| | Luke,
... four further theses:
that no way of conducting rational enquiry from a standpoint independent of the particularities of any tradition has been discovered and that there is good reason to believe that there is no such way; There isn't a rational enquiry that can be conducted from a supra-contextual, synoptic (God's-eye) view of things -- an omniscient sort of rational enquiry -- but only enquiry that is contextual.
that the problems of understanding and representing faithfully the concepts and beliefs of some tradition alien to one's own in a way that makes those concepts and beliefs intelligible within one's own tradition confront difficulties which can in certain contingent circumstances be overcome; You can talk about rival moral standpoints without adopting them (such as talking about altruism from the standpoint of egoism; defining altruism's terms and whatnot). Some folks claim that you have to be an altruist to talk about altruism, or that you have to be an altruist to define altruism's terms. Rand has been criticized for her definitions of altruism and sacrifice, because she is a person who (in principle) operates outside of such things -- but criticizing Rand for defining altruism from an egoist's standpoint is not a valid criticism.
that rival traditions have rival conceptions of rationality and of progress in understanding, but that this does not entail relativism or perspectivism; Even though individualists define terms differently from collectivists at the outset, we are not necessarily stuck in some intellectual stalemate (an intractable relativism) due to that fact. It's normal to think that, though. It's normal to think that if someone defines things differently from you, that there will be no progress in debating them.
and finally that although these theses are themselves advanced from the standpoint of a particular tradition, that of a Thomist Aristotelianism, they involve a substantive and nonrelativizable conception of truth, and that in this respect as in others there is no inconsistency in making universal claims from the standpoint of a tradition It's not a valid criticism for someone to say "It's true for you (because you are an Objectivist), but it's not true for me (because I am a Marxist, or a Catholic, or whatever)." Inside of a paradigm like Objectivism, you can make valid universal claims -- claims about everyone and their various philosophies, because truth itself is universal.
Ed
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... four further theses: that no way of conducting rational enquiry from a standpoint independent of the particularities of any tradition has been discovered and that there is good reason to believe that there is no such way; that the problems of understanding and representing faithfully the concepts and beliefs of some tradition alien to one's own in a way that makes those concepts and beliefs intelligible within one's own tradition confront difficulties which can in certain contingent circumstances be overcome; that rival traditions have rival conceptions of rationality and of progress in understanding, but that this does not entail relativism or perspectivism; and finally that although these theses are themselves advanced from the standpoint of a particular tradition, that of a Thomist Aristotelianism, they involve a substantive and nonrelativizable conception of truth, and that in this respect as in others there is no inconsistency in making universal claims from the standpoint of a tradition.
