front cover of A Dictatorship of Relativism ?
A Dictatorship of Relativism ?
Symposium in Response to Cardinal Ratzinger’s Last Homily, Volume 13
Jeffrey M. Perl, ed.
Duke University Press
In the last homily he gave before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described modern life as ruled by a “dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely” of satisfying “the desires of one’s own ego.” An eminent scholar familiar with the centuries-old debates over relativism, Ratzinger chose to oversimplify or even caricature a philosophical approach of great sophistication and antiquity. His homily depicts the relativist as someone blown about “by every wind of doctrine,” whereas the relativist sticks firmly to one argument—that human knowledge is not absolute. Gathering prominent intellectuals from disciplines most relevant to the controversy—ethics, theology, political theory, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, epistemology, philosophy of science, and classics—this special double issue of Common Knowledge contests Ratzinger’s denunciation of relativism.

One essay relates the arguments of Ratzinger to those of two other German scholars—the conservative political theorist Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde and the liberal philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas—since all three men assume that social order depends on the existence of doctrinal authority (divine or otherwise). The contributors here argue for an intellectual and social life free of the desire for an “infantilizing” authority. One proposes that the Christian god is a relativist who prefers limitation and ambiguity; another, initially in agreement with Ratzinger about the danger relativism poses to faith and morals, then argues that this danger is what makes relativism valuable. The issue closes with the first English translation of an extract from a book on Catholic-Jewish relations by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of the Catholic Church’s most progressive figures.

Contributors. David Bloor, Daniel Boyarin, Mary Baine Campbell, Lorraine Daston, Arnold I. Davidson, John Forrester, Kenneth J. Gergen, Simon Goldhill, Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Julia Kristeva, Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, Christopher Norris, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Richard Shusterman, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Jeffrey Stout, Gianni Vattimo

[more]

front cover of The Metaphysics and Ethics of Relativism
The Metaphysics and Ethics of Relativism
Carol Rovane
Harvard University Press, 2014

Relativism is a hotly contested doctrine among philosophers, some of whom regard it as neither true nor false but simply incoherent. As Carol Rovane demonstrates in this analytical tour-de-force, the way to defend relativism is not initially by establishing its truth but by clarifying its content. The Metaphysics and Ethics of Relativism elaborates a doctrine of relativism that has a consistent logical, metaphysical, and practical significance. Relativism is worth debating, Rovane contends, because it bears directly on the moral choices we make in our lives.

Three intuitive conceptions of relativism have been influential in philosophical discourse. These include the idea that certain unavoidable disagreements are irresolvable, leading to the conclusion that "both sides are right," and the idea that truth is always relative to context. But the most compelling, Rovane maintains, is the "alternatives intuition." Alternatives are truths that cannot be embraced together because they are not universal. Something other than logical contradiction excludes them. When this is so, logical relations no longer hold among all truth-value-bearers. Some truths will be irreconcilable between individuals even though they are valid in themselves.

The practical consequence is that some forms of interpersonal engagement are confined within definite boundaries, and one has no choice but to view what lies beyond those boundaries with what Rovane calls "epistemic indifference." In a very real sense, some people inhabit different worlds--true in themselves, but closed off to belief from those who hold irreducibly incompatible truths.

[more]

front cover of Science and Relativism
Science and Relativism
Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science
Larry Laudan
University of Chicago Press, 1990
In recent years, many members of the intellectual community have embraced a radical relativism regarding knowledge in general and scientific knowledge in particular, holding that Kuhn, Quine, and Feyerabend have knocked the traditional picture of scientific knowledge into a cocked hat. Is philosophy of science, or mistaken impressions of it, responsible for the rise of relativism? In this book, Laudan offers a trenchant, wide-ranging critique of cognitive relativism and a thorough introduction to major issues in the philosophy of knowledge.
[more]

logo for Duke University Press
Sensus Communis
Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism
John D. Schaeffer
Duke University Press, 1990
The concept sensus communis—a term that means a great deal more than its English translation “common sense”—has served as a key principle in the theory of knowledge from the ancient Greeks through the Enlightenment philosophers. John D. Schaeffer shows how the seventeenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico synthesized Greek and Roman ideas of what sensus communis and what this synthesis implies for current discussions of rhetoric and hermeneutics. Arguments for ethical relativism emerge from divisions between sensus communis as an ethical judgment (a concept that Richard Rorty, Richard Bernstein, and others have tried to rescue) and as a linguistic consensus, a division against which Vico argued and which his own concept of sensus communis attempted to reconcile.
In extended commentaries on Gadamer, the Gadamer/Habermas debate, and Derrida, Schaeffer shows that Vico offers the possibility of analyzing social phenomena and constellations of power from within the humanist rhetorical tradition. Vico’s achievements have powerful implications for relating ethics and hermeneutics to the world of concrete social practice, particularly in an age in which the electronic media have replaced print as the primary means of communication and in which a “secondary orality” (a cast of mind similar to that of nonliterate peoples) is appearing within our literate civilization.
[more]

front cover of The Specter of Relativism
The Specter of Relativism
Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philosophical Hermeneutics
Lawrence Schmidt
Northwestern University Press, 1995
Specter of Relativism addresses the timely topic of relativism from the perspective of Gadamer's hermeneutics. This collection of essays explores several of the key issues in contemporary philosophy—the nature of truth, the model of conversation, and the possibility of an ethics in postmodern conditions—in the context of the work of Gadamer. Although centered on Gadamer and including the first English translation of one of his essays, the volume does not narrowly define or defend the approach of philosophical hermeneutics; the contributors present a broad range of views, in some cases championing a Gadamerian perspective, in others challenging it. 
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter