thoughts on 'cultural relativism', I

I'm not sure exactly who believes in 'cultural relativism' as it is defined by its adversaries, but I can agree that this version is false and/or contradictory. You know the idea: we can't judge another culture from the outside, there are no universal criteria that allow us to say that one culture's better than another etc.Well, firstly, 'We' are not homogenous and neither is the 'other culture'; and by what criteria have we identified it as 'Other' in the first place rather than simply 'different'? A New Yorker might be culturally different from a Londoner but is surely not irredemiably Other. To mark something as Other presupposes an interpreatative decision that cultural relativism arguably prohibits. Secondly, if there are no universals and all cultures are 'equally valid' , then you have to say equally valid in respect of what, valid as what? Logically, the criteria in question must be a universal one. For example, you say 'all are valid as expressions of life', then 'expressing life' is posited as a value. Needless to say, only for the Western intellectual are these other cultures 'expressing life' , they themselves are engaged in religious worship or whatever.

so far so obvious. It seems to me though, that the bugbear of 'cultural relativism' among the newly Enlightened is frequently a rhetorical device used to dismiss the interpretative generosity we should indeed extend to different societies. 'Cultural relativism' is one of various threats to an Enlightenment conceived of as a static set of attained Values rather than a necessarily ongoing process of critical self-reflection. In fact, Cultural Relativism, even in the self-contradictory variant above, continues with and presupposes enlightenment categories.

Anyway, as regards the question of cultural difference and truth, permit me a slight detour by way of illustration.

Someone asked me the other night about the question of 'Shakespeare's homosexuality'. They mentioned the infamous sonnet 20. Was their interpretation (revolving around 'thing'/ 'nothing') correct? Broadly yes. But I reminded them of the conventions of male-male friendship that existed back then, the important historical differences, the dnagers of prematurely applying contemporary categories (eg of 'sexuality') and so on.

One has to be aware of and 'respect' the cultural differences between the present and the past, not because we can't assess the past at all using our present categories, but because some of the most obvious and ready to hand categories would involve basic interpretetive error. We observe and allow cultural difference not in defiance of Truth but in its name. Moreover, it's not that we say - in the case just cited - ok, the past is a foreign country, they're allowed their quaint little differences. It is also, simultaneously, that these differences interrogate the self-evidence of our own values and expost them precisely as 'cultural'. To expose culture as culture is precisely one of the basic tasks of critical thought. To reveal something as cultural confiscates its self-evidence and makes it contestable and subject to human transformation.