Particularism vs Relativism - What's the difference?
particularism | relativism |
(theology) The principle that only certain people are chosen by God for salvation.
An exclusive focus on a particular group, area, sect etc.
(politics) The principle that individual states, races of a federation etc. may act independently of a central authority.
*2011 , (Norman Davies), Vanished Kingdoms , Penguin 2012, p. 221:
*:Despite the dominance of Castile and the stream of centralizing measures flowing from the new capital in Madrid, Aragonese particularism continued to make itself felt right up to the early eighteenth century.
(uncountable, philosophy) The theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.
(countable, philosophy) A specific such theory, advocated by a particular philosopher or school of thought.
* 2008 , Paul Boghossian, “Replies to Wright, MacFarlane and Sosa,” Philosophical Studies , vol. 141, no. 3, p. 413:
As nouns the difference between particularism and relativism
is that particularism is the principle that only certain people are chosen by God for salvation while relativism is the theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.particularism
English
(wikipedia particularism)Noun
(-)relativism
English
(wikipedia relativism)Noun
- Following Gilbert Harman’s lead, my own formulation of relativism' about the normative domain was based on the classic examples of thoroughgoing ' relativisms drawn from physics.
