Truth and Relativity: An Exchange: 1. Sean Sayers' Relativism; 2. Once more on Relative Truth: A Reply to Skillen

TRUTH & RELATIVITY: AN EXCHANGE Sean Sayers’ Relativism Tony Skiffen For some years Sean Sayers has been urging, against empiricism and anal ytical philosophy, the virtues of dialecticallogic. Such logic, he believes, is essential to a proper understanding. I take issue with this view at the level of ‘logic and language’. It seems to me […]

Beyond Objectivism and Relativism

Beyond Objectivism and Relativism Ingvar Johansson One very important line of division in todayt s philosophy is between those who want to go beyond the dualism between objectivism and relativism and those who still think this dualism is a live option. On this issue t I side with Richard Rortyts view in Philosophy and the […]

Post-Marxist Modes of Production

POST-MARXIST M I ‘) .. or PRODUCTION According to whoever wrote the editorial ‘notes’ for Radical Philosophy 17, ‘The present upsurge of fundamental Marxist researches may indicate an exit route from the circle of philosophy’s –deaths and re births , via which the problem of the specificity of “the philosophical” might be both subverted and […]

Is Philosophy Really Necessary?

new world. Tradition and faith were two of the most powerful bulwarks of the old regine. and the philosophical attackes constituted an immediate historical action. Today. however. it is not a matter of eliminating a creed. for in the totalitarian states. where the noisiest appeal is made to heroism and a lofty Weltanschauung, neither faith […]

On seeing Things Differently: With reply by Tony Skillen

on SEEIIIIi tHlnliS DIFFEREmlY RiEhard Donnan •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Some moral disagreements are more fundamental than others. This is obvious. In particular, some moral disagreements are so fundamental that t~ey are to be regarded not simply as conflicts between particular moral beliefs hut as conflicts between distinct moralities. This, though less ohvious, has heen increasingly recognised hy […]

Science-envy: Sokal, science and the police

Commentary Science-envy Sokal, science and the police Bruce robbins When Social Text entitled its Spring 1996 issue ʻScience Warsʼ, it fulfilled its own prophecy. Thanks to Alan Sokalʼs now famous parody article, which was published there undetected, a discursive war immediately erupted. (See ʻFriendly Fire: The Hoaxing of Social Textʼ, RP 81, pp. 54–6.) As […]

Towards a phenomenology of racial embodiment

When one realizes the indeterminacy of racial categories, their fluid borders and cultural variety, it is often tempting to adopt a nominalism about race: that race is no more real than phlogiston or witchcraft. In this essay, I resist this conclusion primarily on phenomenological grounds. Race is real, certainly more real than phlogiston, though like […]