Image for Fake News, Real Life:<br> On Truth and Relativism

In his famous book The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom wrote that modern college students all held relativism as a moral postulate. For them, relativism is “the only plausible stance” and was “the great insight of our times.” But just how can relativism—the position that either there is nothing to be known or that we cannot know it—be a moral demand? Isn’t that a contradiction? In this seminar, we examine the theory and practice of relativism, and study how to overcome relativism. How it is that we actually can and do know reality, even while admitting that not everything is certain, or obvious, or monolithic when it comes to knowing?