Britannia Radio

Relativism and Insanity

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Israel has imported two kinds of relativism: historicism and positivism. Many Israeli academics, beginning with the founders of the Hebrew University, were influenced by German historicism. Historicists maintain that all human thought is historical, hence, that man is incapable of grasping trans-historical truths. All philosophy, religion, morality, and even science belong to a particular “historical epoch” or “culture.”

Historicism was introduced into the Hebrew University by such German-educated intellectuals as Martin Buber. Confronted by the issue of the Jewish versus the Arab claim to Eretz Israel, Buber held, “There is no scale of values for the [world-historical] function of peoples. One cannot be ranked above another.” Buber was not simply an anti-Zionist. His opposition to a Jewish state was rooted in historical relativism.

Since historicism has been refuted by Professor Leo Strauss, I will critique only logical positivism and its associated relativism, which seems to underlie Israel’s policy of “territory for peace.”

Most social scientists have been influenced by logical positivism, which acknowledges the possibility of objective truths in the domain of science, but not in the domain of moral and aesthetic values. The positivist theory of knowledge is based on sense experience, which is rejected by contemporary theoretical physicists. Einstein maintained that “It is the theory which decides what we observe.” His general theory of relativity (1915) postulated the curvature of space-time, the mathematics of which was provided by Riemannian geometry formulated in the mid-nineteenth century without reference to empirical reality.

It should also be noted that the empiricist bias of positivism makes nonsense of quantum mechanics, which transcends space and time and therefore what is observable. Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg writes, “The idea that quarks … can in principle never be observed in isolation has become part of the accepted wisdom of modern elementary particle physics, but it does not stop us from describing neutrons and protons and mesons as composed of quarks.” By description Weinberg obviously means mathematical description.

The mathematical understanding of nature distinguishes modern from pre-modern science. Mankind has paid a price for this intellectual revolution. The reduction of science to quantitative analysis (beginning with Galileo and Newton) renders it incapable of telling us anything about the rich, qualitative world of sense-perception and human values. Unlike classical and medieval science, modern science discards all considerations based on aesthetic and ethical principles. Distinctions between the beautiful and the obscene, the good and the bad, collapse into mere emotions or subrational forces. In other words, the discovery of mathematical laws of nature automatically implies the subjectivity and relativity of everything not susceptible to exact measurement. This obviously includes religious and moral values or ideologies.

Hence, in the conflict between Jews and Muslims, there are no rational grounds for preferring one side to the other. We have entered the mental world of positivism-cum-relativism or the emotive theory of values.

Thus, to say “X is good” is equivalent to saying “I like X.” By translating ethical into non-ethical or psychological language, positivism devaluates all values, especially aristocratic ones. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes performed this leveling or democratic operation in the 17th century. He offers, in his Leviathan, the most lucid and succinct definition of relativism:

Whatever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate or aversion, evil ... For these words of good [and] evil ... are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so, where there is no commonwealth.

It follows that what one calls “good” or “evil” is no more valid than another’s. All moralities are therefore equal (since none is objectively true). This is a democratic conception of man. Man is simply an ensemble of desires—which Freud will call the id. The purpose of man’s reason is to determine how to obtain the object of his desires. As Hobbes puts it: “The thoughts are to the desires, as scouts and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired.” Freud will call this instrumental reason the ego. And of course man will call the object of his desires “good”—which Freud will call the super-ego.

Hitherto, when people said “X is good,” they meant that X is intrinsically good—good independent of their personal likes and dislikes. The emotive theory of values rejects this traditional view of morality. When you say “X is good,” this means nothing more than saying you like X.

Having been influenced by positivism or the emotive theory of values, Israel’s ruling elites will not be whole-heartedly motivated by any religious ideology. Their all-consuming goal will be “peace,” meaning comfortable self-preservation. They will not take the religious convictions of the enemy seriously. They will regard the enemy’s ideology as devoid of rationality —a myth that serves their material interests. They will think the enemy can be pacified by the promise of land and economic prosperity. (This is precisely the attitude of Netanyahu and his minions.)

But suppose they have miscalculated. Suppose the religious convictions of the Arabs, even if non-rational, are not simply reducible to their emotions but also strengthen and sustain their emotions—including their hatred of Israel. In that case, other things being equal, any protracted conflict between Israel and her enemy would end in the victory of the Arabs.

Consider again Hobbes’ statement, “The thoughts are to the desires, as scouts and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired.”

But surely this applies to Hobbes’ own thoughts, unless he can show—which he does not—that his thoughts are exempt from his own conclusions! Hobbes’ thoughts are nothing but the instrument of his own desires. Of man’s desires he mentions “the desire of power, of riches, of knowledge, and of honour. All of which may be reduced to the first, that is, desire of power. For riches, knowledge, and honour, are but several sorts of power.”

It follows that his Leviathan is a manifestation of Hobbes’ desire for power, or what Nietzsche termed a “species of autobiography.” But this means that the doctrine of moral relativism, as set forth in the Leviathan, has no objective validity! Yet this doctrine, as presented in that book, dominates the mentality of the modern world. In other words, modernity is largely the manifestation of the will to power of Thomas Hobbes, who more or less elaborated the thoughts, of Machiavelli.

Clearly, modernity is based on volition, not on reason. But this means that modernity, to an indeterminate extent, is irrational. This can be demonstrated by a logical analysis of democracy, modernity’s standard of what is worthy of praise or blame, of what is “good” or “bad.”

The foundation of democracy is the egalitarian principle of “one adult/one vote.” This principle implies the theoretical equality of adults holding contradictory opinions, which suggests that their contradictory opinions are equally valid. This is logically absurd. Moreover, the theoretical equality of all opinions includes opinions regarding good and bad, right and wrong—the position of moral relativism, a doctrine most prevalent in democratic societies. Democracy therefore manifests the alogical as well as amoral nature of the unconscious. Hence it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that modernity, despite the triumphs of mathematical physics, is indeed based on the irrational. One may even say that modernity fosters insanity. This is precisely the conclusion of my bookDemophrenia. There I point out that

"The absence of research on the possible adverse effects of moral relativism on mental health is all the more curious when one considers that psychologists include alienation, anxiety, and loss of identity among the symptoms of schizophrenia. These symptoms are conspicuous in secular, egalitarian societies where moral relativism thrives. Surely a loss of belief in objective moral standards has emotional and behavioral consequences, some of which may be deleterious. Indeed, many psychotherapists maintain that belief-modification can mitigate various schizophrenic symptoms."

Apparently, there are more psychiatrists in the United States than in all other countries combined. It has been reported that they have a high rate of suicide, which may be related to the prevalence of moral relativism in all the social sciences, including psychology. This prompted me to write a critique of modern psychology, which, to my surprise, was published in the Journal of Psychology. The editor commented, we need this to purge our souls!

Can it be that the college–bred doctrine of moral relativism is a basic cause of Israel's compulsive policy of “territory for peace,” a policy pursued by educated prime ministers who seem to be oblivious of the insanity of negotiating with Arabs committed to Israel's destruction?