On Rationalism, Relativism, and Determinism

Here is an interesting article (at least I find this type of thing interesting) that describes fallacies of rationalism, relativism, and determinism in terms of iconoclasm and how it relates to toppling statues of American historical figures.

Rationalism is when we apply our own moral standards without allowing for the difference in the historical setting of the person in question.  An example might be toppling at statue of George Washington because he owned slaves. The historical setting of slavery for George Washington was completely different than the setting for us today. The intellectual framework imposed at the time limits a person’s responsibility.

Let’s put this in context of pro-life vs. pro-choice. Suppose all abortion became as illegal as murder in this country in a few short years, and about 150 years from now our society looked back in horror at the reality of abortion in much the same way as we think of slavery today, but even worse since there was much more murder involved. Now suppose that during this time, 150 years in the future, some government group put up a statue of Barack Obama honoring him as the first black President. Should the statue be removed because he was pro-choice? If only up to me, I would say “no”, but I’d say “perhaps”, if done democratically under the rule of law (via city council for example), but not by a lawless, angry mob.

Relativism involves judging past actions by the standards of their own time. In this fallacy one would argue that it was perfectly fine for George Washington to own salves because slavery was legal and largely accepted in his time. This is like saying abortion is morally OK today because abortion is legal and widely accepted in our time. This fallacy presupposes no objective and universal morality for human beings across time; in other words…cultural relativism.

Determinism holds a materialist view of history in which all actions appear determined by compulsions of power and profit. This view can also remove personal responsibility (like relativism). If racism is seen as impersonal and part of an invisible structural force, we end up with over-generalizations that are tossed about today such as “white privilege” and “systematic or institutionalized racism”. In this view, just being white is enough to make you a racist even without individual fault; so George Washington can be viewed as a racist as much as any white person living today.

Harking back to the abortion analogy above, we might imagine a future 100% pro-life nation looking back on all of us today, even those who are pro-life, and only seeing “post-born privilege” and “systematic or institutionalized murder”. Under these circumstances, even a statue of a pro-life person might be toppled if he or she lived in our time.

Back in strange days of the present, I often ponder how easily problems of race relations would melt away if the world would only follow the Gospels as the “new normal” and …”love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Then the remaining racists, race -baiters and anarchist would say to one another “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after him” (John 12:19).