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Protagoras and the Challenge of Relativism

Author: Dr Ugo Zilioli

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1409485455

Protagoras was an important Greek thinker of the fifth century BC, the most famous of the so called Sophists, though most of what we know of him and his thought comes to us mainly through the dialogues of his strenuous opponent Plato. In this book, Ugo Zilioli offers a sustained and philosophically sophisticated examination of what is, in philosophical terms, the most interesting feature of Protagoras' thought for modern readers: his role as the first Western thinker to argue for relativism. Zilioli relates Protagoras' relativism with modern forms of relativism, in particular the 'robust relativism' of Joseph Margolis, gives an integrated account both of the perceptual relativism examined in Plato's Theaetetus and the ethical or social relativism presented in the first part of Plato's Protagoras and offers an integrated and positive analysis of Protagoras' thought, rather than focusing on ancient criticisms and responses to his thought. This is a deeply scholarly work which brings much argument to bear to the claim that Protagoras was and remains Plato's subtlest philosophical enemy.

Fear of Knowledge

Author: Paul Boghossian

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2007-10-11

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0191622753

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The academic world has been plagued in recent years by scepticism about truth and knowledge. Paul Boghossian, in his long-awaited first book, sweeps away relativist claims that there is no such thing as objective truth or knowledge, but only truth or knowledge from a particular perspective. He demonstrates clearly that such claims don't even make sense. Boghossian focuses on three different ways of reading the claim that knowledge is socially constructed - one as a thesis about truth and two about justification. And he rejects all three. The intuitive, common-sense view is that there is a way things are that is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective. Difficult as these notions may be, it is a mistake to think that recent philosophy has uncovered powerful reasons for rejecting them. This short, lucid, witty book shows that philosophy provides rock-solid support for common sense against the relativists; it will prove provocative reading throughout the discipline and beyond.

Protagoras and the Challenge of Relativism

Author: Ugo Zilioli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1317074475

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The Challenge of Relativism

Author: Patrick J.J. Phillips

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2011-11-13

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1441178856

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Offering a comprehensive overview and introduction to the concept of relativism and relativistic arguments this book surveys important relativist philosophers, both classical and modern.

Relativism and Religion

Author: Carlo Invernizzi Accetti

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 023154037X

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Moral relativism is deeply troubling for those who believe that, without a set of moral absolutes, democratic societies will devolve into tyranny or totalitarianism. Engaging directly with this claim, Carlo Invernizzi Accetti traces the roots of contemporary anti-relativist fears to the antimodern rhetoric of the Catholic Church and then rescues a form of philosophical relativism for modern, pluralist societies, arguing that this viewpoint provides the firmest foundation for an allegiance to democracy. In his analyses of the relationship between religious arguments and political authority and the implications of philosophical relativism for democratic theory, Accetti makes a far-ranging contribution to contemporary debates over the revival of religion in politics and the conceptual grounds for a commitment to democracy. He presents the first comprehensive genealogy of anti-relativist discourse and reclaims for English-speaking readers the overlooked work of Hans Kelsen on the connection between relativism and democracy. By engaging with contemporary attempts to replace the religious foundation of democratic values with a neo-Kantian conception of reason, Accetti also makes a powerful case for relativism as the best basis for a civic ethos that integrates different perspectives into democratic politics.

Natural Moralities

Author: David B Wong

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-03-03

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780199724840

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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.

Against Relativism

Author: Christopher Norris

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1997-11-10

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780631198642

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This book offers a vigorous and constructive challenge to relativism by examining a wide range of anti-realist theories, and in response offering a variety of arguments amounting to a strong defence of critical realism in the natural and social sciences.

Relativism

Author: Francis J. Beckwith

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 1998-10

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0801058066

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A critique of moral relativism, the belief that there exists no objective moral standards that apply to every place, person, and time.

The Book of Absolutes

Author: William Gairdner

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0773574697

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A lively challenge to postmodern opinion that reveals satisfying and reliable certainties.

Relativism and Post-Truth in Contemporary Society

Author: Mikael Stenmark

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-09-17

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 331996559X

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This book approaches post-truth and relativism in a multidisciplinary fashion. Researchers from astrophysics, philosophy, psychology, media studies, religious studies, anthropology, social epistemology and sociology discuss and analyse the impact of relativism and post-truth both within the academy and in society at large. The motivation for this multidisciplinary approach is that relativism and post-truth are multifaceted phenomena with complex histories that have played out differently in different areas of society and different academic disciplines. There is hence a multitude of ways in which to use and understand the concepts and the phenomena to which they refer, and a multitude of critiques and defenses as well. No single volume can capture the ongoing discussions in different areas in all their complexity, but the different chapters of the book can function as exemplifications of the ramifications these phenomena have had.