Student Question
How does Borges's "The Library of Babel" illustrate the theory of relativism?
Quick answer:
The theory of relativism has to do with knowledge and ethical truths being dependent on the context of the people or cultures holding them. This creates an indefinite amount of possible viewpoints. In the short story "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges, the author presents similar ambiguity but within a literary context.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, relativism is "a theory that knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind and the conditions of knowing; a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them." In philosophical terms, the theory of relativism asserts that a proposition's truth depends upon its context or on the individuals, groups of people, or cultures that formulate or interpret the proposition. Anthropologists use relativism in their methodology to place behaviors or beliefs within the context of the cultures holding them. Philosophical discussions of relativism are often very controversial, because on the one hand, the theory seems to embrace open-mindedness, while on the other hand, it is extremely permissive and incoherent.
In the short story "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges , the author proposes the concept of a library that contains "an infinite number of hexagonal galleries." Each...
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of the galleries has the same number of shelves, each shelf has the same number of books, and each book has the same number of pages, lines, words, and so on. However, within this uniformity, there is also an infinite amount of diversity. Borges explains that "the fundamental law of the library" is that the books are made up of the same punctuation, spaces, and letters of the alphabet, and that "in the vast library there are no two identical books." Some of the books appear to be gibberish to readers and others make sense, because within the library, there is an infinite number of permutations of the letters that comprise the various volumes.
While explaining the library's composition and contents, Borges also writes of how the diversities in the library affect the behavior of travelers and of inhabitants of its various levels. The infinite possibilities of the library create confusion, the rise of strange theories, and violent disagreements.
We see, then, that the story "The Library of Babel" relates to the theory of relativism in its proposal of the infinitude of possibilities. Just as in relativism there is no limit to possible philosophical stances, because all propositions depend upon their contexts, in the Library of Babel there is no limit to the amount of volumes as well as viewpoints and knowledge within them, because they theoretically contain every possible variation of letter and word order.
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