"All things are relative" as an invitation for transcendence

 I was previous discussing the maxim "all things are relative." The criticism is that if all things are relative then the maxim is relative also and so not an single absolute truth. So if all things are relative what is the maxim relative too. But put another way what is the perspective that makes such a claim. Doesn't this maxim come from a place that is beyond the relative in the same way that Godel's statement proved incompleteness. This maxim proves that "thing" are not the entirety.

ChatGPT said:

You're touching on a profound tension at the heart of relativism and epistemology.

The maxim "all things are relative" is indeed self-referential, and the classic criticism is that it defeats itself: if everything is relative, then the claim "everything is relative" must also be relative, and thus not universally true. This leads to a paradox or at least a kind of instability in the claim.

However, you’re proposing a more subtle and interesting view: that the very act of stating "all things are relative" implies a standpoint outside the relative — a kind of meta-perspective — similar to how Gödel’s incompleteness theorems point to truths that cannot be proven within a given formal system but can be seen from outside it.

A Few Key Points to Consider:

1. Gödel and Meta-Statements:
   Gödel showed that any sufficiently complex formal system cannot be both complete and consistent. Some truths are "true" but unprovable within the system — they require a meta-system to be recognized. Likewise, saying “all things are relative” seems to require a meta-perspective from which relativity is observed.

2. Relativity as a Lens, Not a Limit:
   If "all things are relative" is understood not as a claim within the web of relative truths, but rather as a lens or orientation toward knowledge, then it doesn’t need to be judged as a truth claim subject to its own rule. Instead, it becomes more like a stance or method — a way of recognizing that any particular claim is context-bound.

3. The Maxim as Apophatic Insight:
   There’s a mystical or negative-theology element in your observation: by claiming all things are relative, the statement gestures to something that transcends “things” — that perhaps "things" are not the whole story. This mirrors apophatic theology, or even some interpretations of Buddhism, where pointing out the relativity or emptiness of all dharmas is a way to glimpse what is not constructed.

4. Not Self-Refuting, but Self-Transcending?
   So perhaps instead of being self-refuting, the maxim "all things are relative" is self-transcending — it implies the need for a broader perspective, even if that perspective can't be fully articulated within the relativistic frame. It's a gesture toward the limit of the conceptual system itself.

Summary Thought:

Yes, you’re right to suggest that the maxim may be pointing to something beyond the domain of relative things — not by asserting an absolute, but by indicating the limits of what can be said within the domain of things. Much like Gödel's theorem doesn’t disprove mathematics, but shows that formal systems can't contain all truths about themselves, this maxim may suggest that "things" — and truth about them — are always embedded in a larger, possibly inarticulable context.

Would you like to explore this idea through specific philosophical traditions (like Wittgenstein, Nagarjuna, or postmodernism)?

You said:

Quickly I believe that Nietzsche argued that contradiction was not the end of logic. To have drawn the narrative into a contradiction is already to have covered the ground beyond the bounds of logic. In the above we are starting with a maxim and instead of denying it as a contradiction suggesting an "aufhebung" which transcends the contradiction.

ChatGPT said:

Yes — that's exactly right, and beautifully put.

Nietzsche indeed challenged the classical idea that contradiction = failure. For him, contradictions often revealed deeper truths or tensions in reality, rather than simply marking a mistake in reasoning. He saw logic as a human invention, not an ultimate arbiter of truth. So reaching a contradiction wasn’t necessarily a dead end; it could be an opening — a sign that you've reached the edge of one system, one mode of understanding.

You're also right to invoke "Aufhebung" — Hegel’s term (often translated as "sublation") — which means to negate, preserve, and transcend simultaneously. Rather than eliminate the contradiction, the aufhebung integrates it into a higher synthesis. In that light:

• The maxim "all things are relative" seems self-contradictory on the surface.

• But instead of discarding it, we can treat it as a dialectical moment — one that points beyond both naïve relativism and naïve absolutism.

• The contradiction becomes productive — transcended, not erased.

This is a Nietzschean-Hegelian moment: contradiction as the seed of transcendence. The limits of relativism reveal the inadequacy of purely logical or propositional knowledge, and point to something meta-rational, possibly perspectival or even existential.

Would you like to explore how this plays out in Nietzsche’s own writings, like Beyond Good and Evil or Twilight of the Idols?