I know this is quite a broad philosophical topic, and I just recently found out about it, so I am intrigued to see how it will be explained.
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So the word relative basically breaks down to seeing something in relation to what’s around it. It causes discussion in basically every field of thought.
So in order to describe and judge something you need something to compare it to, called a frame of reference. It’s basically like a complicated ruler which allows you to describe things in relation to things known.
The issues that arise from this however are that when it comes to thinking, the way that people perceive and judge things depends on their frame of reference. The things they’ve seen and experienced in the past effect the way that they measure things because if someone has for instance seen a lot of suffering, they may measure a new amount of suffering as small from their frame of reference where as it might seem huge to someone who has a different reference for amounts of suffering
Einstein explained relativity as “an hour courting a pretty woman feels like a second, and a second standing on hot coals feels like an hour”. But it’s also a physics concept depending on the relative time for a certain object (such as the comparison between one on earth and one in space), but philosophically it’s a difference in perception depending on the person and what they are doing at any time.
In philosophy, relativism has to deal with whether or not things have *intrinsic* properties. For example, when we say that a thing is evil does that mean that is has evil as an objective property (i.e., everyone who can fully understand it can observe something about it and agree that it is evil) or are we only able to define it as evil from our own relative perspective (i.e., we define it as evil because it has properties we find objectionable, but there are other perspectives from which those same properties could reasonably not be considered evil)? As an alternative example: does gold have an *intrinsic* value (i.e., it has value simply by being gold) or does it only have value because we can do something useful with it (make use of its conductive properties or exchange it for goods and services)?
Relativism takes the approach that these things are *not* intrinsic properties and thus must be understood in their relative contexts. In order to examine the nature of evil, you must first ask *from whose perspective?* The opposite side of the spectrum from relativism is Absolutism, which holds that these things *are* intrinsic properties that can be understood objectively, without reference to a particular culture or viewpoint.
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