How to Teach Relativists   

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg 

Relativism is a university-bred doctrine which infects the minds of countless students, some of whom become politicians and judges.

Thus, while Jews were being slaughtered by suicide bombers, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an April 2001 interview with Ha’aretz that his son Omri taught him “not to think in terms of black and white.”   Has Mr. Sharon been tainted by relativism?  Has this doctrine influenced his failure to denounce the Palestinian Authority as “evil”?  Has it to some extent influenced his policy of self-restraint toward Palestinian terrorists—his reluctance to exact swift and sufficient vengeance against the murderers of his people?

How many decisions of Supreme Court President Aharon Barak have been influenced by relativism?  Did relativism underlie his quashing indictments of Arab Knesset members who incite Arabs to kill Jews? His legitimizing homosexuality and gay marriages?  His nullifying a law permitting the Film Censorship Board to ban pornographic movies by ruling that nothing can actually be declared pornography, as “one man’s pornography is another man’s art”?

How often have you heard the remark, “Everything is relative.” Or, “Who’s to say what’s good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful or ugly?”

Without denying borderline cases, how might one go about helping college students overcome this pernicious doctrine?  There is no one cure-all approach, but what follows may be helpful.

First, it should be understood that most students influenced by relativism are nonetheless decent; they really do not understand the ramifications of their relativism, that it is really a shameless doctrine.  Hence one approach to such students is through their own sense of shame.  Thus, when a student says, “Who’s to say what’s good or bad or beautiful or ugly?” the teacher might respond as follows:

“Why surely you are!  You surely know that such words as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ involve behavior. Surely you would not date a person who picks his (or her) nose in public, steals candy from children, beats up old ladies, and does what dogs do in public, but which decent people do in private?  Surely you and the vast majority of mankind would condemn such acts as disgusting or immoral.  And surely you will agree that the Mona Lisa is more beautiful than the witch in Grimm’s fairy tale?”

The preceding is not a refutation of relativism, but rather an initial approach to getting certain students to see that relativism has some ugly implications.  So let us go further.

Our initial approach was to arouse an emotional reaction from the student.  Now let’s approach his reason.

There are two ways of seeing, one with the eyes, the other with the mind.  Take a doctor and a layman, both looking at the face of the same person.  Whereas the layman sees nothing wrong with that person, the doctor sees the onset of a serious illness.  Unlike the layman, the doctor sees with his mind as well as with his eyes.  Similarly, when a scientist and a layman look through a microscope or a telescope.

Now, just as the mind must be trained to recognize and understand the early symptoms of a disease, the structure of a cell, the order of a galaxy, so the mind must be trained–early in life–to see goodness and badness, the beautiful and the ugly.

An individual raised in a brothel is not likely to praise chastity or modesty.  Do not expect people incessantly exposed to pornography to be refined, either in speech or in conduct.  When what is distinctively human is reduced to the animal level, a people so educated are not likely to appreciate what is noble or respect the sanctity of human life.

The Jewish people are known for being kind, modest, and merciful.  This is to be expected of a Torah people.  See how they care even for their Arab enemies. Contrast their enemies, the people of the Koran. Notice their cruelty, and not only to Jews, but even to each other, as was seen in Iraq, and as may be seen throughout the Arab-Islamic world.

I mention these “cultural” phenomena because relativism flourishes only in democracies.  There the principle of equality extends even to the mind, such that all opinions regarding how man should live are deemed equal.  If so, what right does the United States have to “democratize” any Islamic regime?

In view of the above, the student should begin to suspect that his relativism is not a doctrine to which he came as a result of his own independent, philosophical inquiry.  Rather, it came to him by a process of sociological osmosis.  This means that he has been brainwashed by the media of education, especially by the social sciences and the humanities wherein relativism flourishes.

The student should be informed about the uniqueness of Abraham, the first Jew, who rejected the polytheism—the ancient relativism—of his society.  The point is this:  The Jew is that world-historical personality who stands apart, who preserves his intellectual and moral integrity, who is not corrupted by pernicious gentile doctrines.  And he can stand apart because he has the Book of Truth, the absolute standard by which to judge the ideas and actions of others.

Would to heaven that such Jews were the leaders of Israel!!!.