We explain what something relative is, examples and what relativism is. Also, what does it mean that everything is relative.
What is something relative?
When we say that something is “relative,” we are meaning that it is related to something else, that is, that Its exact and complete meaning cannot be determined if we do not take into account something else on which it depends.. That is to say, it is not an absolute, universal, full term, but rather it must be understood in conjunction with other factors.
For example, if we say that in one country there is greater “relative poverty” than in another, we are stating that in said country there is a greater proportion of people who cannot cover their basic needs than in the other, but that to measure it we must take into account takes into account the variable cost of these basic needs.
For example, a person earning US$500 a month may count as middle class in certain countries and poor in others, depending on how high the cost of living is in each country.
Another illustrative example would be to affirm that the population gives relative importance to government announcements, meaning that said importance is not absolute, it is not full, but rather depends on various other factors.
Although these factors are not named in the sentence (perhaps because there can be many!), the meaning of the term remains: what is relative depends on third factors, on things that are not being taken into account or cannot be taken into account.
In this way, the most colloquial sense of the adjective “relative” has to do with that which cannot be fully affirmed, that is variable or doubtfulthat which “depends on the context”.
This adjective came from Latin relative (“that has a relationship with something” or “that leads backwards, towards something else”), made up of the prefix re- (“backwards” or “repeatedly”), the verb ferre (“carry” or drive”) and the suffix -ivowhich indicates passive relationship.
Other examples of sentences that use this adjective are:
- The profits of a company are always relativeif you think about how much is spent producing.
- Love has to be total, no relative. Either you love with everything, or you don't love yourself at all.
- They gave us a conference relative to Roman antiquity.
What does it mean that everything is relative?
The colloquial expression that “everything is relative” is very common; we can even find it in the lyrics of some songs. The meaning of this expression is that nothing is absolute in itself, that is, everything always has links with the rest of the immediate universe and that these links must be taken into account when thinking about an issue.
“Everything is relative” means that everything depends on something else, or on the things that are taken into consideration, that is, everything depends on the point of view.
We can understand this better with an example. Suppose a person murders another, for reasons unknown to us. At first glance, this seems like a monstrous, criminal, reprehensible event. But what happens if we later find out that the murdered person was on his way to commit a murder? This information changes our judgment about the first homicide, since it saved the life of a third.
Now suppose, again, that the third party whose life was saved turns out to be the greatest criminal of all time, a sort of Adolf Hitler reincarnated. How do we now understand the person who was preparing to murder him? Like a hero.
And the person who stopped him, murdering him before he could kill the new Hitler? As an accomplice to the latter's crimes. Let's look at how our considerations have changed since the initial murder.
In this example we have seen that our judgment about each crime committed is relative, that is, it depends on the information we have about it. That same logic, according to the saying, is what we must apply to all things in life, since they are all, in one way or another, relative.
Relativism
In the field of philosophy and theory, it is known as relativism. the philosophical school that denies the existence of absolute truthsin whatever field. This school considers all knowledge as incomplete, that is, everything that we take as absolute and universal is only so because we ignore an important part of the information.
According to this philosophical school, human knowledge is incomplete, subjective, incapable of any objectivitysince whenever we think we do so influenced by our history and our culture, that is, from preconceived ideas.
Relativism is an anti-metaphysical school, developed in fields of knowledge such as anthropology, sociology and philosophy itself. It covers branches such as moral relativism (good and evil are relative), cultural relativism (there are no backward or advanced cultures) or linguistic relativism (the acquisition and management of the spoken language is subjective, it varies depending on the speaker), among others.
References
- “Relative” in Wiktionary.
- “Relative, va” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Radication of the word Relative” in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- “Relativism” on Wikipedia.
