Lin, Andrew. "Relationality as a Basis for Postmodern Truthfulness-- a Relative/ Relational Mode of Truth according to the Ontological Principle of Relativity in Process Philosophy and the Relationism in Sociological Theories." Process Thought and East Asian Culture:Philosophy and East Asian Thought  97-107. [Conference paper presented at The 5th International Whitehead Conference], Seoul, South Korea, May 28, 2004.

Abstract

Since Nietzsche’s perspectivalism pointed out the relative nature of human knowledge, the ontological mode of truth in metaphysics has already been deconstructed by some postmodern thinkers. But does it lead inevitably to a nihilistic relativism? In this essay, I would like to explore a relative/ relational mode of truth that has been implied within Whitehead’s process philosophy, especially his ontological principle and the principle of relativity, which can become as the ontological principle of relativity, and its similar presence of relativity, which can become as the ontological principle of relativity, and its similar presence in Karl Mannheim and Niklas Luhmann’s sociological theories. Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge proposes relationism rather than relativism in the social construction of knowledge. Luhmann’s social theory of systems manifests the open-endedness, radical relativity, or relationality, or relationality in theoretic systems. Amid them, an unbounded mode of truth having “relationality” as its basis is implied; it is open to the full social breadth of relationships in interactions. It provides a constructive possibility for postmodern “truthfulness” within the condition of deconstructive postmodernity.