Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Truth Is Absolute! Part Two

Part One is here.

Michael Krausz, "Relativism and Beyond" in Relativism, Suffering and Beyond, eds. Bilimoria and Mohanty (Oxford, 1997), pp. 97-98:

The classical 'self-refuting' argument against relativism runs roughly along the following lines. If relativism is true then the thesis of relativism itself must be relatively true. It would be contradictory to affirm that relativism is true in an absolute sense. But while one could affirm that relativism is true in a relative sense, the counter-argument goes, to say that relativism is only relatively true has no general force. In order for the thesis to have general force it should include itself and should be presumed to be absolutely true. But that, again, would be contradictory.

In response . . . one might observe that there is no reason to rule out of court any non-general thesis of relativism. That is, the claim that the thesis of relativism is a thesis embraced locally does not itself show that it has no content or is not locally defensible. Local knowledge is knowledge nonetheless. Rather along lines suggested by Nelson Goodman, the aim of justifying local claims, including the thesis of relativism itself, need not be the establishment of of a general or a universal or an absolutist claim but may well be in the name of unpacking local understanding.


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