Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Relativism is Graduate Skepticism
By the word skepticism Father Picard means every doctrine which deems it impossible to attribute a value of absolute necessity to any knowledge. Therefore he considers skeptics, not only those who maintain that one can know nothing, viz., the holders of absolute skepticism, but even the holders of phenomenism: that all is appearance; the holders of relativism: that nothing is absolutely true; the holders of pragmatism: that the principles of knowledge are true insofar as they are comfortable, and we have motives instead of reasons to accept them.
Etienne Gilson, Realisme Thomist et Critique de la Connaissance, Paris: Vrin, 1947, 80-81.