Reason and Relativism

Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, recently asserted that “Public reason is not possible in a culture that is dominated by the ‘dictatorship of relativism,' for a very simple reason: Relativism is a dogma and therefore it a priori rejects rational argumentation, even toward itself. . . . Relativism [denies] a capability of reason to argue truth . . . [and so] prevents the use of public reason.”  Villanova law prof Robert Miller shows here and here why this assertion is wrong.  Read his whole analysis, but here's a taste:

Crepaldi, like many Catholic thinkers, tends to lump together under the rubric of “relativism” several quite different moral doctrines, all of which differ from Catholic teaching and have become prominent in the twentieth century, but none of which (other than perhaps the emotivism of the logical positivists) involves a wholesale rejection of rational argumentation on normative issues.