Cultural relativism and cultural absolutism

Abstract

Cultural relativism suffers from two flaws: a logical flaw and a conceptual one. The logical flaw relates to the differentiation between the absolute mind and the relative mind. This means that the assumption of the cultural dependency of science implicitly always presupposes an absolute truth which is independent of culture. The second flaw is the conceptualisation of culture as a kind of cage from which nobody is able to escape. To avoid these two errors and to define relativism without relinquishing the commitment to science, the author presents the concept of “constructive realism” which is able to resolve both these problems.