Beyond Relativism

Relativism is a very complicated theory phenomena and comes to front of the western philosophical schools. The dissertation analyzes the origin, the development and the theoretical essential on the relativism of new pragmatism profoundly and entirely, tries to comment on its active significance, its theoretical limitation and the precondition and the approach of exceeding the relativism. The dissertation consists 7 chapters. The introduction summarizes the relativism's meaning and traces back to the relativism's history from ancient Greek philosophy to modern and contemporary philosophy, emphasizes the relativism's rationality and the important significance of re-interpretation on the relativism.The first chapter summarizes the relativism of new pragmatism. New pragmatism is the product of the critique on the traditional metaphysics and the combination of the Continental philosophy and the classical pragmatism. Although there exists strong coherence concerning some basic viewpoints of the two pragmatism, there are also many differences o the topics of thinking angle, depth and the final theoretical target. First of all, the dissertation compares the similarities and differences of the classical and new pragmatism. New pragmatism inherits the classical pragmatism's tradition and principles that not only abandons the traditional philosophy's fantasy of pursuing certainty and absolute knowledge, but also abandons the dualistic thinking way of talking world and philosophy as well. so the pragmatism is viewed as a kind of relativism because of these negative characters. New pragmatism inherits and develops these principles and have some new characters which concern with the analytic philosophy. Most new pragmatists criticize the traditional dualism with the analytic philosophical form, they place emphasize on demonstration, with the artifice of language analysis, they destroy the traditional philosophy within the analytic philosophy, reveal the inner contradiction of the traditional philosophy and strengthen the pragmatism's theoretical power. then the chapter analyzes the deep-seated reasons for the rise of the new pragmatism. and its inner relationship with the analytic philosophy.Second, the dissertation further discusses the essential of the relativism of new pragmatism, it shows the post –modernism's characters of anti-foundationalism, anti-essentialism, tolerance and variety. So new pragmatism is considered as a kind of relativism compared with the foundationalism of the traditional philosophy, but it isn't the extreme relativism, beyond foundationalism and relativism is the target of pragmativism. As a result, it gives further discussion on the problem of relativism and gets a higher result. It provides us a great deal of theoretical resources for us on how to understand and exceed the relativism. and influence the development of the future philosophy.The second chapter: Rorty's relativism is the most important part of the dissertation. Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the mirror of Nature attacked on the foundationalism of the traditional philosophy and advocated the post-philosophical culture. First, the dissertation discuss the origin and essential of Rorty's relativism------anti-foundationalism. He declared his anti-foundationalism by getting rid of three metaphysics and fictional problems which are concerned with the mind-body conception. The three problems are mental problem of mind, the rational problem of mind and the problem of human being's character. Through the profound analyzes on traditional and analytical philosophy, he criticized the traditional philosophy's metaphor of mind as a mirror, destroied the conception of mind and the foundatinalism, representationism and essentialism as the basis of traditional philosophy. He re-interpreted some analytical philosophers' job and declared the inevitability of pragmatism.Second, After ended the foundationalism philosophy, Rorty drawn out a blueprint for the future philosophy------"post –philosophical culture". The...