Relativism and Politics

As the Presidential candidates have been campaigning, the American people have listened to a storm of ads and debates. The candidates have each said a good deal about their policies and plans for the future, but it is a common criticism that they are just pandering to the base at different points. A question arises from this: is it just for candidates to present themselves in a different way than they either are or intend to be? To briefly address this problem, it will be beneficial to use the relativistic logic of Hans Kelsen.

          To begin with, it should be noted that the relativistic system cannot objectively say whether it is just for politicians to misrepresent themselves, but it does provide an interesting point about the freedom of ideas necessary in a democratic society. Kelsen very explicitly argues for both freedom and tolerance. He defines tolerance as being “…the sympathetic understanding of the religious or political beliefs of others- without accepting them, but not preventing them from being freely expressed” (Hackett, 203). This creates an interesting dilemma for me, which is the question of whether or not it is acceptable to lie or deceive.

Relativism posits that there are many possible systems of morality and justice, and it is likely that some of these systems contain different views on what is or is not acceptable. We as individuals are therefore the ones to decide if a certain system works or not, which is very similar to a political election. This returns us to the original question: would Kelsen argue that the intentional deception of the candidates is acceptable? This highlights an interesting problem in his arguments, which is that he provides no criteria for distinguishing between the merits of various systems. This is a major problem, especially in the case given regarding candidates, because it can turn the problem into a very circular one. While it could be argued that it is just as long as the candidates each follow their own moral code, we would all agree that this is a terrible system for comparing what is and is not just. This could be construed to break his principle of tolerance, but on the other hand, his principle of tolerance upholds the right for people to deceive. 

Though, I may have just misread what Kelsen said. Do any of you have any thoughts or comments?