NOTES PREFACE 1. Richard J. Bernstein, Praxis and Action (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), p. 5. 2. Richard J. Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. xiii. 3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), p. 27e. PART ONE: BEYOND OBJECTIVISM AND RELATIVISM: AN OVERVIEW 1. For a critical discussion of the "realist reaction," or what Richard Rorty calls the "anti-pragmatist backlash," see "Pragmatism and Philosophy," Rorty's introduction to his Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 2. See Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th ed. rev. (London: Routledge &. Kegan Paul, 1966). 3. See Science in a Free Society (London: NLB, 1978). 4. Michael Dumrnett, "Can Analytical Philosophy Be Systematic, and Ought It Th Be?", in his 'lhlth and Other Enigmas (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1978), p. 458. 5. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 5-6. 6. See my critical study of Rotty, "Philosophy in the Conversation of Mankind," Review of Metaphysics 33 (1980):745-76. 7. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and 7tanscendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, lll.: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 68-69. 8. Ibid., p. 69. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., p. 70. 11. Considering the strong contrast that Husserl draws between objectivism and transcendentalism, it may seem facile and perverse to label both of these antitheses as objectivism. Philosophers who have taken the transcendental tum typically think of objectivism as the enemy that is to be defeated. But the primary issue here is not merely verbal; it is substantive. Transcendentalism, as portrayed by Husserl, suppos- 234 Notes edly represents the "most radical transformation" and fulfillment of "the whole movement of philosophical history in the modern period." Transcendentalism promises "apodictic certainty," a genuine "beginning," a new foundation and Archimedean point for philosophy. It promises a final escape from all forms of historicism and "anthropological relativism." In short, transcendentalism aims to achieve for philosophy what the varieties of objectivism have always claimed to achieve. Transcendental phenomenology is supposed to be the "final form" of philosophy itself. Heidegger, Derrida, Adorno, and Kolakowski-with different philosophic motivations -have closely scrutinized and exposed this self-understanding of the character and telos of transcendental phenomenology. They have all contributed to its deconstruction . They can be interpreted as exposing the objectivist bias that lies at the very core of transcendentalism. See especially Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973); Leszek Kolakowski, Husserl and the Search for Certitude (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); and Theodor W. Adorno, Against Epistemology, trans. Willis Domingo (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1983). 12. See the several essays on the phenomenological movement in pt. 2 of HansGeorg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). See also the references in n. 11. 13. See Steven Lukes, "Relativism: Cognitive and Moral," in his Essays in Social Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp. 154-74. 14. See Alasdair MacIntyre's provocative analysis in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). MacIntyre argues not only that "the Enlightenment Project of Justifying Morality" has failed, but that it "had to fail." He seeks to explain why "to a large degree people now think talk and act as if emotivism [or relativism] were true no matter what their avowed theoretical stand-point may be" (p. 21). 15. See the discussion of Max Weber in my Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1976), pp. 45-51. 16. For a forceful but controversial analysis of the nihilism implicit in Weber and the modern conception of social science, see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), chap. 2. 17. Science in a Free Society, pp. 8-28. 18. See the following passage by Gadamer: However clearly one demonstrates the inner contradictions of all relativist views, it is as Heidegger has said: all these victorious arguments have something about them that suzgests they are attempting to bowl one over. However cogent they may seem, they still miss the main point. In making use of them one is proved right, and yet they do not express any superior insight of any value. That the thesis of scepticism or relativism refutes itself to the extent that it claims to be true is...