Abstract
In this chapter, Zackariasson offers some background to the contemporary discussions of relativism and post-truth in academic as well as public debate. He discusses the factual and normative factors that together form part of what we can call a dynamic of relativization—a dynamic that increasingly pushes us to acknowledge the relative character of most, or even all, judgments and truth-claims. The chapter also introduces some basic terminology, such as what we could mean by a post-truth condition, and the relevance of the distinction between descriptive and normative relativism for the relativism debate. Finally, it offers a brief overview of the coming chapters.
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You could, of course, like some critics of consumerism, for instance, hold that the differences we see are really superficial, and that there is broad consensus among virtually all citizens about the virtues of capitalism, consumerism and choice. Here, I will not pursue that route, however.
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Regardless of which of these individuations of the relevant community we opt for, relativisms typically face the rather difficult task of accounting for which kinds of communities that truth or the adequacy of judgments is relative to. A critic of relativism such as Louis Pojman claims that these difficulties are so grave that, eventually, relativism will collapse into subjectivism, because cultures and religions are so heterogeneous that we can divide them into ever smaller communities until we are down to the individual level (Pojman 2001).
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Zackariasson, U. (2018). Introduction: Engaging Relativism and Post-Truth. In: Stenmark, M., Fuller, S., Zackariasson, U. (eds) Relativism and Post-Truth in Contemporary Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96559-8_1
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