to NRH. But later, in the long chapter 2 on his critique of Weber's account of the distinction between fact and values (which is the chapter that Ernest Nagel criticizes (recall here; here), in the context of ascribing to Weber the idea that "science or philosophy rests, in the last analysis, not on evident premises that are at the disposal of man as man but on faith" he goes on to claim: 

By regarding the quest for truth as valuable in itself, one admits that one is making a preference which no longer has a good or sufficient reason. One recognizes therewith the principle that preferences do not need good or sufficient reasons.--Strauss (NHR 1965 ed), p. 72.

There is much to be said about this account as a reconstruction of Weber, and as a diagnosis of the effects of Weber's position. But what does seem clear is that Strauss associated the rejection of what Oppenheim calls 'absolutism' with the claim that preferences are ungrounded or at least not grounded in sufficient reason. 

In fact, being alert to this feature of Strauss' position also helps explain the recurring use of "blind" in modifying "preferences" and "choice" in the passages Oppenheim quotes in the notes. (This use of 'blind' echoes the kind of language early modern critics of epicureanism would use.) Such preferences and choices are treated as unguided, and so de facto random. 

Interestingly enough Oppenheim agrees. Because Oppenheim claims that his flavor of "Relativism does not question the possibility of explaining or giving reasons for people's valuations; relativism denies the possibility of validating or giving grounds for them." (412; emphasis in Oppenheim) So, not unlike Russell, Oppenheim rejects the PSR (at least in the context of values). 

In fact, the first paragraphs quoted at the top of the post, which take on unnamed critics that de facto [III] diagnose an inductive risk from holding relativism (recall the denial that relativism is subversive in the title of the section), are also directed at something like Strauss' meta-philosophy. For one of the commitments that runs through Strauss' philosophy is a concern over the inductive risk(s) of philosophical positions.+ 

Because I have gone on quite a bit already, I leave it to the reader to evaluate Oppenheim's evidence as arguments against the bits of Strauss that Oppenheim wishes to tackle here. However, Oppenheim returns to his disagreement with Strauss in a 1957 APSR article, that I discuss before long. To be continued.

 

*Felix Oppenheim does get mentioned in SEP in other entries.

**He goes on to claim: "Relativism does not question the possibility of explaining or giving reasons for people's valuations; relativism denies the possibility of validating or giving grounds for them." (412)

+For evidence of this claim see, especially, the (very critical) chapter on Strauss in Stephen Holmes' (1993) The Anatomy of Antiliberalism,.