Fundamentalism vs Relativism in a Modern Society

Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2015 in the subject Sociology - Religion, grade: 1,7, University of Heidelberg (IUED), course: Übersetzen als kulturwissenschaftliches Handeln I, language: English, abstract: At first glance we seem to know what fundamentalism really means. We hear it on the radio, watch it on TV and read about it in the newspaper. Fundamentalism is nowadays often connected to Islam or religion in general, often to terrorism. Nonetheless, the question remains: where does this word come from and what exactly does it mean? Relativism is another big word often connected to philosophy and great thinkers of the past like Nietzsche. The problem with relativism is the same as with fundamentalism. It seems that there is no real answer to what fundamentalism or relativism actually refers. Therefore, both of them are divided into several subcategories, and because of that, it is not possible to throw light on every little detail. For an example, one can visit the German Wikipedia entry about ‘Fundamentalismus’ (English: fundamentalism). The authors of that entry started a discussion about how it should be written to make absolutely clear that it gets the true sense of fundamentalism. Even the English Wikipedia entry is not to everyone’s satisfaction and lacks improvement. On the other hand, relativism at first sounds easy to understand, but it is hard to grasp. Mainly because it is rarely used and for that reason, there are fewer sources for definitions than for fundamentalism. In the modern times we are living in now, both of these movements, one could almost say, developed rapidly. This is another reason for setting those two words in direct comparison, but the outcome also depends on the sources available.