Look, I know you guys hate people plugging their blogs on this service, but I thought that these two posts of mine would be pertinent to the discussion:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_leninology_archive.html#109234132720821106
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_leninology_archive.html#109250783218778285
Explain myself? Well, they both deal with the arguments of relativism, value-pluralism and universalism. The first is a review of John Gray's "Two Faces of Liberalism" (2000); the second is a review of Steven Lukes' "Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity" (2003).
Any clued up reader will grasp that I am a beginner in these matters, but perhaps there will be some useful arguments in there.
>From: dave dorkin <ddorkin1 at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: Relativism and Rorty (Was Re: [lbo-talk] Democracy
>andConstitutional Rights)
>Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:47:21 -0700 (PDT)
>
>I think those following this issue would be interested
>in this book which deals very closely with this
>question:
>
>LIBERALS AND CANNIBALS by Steven Lukes
>
>Steven Lukes’ important new book takes its title from
>an aphorism coined by the late Martin Hollis:
>“liberalism for the liberals; cannibalism for the
>cannibals”. According to Hollis, this ‘disastrous
>parallel’ is characteristically drawn by relativists,
>who hold the view that the liberal values of freedom
>and equality under the law are culturally embedded and
>do not apply across cultural boundaries or to ways of
>life different to ours.
>
>Liberalism, in this picture, is just what “we” do, and
>its prescriptions don’t apply to “them.” To suppose
>that they do, the relativist argues, is to commit a
>kind of ethnocentric fallacy, and to fail to see that
>all cultures are valid in their own terms, bound by
>norms and principles applicable only to themselves.
>
>This is a widespread and influential view. Lukes
>shares Hollis’s conviction that its influence in
>philosophy and social and political theory is baleful.
>He raises four main objections against it...
>
><http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/volume118issue3_more.php?id=85_0_21_0_C>
>
>Dave
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
>http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
_________________________________________________________________ It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger