On Cultural Relativism and “Radical Doubt”

Abstract

Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, in their study of culture,^I mention in passing that Descartes, the man who commenced the new Western philosophy by introducing his method of “radical doubt,” was also the first one who detected the problem of cultural relativism. And indeed, as we read in Chapter I of his “Discourse on Method”:

D. B. Zilberman died before publication of this work was completed.

First edition of this article was published in: Science, Politics and Social Practice, Springer, BSPS, vol. 164, pp. 359–372, ©1995, – DZF.

From Catalog of Zilberman Archive at the MUGAR Memorial Library Boston University, 1.7.14, 1994: “The text “On Cultural Relativism and ‘Radical Doubt’” is an extended meditation on the possibility of a ‘mature anthropology’ as a practical (‘practicalized’) science based on ‘modal judgments’ and radical doubt (of a Cartesian sort). This is a large-scale philosophical retrospective from Descartes and Hobbes; and this reasoning is unfolded in connection with the “Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions” by A. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn.” – DZF.