This important book tackles the problem of comparing phenomena- social roles, forms of activities, institutions- across cultures.

This book argues that critical realism offers the theory of cognitive rationality a real way of overcoming the limitations of methodological individualism by recognising both the agents' - and the social structure's - causal powers and liabilities. Cynthia Lins Hamlin persuasively argues that critical realism represents a better safeguard against the relativism which springs from the conflation of social reality and our ideas about it. This is an important book for sociologists and anyone working in the social sciences, and for all those concerned with the methodology, and philosophy, of social science.

Drawing freely and expertly from Continental and analytic traditions, Richard Bernstein examines a number of debates and controversies exemplified in the works of Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty, and Arendt. He argues that a "new conversation" is emerging about human rationality—a new understanding that emphasizes its practical character and has important ramifications both for thought and action.

Is it possible, given culturally incongruent perspectives, to validate any common standards of behaviour? Is cultural relativity be a problem when cultures are porous? Can we implement human rights without incorporating the idea into the fabric of culture? This book addresses such questions with an inventive and original understanding of culture.

A collection of essays in which philosophers of widely different interests grapple with the problem of the relative and the absolute in philosophy and religion. A concluding article tries to advance beyond the simple antithesis to a more sophisticated and adequite conception.

Rich with analyses of concepts from deconstruction, systems theory, and post-Marxism, with critiques of fundamentalist thought and the war on terror, this volume argues for developing a philosophy of being in order to overcome the quandary of postmodern relativism. Undergirding the contributions are the premises that ontology is a vital concept for philosophy today, that an acceptable leftist ontology must avoid the kind of identity politics that has dominated recent cultural studies, and that a new ontology must be situated within global capitalism.

Laudan argues that the debate between positivists and post-positivist relativists can only be resolved by seeing that these unacceptable positions rest on the same unexamined set of assumptions. By targeting and critiquing these assumptions, he lays the groundwork for a post-positivist philosophy of science that does not provide aid and comfort to the enemies of reason.

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.

Reconsidering the Postmodern takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through European national literatures. Focusing on novels by authors as diverse as Arnon Grunberg, Michel Houellebecq, Aleksander Hemon and Javier Marías, twelve literary experts reflect on postmodernism and its aftereffects in contemporary fiction. These essays are personal, ironic, and historical without being nostalgic, while reassessing the constantly evolving state of the European novel and the way in which postmodernism has permanently altered the face of fiction. Reconsidering the Postmodern is an important qualitative evaluation of the literary value and legacy of the postmodernism movement.