Varieties of Relativism

This comprehensive account of the relativist debate is designed for students as an instructive introduction to the topic, while for professionals it should be a useful reference to the continuing discussion. The latest round in the age-old debate between relativists and their opponents has continued unresolved for the last 20 years. Relativism has increasingly become the unconscious theoretical underpinning for a host of theories of ideologies, and is beginning to be treated as a simplistic belief that truth is grounded in the value systems of a culture. This volume casts relativism as a sincere attempt to resolve sceptical conflicts beyond any reasonable doubt, and seeks to map the current landscape of arguments for the varieties of relativism and opposing varieties of absolutism by clarifying each of the main fields of the relativist/absolutist debate. It presents the whole subject as a complex pattern of inconclusive controversies, to be made sense of only by paying attention to the question of which species of absolutism each variety of relativism opposes.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 The debate: the roots of relativism; our conceptual tools; the argument for discursive relativism in general; contemporary relativism in context; the basic insights spelled out; varieties of relativism; the shape of relativist arguments; our argumentative strategy. Part 2 Semantic relativism: absolutist accounts of meaning; the argument for a universal root vocabulary; the upshot of these arguments. Part 3 Epistemic relativism: arguments for epistemic relativism organized around different conceptions of epistemic framework; a global argument against epistemic relativsm; the paradoxes of epistemic relativism; the Strong programme - is it a sociological reduction?; some standard objections to the Strong programme; the Strong programme reconsidered. Part 4 Ontological relativism: what is ontological relativism?; possible resolutions; ontological relativism and its epistemic groundings; a paradox of ontological relativism; the existence of artifacts. Part 5 Moral relativism: what is moral relativism?; how we might distinguish moralities from practical maxims; some arguments for moral relativism; some arguments for moral absolutism. Part 6 From relativism to anarchy; the sources of strong relativism; the extremists, from relativism to anarchy - Rorty - beyond grounding and certainty, Fayerbend - beyond logic and truth, Gergen - beyond authenticity and responsibility. Part 7 The upshot: patterns of variety of relativism and absolutism; Antinomies - some principles of polar opposition, are "true" and "false" exclusive and exhaustive assessment of statements, the structure of antinomies; paradoxes; our position.

About the Author :
Rom Harre is a Fellow of Linacre College, University of Oxford, and Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University. He is also adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Binghampton University. His publications include Great Scientific Experiments, Varieties of Realism, Social Being, The Discursive Mind (with Grant Gillett), Philosophies of Science and The Explanation of Social Behaviour (with Paul Secord). Michael Krausz is the Milton C. Nahm Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. His publications include Rightness and Reasons: Interpretation in Cultural Practices (1993), in addition to contributions on relativism, rationality, interpretation, metaphysics of culture, cultural identity, creativity, interpretation of music and the philosophy of R. G. Collingwood.