"There are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable knowledge — the one solution may be termed relationism, and the other relativism."
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to absolute objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed.
"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to todays standards. We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal ones own ego and ones own desires."
"Nietzsche … tried to apply to his own thought the teachings of cultural relativism. This practically nobody else does. For example, Freud says that men are motivated by desire for sex and power, but be did not apply those motives to explain his own science or his own scientific activity. But if he can be a true scientist, i.e., motivated by love of the truth, so can other men, and his description of their motives is thus mortally flawed. Or if he is motivated by sex or power, he is not a scientist, and his science is only one means among many possible to attain those ends. This contradiction runs throughout the natural and social sciences. They give an account of things that cannot possibly explain the conduct of their practitioners. The highly ethical economist who speaks only about gain, the public-spirited political scientist who sees only group interest are symptomatic of the difficulty of providing a self-explanation for science and a ground for the theoretical life, which has dogged the life of the mind since early modernity but has become particularly acute with cultural relativism."
"Theres a tremendous irony in the way conservatives have adopted their position on evolution. After all, the right has been complaining about relativism — the idea that there is no absolute truth — for years. Now, challenging the conclusions of science in the name of cultural tolerance, conservatives have created their own version of radical deconstructionism. Aping the French academicians they once excoriated, theyre undermining the very idea of empirical reality, dismissing inconvenient facts as the product of an oppressive ideology."
"When I say that truth is “relatively absolute,” I mean that the search for truth, which we cannot renounce, always takes place within a relationship. And truth, being dynamic in turn, arouses in us a moral duty, an uninterrupted questioning that can never be satisfied with a particular piece of knowledge."
"Cultural relativism is undermining our willingness to defend our civilized Western culture against the barbaric culture of Islam. People who do not believe that their values are worth defending will not defend them."
"The proclamation of relativism is provocative. (...) I am not particularly interested in being an apostle of relativism. But as I come from a dogmatic culture [Francos regime], Im allergic to some things. Truth, Reason and absolute correction were Catholic in that culture. Now I hear that postmodern relativism is the cause of the moral misery and the loss of values. It is seen that there is a nostalgia of dogmatic culture, disguised with some democratic and enlightened discourse. That dogmatic culture has relativism as its enemy, for that reason I claim this convicted relativism. But it is not an absolute relativism."