Two kinds of relativist

It might be helpful to distinguish two categories of relativist. The first says "All truth is relative to culture and social environment. We must accept that we are part of a certain culture and social environment. Things too foreign cannot be seriously entertained." A good example in this category is Richard Rorty. The second category of relativist says, "All truth is relative to culture and social environment. We must expose ourselves to a variety of cultures and social environments by reading books from a wide variety of times and places. Only this will allow us to correct for the bias we have for our own." A good example in this category is Nietzsche. The first kind of relativist accepts our limitation to our own time and place, even celebrates it. The second sort acknowledges relativism only to go on to combat it. Nietzsche advocates taking the questions posed by the great thinkers of history seriously, and not sanguinely supposing we have answered them. He is often classified as a relativist of the first category, when he is really of the second. Like all great thinkers, he aspires to be cosmopolitan and untimely, to transcend merely personal ties, to cultivate a pathos of distance from his own place and time in order to understand it. He never repudiates the philosopher’s passion to discover and bear witness to the truth, but rather turns the passion inward upon itself to discover its origins.