Recent years have seen a vigorous revival of interest in relativism - both in support and in opposition. This collection of 21 essays, 16 of which appear in print here for the first time, advances the discussion found in an earlier volume, Relativism: Cognitive and Moral. These present selections focus on philosophical and methodological issues of relativism by exhibiting its varieties and by rehearsing its virtues and vices. The contributions concern relativism in a wide range of practices in the human studies.

Interpretation, Relativism, and Identity: Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Krausz addresses three major philosophical themes: interpretation, relativism, and identity. It does so by focusing on Krausz’s distinctive exploration of the relationship between interpretation and ontology, the varieties of relativism, and the interpretive dimension of identity construction. Throughout the years, Krausz has participated in exchanges between people who embrace opposing views about reality, human selves, and the attachments or detachments between them. In these exchanges, life orientations are at stake as much as conceptual distinctions. These exchanges are reflected in a discussion among renowned scholars in philosophy and literary studies not only on Krausz’s work but also on the significant philosophical implications of key issues for how we understand the human condition, our commitments and values, the meaning of religious and artistic texts, and the way we make sense of our lives and ourselves. The contributors to this volume engage with all of these concerns in their dialogue with Krausz and with one another. The range and versatility of Krausz’s conceptual apparatus can benefit students and scholars with interests in interpretative endeavors, different ontological commitments, and various conceptual priorities and preferences.

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The essays in this volume grapple with one of the most intriguing, enduring, and far-reaching philosophical problems of our age. Relativism comes in many varieties. It is often defined as the belief that truth, goodness, or beauty is relative& mdash;relative, that is, to some context or frame of reference& mdash;and that no absolute standards can adjudicate between competing reference frames. This anthology captures the significance and range of relativistic doctrines, rehearsing their virtues and vices and reflecting a spectrum of attitudes toward relativism. Invoking diverse philosophical orientations, these doctrines concern conceptions of relativism in relation to pluralism and moral relativism; facts and conceptual schemes; realism and objectivity; solidarity and rationality; universalism and foundationalism; and feminism and poststructuralism. The thirty-three essays in this book include nine original works and many classical articles.

This volume collects twenty-one original essays that discuss Michael Krausz’s distinctive and provocative contribution to the theory of interpretation. At the beginning of the book Krausz offers a synoptic review of his central claims, and he concludes with a substantive essay that replies to scholars from the United States, England, Germany, India, Japan, and Australia. Krausz’s philosophical work centers around a distinction that divides interpreters of cultural achievements into two groups. Singularists assume that for any object of interpretation only one single admissible interpretation can exist. Multiplists assume that for some objects of interpretation more than one interpretation is admissible. A central question concerns the ontological entanglements involved in interpretive activity. Domains of application include works of art and music, as well as literary, historical, legal and religious texts. Further topics include truth commissions, ethnocentrism and interpretations across cultures.

This clear and comprehensive account of the relativist debate will be invaluable for students as an instructive introduction to the topic. For professional philosophers it will 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 twenty 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 the truth is grounded in the value systems of a culture. Rom Harré and Michael Krausz map the current landscape of relativism and present 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.

In this book, David B. Wong defends an ambitious and important new version of moral relativism. He does not espouse the type of relativism that says anything goes, but he does start with a relativist stance against alternative theories such that there need not be only one universal truth. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities existing across different traditions and cultures, all with one core human question as to how we can all live together.

The author presents fictional dialogues between four former classmates who hold significantly different views about the meanings of truth, goodness, and beauty and our ability to define them without a frame of reference. As they travel in India, a place with unfamiliar concepts and customs, thesy debate the rightness of relativism and absolutism.

Linguistic relativity is the claim that culture, through language, affects the way in which we think, and especially our classification of the experienced world. This book reexamines ideas about linguistic relativity in the light of new evidence and changes in theoretical climate. The editors have provided a substantial introduction that summarizes changes in thinking about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the light of developments in anthropology, linguistics and cognitive science. Introductions to each section will be of especial use to students.