RELATIVISMO. – A term indicating not a specific doctrine or system, but an attitude common to various thinkers, according to which every value is such only insofar as it is relative to something else (v. RELAZIONE): that is, absolute (v.) is denied which, possessing its value not in something else, would be capable of grounding the value of other things.
If the Absolute is denied as the foundation of the constant value of beings, r. is introduced in function of variability. This is the case with what may be called metaphysical r. or relationalism, according to which the value of reality is conditioned by the spatiotemporal dimension (Eracilio, Bergson [v.]), or by the relations that must be established among beings in order for them to constitute themselves in their being as « things » and in their knowability (Herbart [v.]). Every doctrine that conceives reality dialectically may also be considered of this type, whether idealistically (Hegel [v.]) or materialistically (Marx [v.]).
On the basis and from the presupposition of the variability of reality, epistemological r. may arise, according to which no absolute knowledge exists, and knowledge has value only relative to the subject and at the moment in which it is acquired. Thus it is clear that the perpetual flow of the Heraclitean river is the father of Protagoras’s « man is the measure of all things ». In modern thought, Kantian criticism too might be understood as epistemological r., although in a moderate sense, insofar as the a priori subjective element is posited precisely as the universal condition of the objectivity of knowing. In Hamilton, knowledge is relative insofar as it does not reach reality in itself, but only phenomena or modes, and these are related to our faculties and are presented as modifications of our faculties themselves (Lectures on metaphysics and logic, London 1859, p. 148 ff.).
A consequence of the subjectivity and relativity of knowing is the denial of science as an absolute and objective interpretation of reality: MARCHE (v.), Avenarius (v.) Poincaré (v.), Boutroux (v.), by which the exclusively economic-practical value of the sciences is affirmed. A. Einstein likewise arrives at a relativistic conception of scientific knowledge, for whom, given the nonexistence of a coordinate system capable by itself of placing us in relation with reality, every point of view on nature, different from the other possible ones, is nevertheless equivalent to each of them. On the other hand, Einstein hoped to preserve the invariability of physical laws within the various systems and not to have to renounce causal connections among phenomena. But quantum mechanics, with Heisenberg, declared it impossible to determine simultaneously the velocity and position of a particle without producing alterations (v. INDETERMINISMO FISICO). probability (v.). Proceeding once again from the presupposition of a natural reality, affirmed as existing beyond thought and therefore ungraspable, H. Vaihinger holds that thinking is nothing other than a regulated erring, since thought is a biological function that facilitates action, prescribing norms as if reality conformed to the function that we form of it: the categories of truth and falsity must be replaced by those of usefulness and harmfulness. If natural reality, because of its variability, eludes objective knowledge, human reality eludes it all the more: hence a historical r., which is distinguished from ancient skepticism by the latter’s superhistorical and ahistorical character. Once truth and science are posited as historical and human constructions, it follows that they have value only so long as the states of mind and interests for whose satisfaction they were constructed endure (O. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich 1918): beneath the infinite succession of cultural forms there lies hidden the flow of life, genetically and teleologically unknown and unpredictable. From these premises it may further be concluded that an objective historiography is impossible (on this point cf. M. Mandelbaum: The problem of historical knowledge, New York 1938, pp. 17-37 and 190-202).
In a religious sense, r. may be viewed as a consequence of agnosticism; religious r. presents itself with the « dilettantish » program of excluding the religious problem, affirming the impossibility of unifying the multiplicity of aspects of life.
The abandonment of the deduction of ethics from metaphysics leads to an ethical r., according to which it is impossible to possess an absolute criterion of morality, which is structured, LOCKE, JOHN (v.), in conformity with civil law, religious law, or the opinion of society. A widespread form of r. is pragmatism (v.), which « places in the place of the utilitarian ethics of success a logic of success. The incontestable fact that the effort toward truth is connected with the motives of its practical usefulness must be transformed into the logical determination that truth is nothing other than the usefulness of representation ». (cf. G. Windelband, Storia della filosofia, Italian trans., II, Palermo 1938, p. 367, note).
In Italy, r. (like skepticism) developed in polemic with transcendental idealism. A significant figure of Italian r. is A. Aliotta.
R., positively, constitutes a contribution toward recognizing the insufficiency of individuals (related, and therefore limited and conditioned). In the history of thought, no one has therefore denied a moderate r.; indeed, it must be affirmed that, outside God, everything is relative in a certain sense. The most general and simplest formulation of r. arises from the factual observation of the existence of dissenting judgments and opinions; its theoretical systematization consists in the claim to extend itself to declaring this situation to be juridically and universally valid. But its very definition already represents an overcoming of it: in fact, the definition assumes an absolute value, on pain of contradiction, on whose principle, moreover, r. itself is founded.
If, then, r. is posited as the affirmation that every category of judgment is always open to further judgment, its position could be valid only if the relativity of sensory knowledge, from which r. proceeds, were extendable to every other form of knowledge: but the mere fact that it is possible to think infinitely many times, and in the same way, the same truth (e.g., 7 + 5 = 12) is clear proof of the contrary. Judgment and intellectual knowledge in general therefore contain, in the absoluteness of their form and principles, the overcoming of r. (v. CONCETTO; CONOSCENZA; GIUDIZIO; NECESSITÀ; SCETTICISMO).
verità universali?, in Humanitas, 2 (1949), pp. 572-84; S. Hampshire, Scepticism and meaning, in Philosophy, 25 (1950), pp. 235-46.