Tag: cultural relativism

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The Devil’s in the Details

By Amy Spiegel

Greetings from Asia!  Bailey and I are visiting my sister and her family who work at an international school in Taichung, Taiwan. This is Bailey’s first international experience and it has been interesting to watch him processing the sights, sounds, and even the smells of a country so different from his own. One of the things that has made the biggest impression on us both has been the difference in driving styles. Having spent most of his life cruising the back roads of Indiana with few cars in sight, the crowded streets of a big city have taken some getting used to. Here in Taiwan, there are not only cars to contend with but lots and lots (and lots and lots) of scooters. My sister appropriately compared the rules of the road here to the flow of water. Just as water follows the path of least resistance, traffic flows in a rather free-form manner here, without any discernible rhyme or reason. I have been amazed at my sister’s patience with other drivers as they weave in and out of traffic around her. She (and the other drivers on the road) seem unphased by maneuvers that would elicit some unfriendly hand gestures back home.

As we traveled to our destination last night, Bailey pointed to a scooter rider crossing in front of us and said “How rude!” While I have to admit to seeing his point to a certain extent, I tried to explain to Bailey that rudeness is largely a cultural concept. What is rude in one country may be perfectly acceptable in another. (Unfortunately, I made the mistake of illustrating my point with the example of cultures who consider burping a compliment to the chef. I will now be hearing this bit of cultural relativism as an excuse for bad table manners for the next several years, I am sure.)

This idea of perspective-defining behavior has been kicking around in my head for a while. I must confess to often looking at things in black and white terms, but lately I have begun to wonder whether this is a valid approach to take. I don’t want to get all postmodern and revisionistic on you, but I think there is some truth to the idea that there is a great deal of gray in the world when it comes to human interaction. Though I find this realization a bit disorienting considering my natural bent toward defining things in terms of right and wrong, there is some comfort to be gained from viewing things this way as well. Prior to being more open to this way of thinking, when I had a conflict with someone, or was frustrated with the way a situation was handled, someone had to be in the right and someone had to be in the wrong. So I was either the good guy or the bad. Either way, I lost because this meant that either I was in the wrong and had trespassed against a friend or I was a victim of someone else’s wrongdoing. Neither role seemed terribly satisfying. But allowing for shadowy areas where two parties are at odds, not due to some moral failure on their part but simply because they didn’t share the same perspective, means that no one need be diminished in a moral sense. It is a clash of cultures, so to speak, rather than a transgression.

It’s all about giving someone the benefit of the doubt that you hope to be given by others. I am not saying there aren’t plenty of instances where someone is truly in the wrong. The Nazis were bad, cannibals need to cut it out, and serial killers aren’t just misunderstood. There are certainly universals which have been woven into our natures as bearers of the Imago Dei, and those who transgress against them are without excuse. But between the boundaries of the law there is a lot of wiggle room. Like those darned scooters squeezing into minuscule spaces between cars, we are sharing the road with a great many of our fellow humans. If we want to reach our destination in one piece and save ourselves a lot of grief along the way, perhaps it is best to put away our driver’s manuals and allow for a bit of tolerance. If we are lucky, those around us will do the same and all will be made right in the end. After all, Jesus didn’t seem to get bogged down in the little things but was much more concerned with the big picture. As the saying goes, the devil’s in the details and that is certainly company I don’t wish to keep.

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Why Beauty is an Objective Quality in the World

By Jim Spiegel

In my February 12 post I presented an anti-naturalist argument from beauty.  A key premise of this argument is that beauty is an objective quality in the world.  This view is known as aesthetic objectivism.  Before offering some reasons in defense of this view, let me first explain the contrary perspective known as aesthetic relativism.  The aesthetic relativist maintains that aesthetic values, such as “beautiful,” “elegant,” “ugly,” “sublime,” or “poignant,” are entirely relative to the preferences of individuals or cultures.  So, for example, an aesthetic subjectivist would say that all aesthetic judgments are relative to the individual.  Or, as it is popularly expressed, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  The somewhat less common brand of relativism is aesthetic cultural relativism, which says that all aesthetic judgments are relative to particular cultures.

Notice that both forms of aesthetic relativism deny that there is any objective sense in which beauty or other aesthetic values exist in the world.  So according to relativism, an artwork (such as a poem or a film) or a part of nature (such as a flower, a sunset, or a human face) is not beautiful in itself but is only pleasing to a person or group of people.  Aesthetic judgments (like “this song is lovely” or “that painting is ugly”) do not reveal facts about the world but only reflect observer responses to aspects of the world.

While the claim that all aesthetic judgments are relative to a person or culture has a generous ring about it, a bit of reflection reveals the view to be absurd.  First, consider the implications of aesthetic relativism when it comes to comparing works of art.  My four-year-old daughter, Maggie, loves to draw, and on our refrigerator there are several samples of her recent work, including a crude drawing of three horses.  It is rendered entirely with a pink marker, and the horses have rectangular bodies and triangular heads.  So, we might ask, how does Maggie’s Three Horses composition compare, in terms of aesthetic quality, to, say, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa?  Is one of these works superior (i.e. more objectively beautiful) to the other?  Not according to aesthetic relativism.  Remember, on this view no work of art can be objectively superior to another, because the relativist maintains that beauty is entirely relative to individual or cultural preference.  So if I happen to prefer Maggie’s Three Horses to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, then the former is superior to the latter for me.  Or if a given culture—because of, say, a prevailing fancy for the color pink—preferred Maggie’s drawing, then Three Horses would be superior for that culture.  In neither case could it be said that the Da Vinci painting is aesthetically superior to Maggie’s drawing in an absolute sense.

Such a relativist view contradicts common sense.  Obviously the Mona Lisa is superior to Maggie’s line drawings, regardless of how fond I might be of my daughter’s efforts.  But the only way this judgment can make sense is if beauty is an objective fact, not merely a matter of individual or cultural preference.  Only an objectivist view can account for the common sense distinction we ordinarily make between personal tastes and real excellence in works of art.  So if we are to maintain (as we should) that the Mona Lisa is better than my daughter’s drawing, we must admit that aesthetic qualities (whether good or bad) are public facts about the world.  In other words, beauty is an objective quality of things. 

A second argument for aesthetic objectivism appeals to the universal, time-tested appreciation of many works of art.  Educated people will agree, as they have for centuries, that Shakespeare’s King Lear is a great play, that Handel’s Messiah is an excellent piece of music, and that Michelangelo’s David is a superb sculpture.  How do we explain this consensus of opinion among intelligent connoisseurs of art, except by acknowledging that the tremendous aesthetic qualities of these works are public facts?  If aesthetic relativism is true, then the convergence of opinion by hosts of art critics is mere coincidence.  There just happen to have been similarly positive responses to these artworks across cultures for hundreds of years.  But, of course, this is absurd.  So aesthetic objectivism must be true.

Third, consider the fact that we often debate the quality of artworks and we sometimes change our opinions about whether a film, book, or song is good or not.  We might find ourselves defending the merit of a novel we have read or saying something like “I was wrong about that film.  I think it is good after all.”  These are everyday occurrences in discussions of art, and they confirm the basic intuition that aesthetic judgments are objective, whether correct or incorrect.  Aesthetic qualities must be public facts and not simply subjective or cultural responses.  Otherwise, we could not meaningfully argue about them or improve our views on works of art.

For such reasons as these, we can safely say that beauty and related aesthetic attributes are not merely in the eye of the beholder or a matter of cultural preference.  They are objectively real facts about the world. 

[My arguments here are adapted from my article “Good Art and Bad Art: What is the Difference?” in Areopagus Journal, 4:1 (January-February 2004).  For an extended defense of aesthetic objectivism, including an elaboration on some of the arguments that I employ here, see Eddy M. Zemach, Real Beauty (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1997).]