Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Wittgenstein and the Problem of Cultural Relativism
Rui Silva, University of the Azores, Portugal
Wittgenstein is frequently mentioned in discussions
concerning the problem of relativism and interpreted either
as a relativist or as an important source of inspiration for
relativists. Unfortunately, relativism is an ill-defined
concept, and this fact posess serious difficulties for an
evaluation of Wittgenstein’s stance on relativism. Not only
the general concept of relativism can be understood in
different ways, but there are also different, although in
some cases partially overlapping, varieties of relativism
(moral, epistemic, ontological, conceptual or cultural
relativism, for instance). As a matter of fact, one can be a
relativist in a certain sense of the word and not in another;
one can be a relativist, say, in the moral sphere and
nonetheless reject epistemic relativism.
Before answering the question “Is Wittgenstein a
cultural relativist?” we need, therefore, to clarify the notion
of relativism. Taken in its most radical sense, relativism is
the thesis that all perspectives on a certain subject are
equally valid or, alternatively, the thesis that all beliefs are
equally good. We may wonder whether there are relativists
in this strong sense. Since Plato’s Theaetetus the aforementioned
thesis is considered self-refuting; in fact, we
can infer from it that those who reject relativism are right…
According to another, less radical definition, relativism is
the view that values, truth or knowledge are relative to or
dependent on a certain framework: a culture, a paradigm,
a conceptual scheme or even a personal belief system.
This is perhaps a more palatable version of relativism, but
it is somehow vague and misleading, because, by
emphasizing the idea of context-dependence, it seems to
conflate relativism and contextualism. Such a conflation is
undesirable; the fact that some key philosophical notions
are context-dependent does not entail, per se, relativism.
According to a contextualist theory of justification, for
example, we justify our knowledge-claims by taking for
granted a specific set of basic beliefs that can vary with the
context. As a result, in different cultural or epistemic
contexts our justification practices can lead to different
conclusions, but a contextualist is free to criticize and
reject rival perspectives. The mere idea of contextdependence
is not enough to define relativism, because
relativism, as the current use of this word clearly suggests,
involves also a permissive stance regarding conflicting and
even mutually exclusive perspectives or belief systems.
Accordingly, it is reasonable to characterize relativism as
the combination of the context-dependence thesis with the
above mentioned permissive attitude. Because
Wittgenstein’s epistemological contextualism is not
committed to the permissiveness that is usually associated
with relativism, it is possible, as I will try to show, to
absolve him of the charge of relativism. Since I would like
to focus on the significance of Wittgenstein’s reflections at
the level of intercultural communication, I will privilege a
particular branch of relativism: cultural relativism, i.e., the
view that it is not possible for outsiders to evaluate and
criticize values, practices and basic beliefs of significantly
different cultures.
There are some strands in Wittgenstein’s thought
that apparently lead us to relativism. At the level of
philosophy of language, Wittgenstein’s later thought is
based on two fundamental assumptions. On the one hand,
there is the idea that meanings, far from being entities
existing independently of linguistic use, are determined or
even generated by use. On the other hand, Wittgenstein
stresses that sentences or utterances are intelligible only
against the background of the non-linguistic activities into
which they are woven. He coins the pivotal notion of
language game to stress this essential connection
between linguistic and non-linguistic activities: “Here the
term ‘language game’ is meant to bring to prominence the
fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or
a form of life” (Wittgenstein 1958, §23). In its turn, a form
of life can be described as the totality of the practices,
institutions and customs that constitute the medium of our
everyday life. Considering that the practical and cultural
contexts in which language is inevitably embedded can
vary in quite significant ways, and since there is not a
standpoint outside the plurality of language-games and
forms of life from which we could evaluate them, the notion
of language game seems to favour relativistic
interpretations. It presupposes apparently, as Habermas
(1988, 143) put it, a “monadology of language games”,
each of them governed by its own standards or rules.
Another aspect of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language
that may be invoked on behalf of relativistic interpretations
of his work is the thesis of the arbitrariness of grammar. A
grammar is, in its Wittgensteinian sense, the set of rules
that govern the use of linguistic expressions and determine
the bounds of sense, affecting, therefore, our description
and representation of reality. Wittgenstein argues that
grammar is arbitrary because, on the one hand, different
grammars are characterized by different conceptual
resources and alternative forms of representation and, on
the other hand, it is not possible to confront grammatical
frameworks with a non-linguistic reality; any attempt to
promote such a confrontation would have to presuppose a
language. As a result, instead of merely being the mirror of
an intrinsic structure of the world, language contributes
decisively to the constitution of the objects of our
experience: “Essence is expressed by grammar”;
“Grammar tells what kind of object anything is”
(Wittgenstein 1958: §371 and §373). Equally relevant to
the problem of relativism are Wittgenstein’s reflections on
rule-following, because they stress the social and
pragmatic dimension of rule-guided processes. One of the
main results of these reflections consists in the claim that
rules are not transcendent to the practices that embody
them and that to obey a rule is to master a practice
through a process of social training. Since speaking a
language is a rule-guided activity, if we want to understand
members of other cultural or linguistic communities, we
must be acquainted with the practices underlying their
linguistic behaviour; understanding others involves an
agreement in form of life (cf. Wittgenstein 1958, §241).
From this perspective, the absence of shared practices
between different communities endangers seriously the
prospects for intercultural communication and,
consequently, for a critical evaluation of other worldviews.
Such breakdowns of communication may well induce a
relativistic attitude.
We can also find in Wittgenstein’s epistemological
reflections some themes that point, at first sight, to
relativism. In On Certainty, in the context of a careful
analysis of the basic certainties that sustain our practices
and everyday life, he points out that these certainties
constitute a particular world-picture (Weltbild) or even a
319