1. Connor Rensimer
Relativism in American Thought
Professor Culver
12 March 2014
Relativism in Dune
! Being at least unconsciously aware of the fact of our finite reflective capacities,
the desire for stability, for grounding amidst uncertainty in the World, persists within us.
Such a desire seeks truths and facts, and exhibits itself in the formation of a priori
principles posed in such a way that they come across as having been out there waiting
to be discovered. The job of philosophers once constituted the function of distinguishing
such doctrines of truth, whether they explicitly or otherwise referred to an underwriter
(God) to reality as we “know” it. Regardless of whether or not a preordaining force is
employed in epistemological or ontological explications, a yearning for metaphysical
comfort is implied by any utterance of eternally affixed truth. Relativism discounts such
notions by asserting that a world view is perspectively limited and born from culture—
more specifically, the socially warranted acts of interpretation. Rorty, who fancies
himself a pragmatist, who “does not have a theory of truth, much less a relativistic
one” (“Solidarity or Objectivity?” 230), emphasizes that, due to the incommensurability
of languages, there is no way to adjudicate between different conceptual frameworks,
consequently leaving us with no means to essential or relativistic truth. With knowledge
being situated in such a way, we are left with a multiplicity of perspectives which are
valued according to utility, that which satisfies the needs of self-preservation. The ideas

2. manifest in relativistic dialogue are exhibited in Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), a science
fiction novel set primarily on a harsh desert planet, concerned with ecology, politics, and
religion with regard to a galactic tribal struggle for dominance.
! Social constructionism claims “that reality—objects, entities, properties, and
categories—is not simply out there to be discovered by empirical investigation or
observation only; rather it is constructed through a variety of norm-governed, socially
sanctioned cognitive activities such as interpretation” (Baghramian, 32). The world is
indeed not ready-made, but rather remains indifferently poised as meaning is imposed
upon it by interpretation and signification; culture is the historically-situated engine
responsible for this conversational activity. On Arrakis, the desert planet which serves
as the main stage in Dune, there dwells a humanoid society known as the Fremen, who
thrive on a dearth of natural resources relative to more lush planets such as Earth or, in
the case of Dune, Caladan. What the Fremen collectively value is what they lack most:
water. Their rites of passage, primary currency, biological patterns, ceremonies and
rituals, and enduring figures of speech are driven by water-based logic, in other words,
an emphasis on surviving the extremes of desert life. The harsh conditions of the planet
demand that they wear special suits which reclaim bodily fluids, allowing them to
traverse as they will whilst losing nothing more than a thimbleful of moisture a day. What
conceptual framework could be more useful in this environment? There, however, is a
disparity between the attitudes toward water between the Fremen and “offworlders,”
especially those from Caladan, e.g. the protagonist of the novel, Paul Atreides, and his
mother, Jessica, who are shocked initially by the Fremen customs. There comes a point
where Paul and Jessica find themselves, after an arduous journey, situated in a Sietch,

3. which serves as a cultural center and shelter for the Fremen, at which point they are
ignorant of the Fremen discipline. The leader of this Sietch, Stilgar, is informed by an
underling warrior of the significant weight of water Jessica and Paul alone possess. He
proceeds immediately to confront the mother and son in order to ascertain the amount
of it and sternly question how they intend to use it:
Stilgar: "What was intended with this wealth?"
Jessica: "Wealth? she thought. She shook her head, feeling the coldness in his voice."
Jessica: "Where I was born, water fell from the sky and ran over the land in wide
rivers…I've not been trained to your water discipline. I never before had to think of it this
way" (Herbert, 291).
To Stilgar’s delight, She and Paul turned over their water for the benefit of the Fremen
whole, for among them was their new home. Shortly following this gesture, Paul is
called out to combat by a Fremen warrior invoking tribal leadership rites, which resulted
in the Fremen dying by the fifteen-year-old’s knife. The tribe proceeds with siphoning
the “life water” (blood) from the fallen warrior’s corpse and arranging the funeral
ceremony at nightfall. In the communal circle where members of the tribe step forward
and express their sentiments toward the fallen with gifts and words, Paul is the only one
to display tears. A Fremen remarks in astonishment, “He gives moisture to the
dead” (Herbert, 306). Not only is it evident that the environment impresses itself upon
the discipline of the Fremen and consequently structure their normative practices, but it
also affects their moral conscience. It is evident that the preservation of the tribe’s water
(their life line) takes precedence over such sentimental expressions. Nehamas’
paraphrasing of Nietzsche encapsulates the relationship between the perceptible world
and the Fremen-contrived reality, stating, "The apparent world, Nietzsche believes, is
not a world that appears to be and is distinct from reality but simply the world as it

4. appears to any being that needs to survive in it and that therefore must arrange it
selectively for its own purposes” (Nehamas, 45). Indeed, it can justly be said that
biological imperatives are the primer for the general psychological and sociological
patterns of a culture. Paul, in accord with this notion, is aware that the empowered
families and factions embroiled in the war are “all caught up in the need of their race to
renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a
great new pooling of genes" (Herbert, 195). Adjacent to water in terms of its prevalent
influence upon the norms of the Fremen, is the spice, “Melange.” The “Spice” is so
pervasive that it exceeds water in the Arrakeen air and serves as a dietary staple, thus it
is an indelible component of Fremen life. Its primal feature is its psychoactive
properties, which entails a synergetic communal awareness, a sense of “oneness.” The
full effect of this awareness is propagated by the consumption of the “water of life,” a
potent narcotic “essence” of the melange spice produced by the Reverend Mother—the
tribe’s spiritual leader—through a chemical alteration. Before the “changing of the
water,” the spice possesses a merely latent narcotic effect, like that of moderate coffee
consumption, but the Fremen, by means of the Reverend Mother, rearrange the natural
substance’s structure in order to amplify its effects for the sake of strengthening the
synergetic bond of the tribe.
! Despite the Fremen’s fervid adherence to their customs—tempered by the harsh
demands of the Arrakeen environment—Paul and his mother, formerly considered off-
worlders, are inclined to overturn a particular principle which determines the leadership
structure within each respective sietch community. This electoral process, known as the
“Tahaddi Challenge,” involves the formal initiation of mortal combat between two

5. warriors of a sietch, in order to determinately alter the power ladder by the sole means
of strength qua strength. At the juncture where Paul, as the symbolic leader (and
prophet) of the Fremen race, is expected to call out Stilgar—technically the commander-
in-chief of the capital, Sietch Tabr—he takes initiative in the sight of his expectant
people, to stake his claim in opposition to the ancient rite:
Paul: “You think it's time I called out Stilgar and changed the leadership of the troops!"
Paul: “Do you think the Lisan-al Gaib that stupid?”
Fremen individual: “It’s the way!”
Paul: Speaking dryly, probing the emotional undercurrents. “Ways change” (Herbert,
413).
Here, Paul has leveraged his power as a prophet, concisely destabilizing the mindset of
the Fremen procession, rendering them doubtful. He proceeds to impress upon the
shaken mass rhetorical questions, in order to illuminate the fact that the tribe possesses
pillars of leadership: Jessica, the reverend mother; Stilgar, the general of the troops;
and himself, free to oversee, delegate, and guide all with the aid of his prescient vision.
At this point Paul reminds the Fremen of their priorities, positioning them in such a way
to accommodate present problems. "The good of the tribe, that is the most important
thing, eh?" "To unseat Rabban, the Harkonnen beast, and remake our world into a place
where we may raise our families in happiness amidst an abundance of water--is this our
goal?" "Do you smash your knife before battle?" (Herbert, 414). In the end, Paul
managed to breach the mindset of the people, ultimately influencing and reconfiguring
their perspective regarding the leadership hierarchy. Who in the whole can deny that
such a thing as the Tahaddi Challenge enacts destruction, rather than positioning the
tribe to flourish? Nietzsche distinguished the method in which particular points of view
may alter a facet of a world-view—such as what Paul demonstrated—in the statement

6. that, "the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification
of all events is assumed...a drive rules here that is capable of employing both means,
firstly falsification, then the implementation of its own point of view" (WP, 512).
Falsification of ingrained norms affects a state of destabilizing doubt, the foundation
upon which people are willing to listen to alternatives in hopes of finding a grounding
certitude through wearing another perspective. Effectively, the Fremen are naturally
approaching their Prophet’s propositions, asking “‘What would it be like to believe that?
What would happen if I did? What would I be committing myself to?’” (Rorty, “P,R,I”
113).
! The limits of what can be known, and the fact that no moral or conceptual
framework is absolute, is reinforced and underscored by the fact that empiricism, too, is
limited by the finite capacity of human perception. Paul’s prescient vision, which allows
him to sample the winds of time, concretely demonstrates our perceptual limitations
through a more acute level of awareness. "The prescience, he realized, was an
illumination that incorporated the limits of what it revealed--at once a source of accuracy
and meaningful error. A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened: the expenditure of
energy that revealed what he saw, changed what he saw" (Herbert, 288). Such a
phenomenon underscores the fact that there cannot be, according to Hilary Putnam, a
“quantum mechanical theory of the whole universe” considering that, “our
measurements, our observations, insofar as they can be described physically, are just
interactions within the whole shebang," and further that “the ‘empirical world,’ the world
of our experience, cannot be completely described with just one picture…" (Realism
with a Human Face, 5). These notions suggest that classical physics turns out to be just

7. another form of metaphysics, and it is thus that universalism is moot because we simply
lack the means—namely a God’s-eye view— to conceive a determinate picture of reality
applicable to all historical contexts.
! In conclusion, life is nothing other than what it seems, as there is no distinction
between what is perceptually apparent and what is real or essentially true. Dune, in
accord with relativist thought, encapsulates and addresses what we’re philosophical left
with: the capacity to interpret, converse, and categorize amongst each other at
particular historically-situated loci, ultimately riding and shaping the currents of eternity
and reality for the sake of preservation, proliferation, and evolution. Although this may
be so, there persists a yearning for metaphysical comfort, a God’s-eye view (a view
from everywhere and nowhere), a means for grasping the true essence of things, apart
from the way they appear.
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