[MD] in defence of the "relative"

[MarshaV]

'The Truth About Relativism' by Joseph Margolis arrived.        

First paragraph of Forward:

"The family of views that has come to be known as relativism has, since
ancient times, inspired a suspiciously hot reaction of scorn and fear.
Relativism conjures up an image of weak or wild intelligence that neither
understands nor cares about the nature of the stable invariances of life and
thought that govern the human condition and make it whole and humane.  One
sees this already in Plato's and Aristotle's reaction to Protagoras'
teaching.  One feels the contempt and the sense of danger.  The startling
thing is that the elemental quality of their language runs like a continuous
stream from the Greek world to our own and has hardly abated.  More than
that, many of the same arguments that Plato and Aristotle collected (or
invented) and poised like battering rams against a barbarian mind are still
in use and hardly improved.  It's hard to believe, but it's true."

Tsk, tsk...           
 
  
Marsha