Though many of our classmates’ points were well taken during our discussion of absolute truths and universalism, the idea that absolute truths did not exist was simply egregious. Most of the class had the idea the idea that absolute truths lacked malleability and they were rigid. This would be true under the basic tenets of universalism where the absolute truth is something that is similarly situated amongst individuals whose existences are consistent across the universe. These absolute truths are present in mathematics. I remember someone saying that one plus one can be considered not two by some people. That has no place under this idea of universalism, where by definition, arithmetic is universal. This is not to say that I do believe that everything consists of absolute truths; I simple believe that they can. Good examples of these absolute truths would be the idea of natural rights that pushed the creation of the Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen by French revolutionaries in 1798 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. These documents are prescient of the existence of an absolute truth in the form of universal human rights.
I am a firm believer of relativism— the idea that truths exist but are flexible by varying standards. An example of this would be moral relativism, the argument that ethical propositions are not reflective of universal truths but make allusions to the social, societal, cultural, historical, personal conditions of an individual or society.
Posted by ishmam on December 14, 2008
Tags: Michel Foucault
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