{"quotes":[{"text":"No-one can own our Lord Buddha. That would be a foolish claim, but the roads that lead to him, the Way... That is a different matter. They are all filled with toll-gates, like the roads of Japan, and the monks collect the fees.","author":"Erik Christian Haugaard","tags":["buddha","relativism","sectarianism","way"],"id":1920,"author_id":"Erik+Christian+Haugaard"},{"text":"The truth is, Jung has brought back one member of the old duality, unreason, with a new name; it is no synthesis at all, but only the latest maneuver in the war against rationality that has been conducted with rising hysteria by literary intellectuals and humanists against the laws of a culture they have reason to distrust and disobey. The Jungian theory proposes to every disaffected humanist his 'personal myth,' as a sanctuary against the modern world. Against the vulgar democracy of intelligence, Jungian theory proposes an aristocracy of feeling. From this proposal derives Jung's persistent influence on modern critical and aesthetic style.","author":"Philip Rieff","tags":["culture","humanism","modern-myth","modern-psychology","relativism","religion","truth"],"id":2865,"author_id":"Philip+Rieff"},{"text":"We find that in the absence of demonstrable truth, the best we can do is to exercise the greatest diligence, humility, insight, intelligence, and industry in trying to arrive at the nearest values to truth. I hope, of course, to argue convincingly that having done this, we have an inescapable duty to seek to inculcate others with these values.","author":"William F. Buckley Jr.","tags":["education","higher-education","relativism","teaching","truth"],"id":11550,"author_id":"William+F.+Buckley+Jr."},{"text":"True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times.","author":"Augustine of Hippo","tags":["absolutes","relativism","values"],"id":23277,"author_id":"Augustine+of+Hippo"},{"text":"Truth is only relative to those that ignore hard evidence.","author":"A.E. Samaan","tags":["comprehending","comprehension","discovery","evidence","history","moral-relativism","relativism","truth","truth-telling","understanding"],"id":46482,"author_id":"A.E.+Samaan"},{"text":"If it is true that we cannot possess knowledge of what is good in any absolute sense, it is equally true that we have an ethical duty to decide between what is better and what is worse.","author":"Richard Kearney","tags":["ethics","good-and-evil","relativism"],"id":49749,"author_id":"Richard+Kearney"},{"text":"Are we truly committed to the notion that ideals and values vary and alter in accordance with changing conditions? Should we not question such a relativistic dogma? Is not the degree of our sensitivity to the validity of the ultimate ideals and values that fluctuates rather than the ultimate ideals and values?","author":"Abraham Joshua Heschel","tags":["idealism","ideals","relativism","values"],"id":64590,"author_id":"Abraham+Joshua+Heschel"},{"text":"Whatever we may think of the merits of torturing children for pleasure, and no doubt there is much to be said on both sides, I am sure we all agree that it should be done with sterilized instruments.","author":"G.K. Chesterton","tags":["irony","pluralism","politics","relativism"],"id":81721,"author_id":"G.K.+Chesterton"},{"text":"Who can say they saw a whole play or read a whole book? Each has their own experience, their own play, their own book.","author":"Johnny Rich","tags":["hip","literature","readers","readers-and-writers","relativism"],"id":84853,"author_id":"Johnny+Rich"},{"text":"[Professor Greene's] reaction to GAMAY, as published in the Yale Daily News, fairly took one's breath away. He fondled the word 'fascist' as though he had come up with a Dead Sea Scroll vouchsafing the key word to the understanding of God and Man at Yale. In a few sentences he used the term thrice. 'Mr. Buckley has done Yale a great service' (how I would tire of this pedestrian rhetorical device), 'and he may well do the cause of liberal education in America an even greater service, by stating the fascist alternative to liberalism. This fascist thesis . . . This . . . Pure fascism . . . What more could Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin ask for . . . ?' (They asked for, and got, a great deal more.)What survives, from such stuff as this, is ne-plus-ultra relativism, idiot nihlism. 'What is required,' Professor Greene spoke, 'is more, not less tolerance--not the tolerance of indifference, but the tolerance of honest respect for divergent convictions and the determination of all that such divergent opinions be heard without administrative censorship. I try my best in the classroom to expound and defend my faith, when it is relevant, as honestly and persuasively as I can. But I can do so only because many of my colleagues are expounding and defending their contrasting faiths, or skepticisms, as openly and honestly as I am mine.'A professor of philosophy! Question: What is the 1) ethical, 2) philosophical, or 3) epistemological argument for requiring continued tolerance of ideas whose discrediting it is the purpose of education to effect? What ethical code (in the Bible? In Plato? Kant? Hume?) requires 'honest respect' for any divergent conviction?","author":"William F. Buckley Jr.","tags":["fascism","fascist","higher-education","relativism","tolerance","yale","yalie"],"id":86307,"author_id":"William+F.+Buckley+Jr."}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":56,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}