Remora.

The addict returns to the needle. The pyromaniac returns to the flame. And LI returns, every Saturday, to Edward Rothstein's column in the Times -- a column in which erudition and ignorance perpetually arm-wrestle, with ignorance, in the end, generally getting the best of it.

So it is with his column, today, which makes a self-referential detour through his column of September 22, 01. In that column, Rothstein, deciding that 9/11 was unprecedented in the whole wide world and seeking to bring this to the attention of the educated public, used the attack as a stick to attack post-modernism and relativism. Relativists, apparently, had never heard of Bosnia, Rwanda, the slaughter of millions in Sudan, Bangla Desh, the Iran-Iraqi war, Eritrea, Biafra, Cambodia, the Great Leap forward, South Africa, the dirty war in Argentina, the military takeover of Brazil, El Salvador, and other of the various blots of the last thirty years. But the destruction of 3,000 lives in the World Trade Center, maybe they would look up from their relativizing and remark on that. Is generally the idea, I guess. So, seeing an opening, the ever eager Stanley Fish jumped to the defense of postmodernism. In all the venues, lately, from NYT Op Eds to Atlantic magazine. Prompting Rothstein to go back to the topic.

LI watches with the usual mixture of awe and abhorrence as Rothstein�s fashions his points. Rothstein is not the man to go to for an account of 20th century philosophy, since he is apparently ignorant of the debate over truth in the 20th century that enlisted such figures as Carnap and Tarski. That this debate long preceeded post-modernism also seems unclear to the guy. The problem, as Rothstein puts it in one of his ursine phrases -- watching the man struggle with philosophical concepts is like watching a bear juggle fireworks -- is that postmodernists don't believe in the "existence" of objective truth.

Now, this view of truth as an existent was challenged a little earlier than 1966. It was, for instance, challenged by Kant. It was challenged when Aristotle objected to Platonic forms. And the objections have generally carried the day. Truth, as the logical positivists like to put it, was a function of the truth table. There isn't a further thing, "truth," which mixes in with a statement like "Roses are red" to make roses red. If this is really Rothenstein's position, he is welcome to it -- but I don't believe he has the philosophical tools to defend it, and I don�t believe he knows how much ground has been covered since Socrates was a pup.

What he means, no doubt, is that "Roses really are red." His opponent, the relativist, is an unclear beast in Rothstein's eyes, but Rothstein thinks that's the guy who says, you only think Roses are red. But X thinks roses are blue. And there's no way of deciding between the two of you. So can�t we all just get along?

Rothstein immediately ties this together with the idea that there is a transcendental ethical point of view. In other words, the truth is not only an existent, in his view, but is morally buttressed. Well, this is a possible point of view, but it seems to deviate from the usage of truth in such cases as �Roses are red is true.� Just as that usage doesn�t make the truth horticultural, there�s no reason to think that �thou shalt not commit adultery is true� makes the truth moral. Rather, it asserts a true claim for a moral judgment. Perhaps Rothstein is thinking that the moral judgment, you should tell the truth, makes the truth some part of his transcendental ethical point of view. Now, being more generous to the guy, I could see how you could make the case that between saying, there is such a thing as objective truth and saying, there is such a thing as transcendental ethical values value, this is a community of vision, a world view, if you will. Being a relativist myself, however, I think that what Rothstein really should want to do is preserve truth from being a moral value, period. Otherwise, I think we can generate what I�d call a vulgar relativistic world view. I won�t do that here, but it would involve taking the collapse of ought statements into is statements as a basis for saying that, since we find a plurality of ought statements on the ground, this should mean that in culture X, we can generate Roses aren�t red, and thus roses aren�t really red. To make �roses are red� logically dependent on such statements as �homosexuality is wrong� is the high road to vulgar relativism: when we decide that �homosexuality isn�t wrong,� that is definitely going to effect our gardening. There is a reason, after all, why positivists have striven so hard to adopt a functional neutrality as their default position. See Max Weber for details.

Rothstein's assumption, here, is that relativism entails a sort of wierd communal solipsism. This assumption, I think, rests on one of the tacit premises of American newspaper and academic culture � that there can be perfectly isolated standards, cultures, and subjects, and that respect for them means not engaging in dispute with them. Relativism, however, doesn�t necessarily entail anything like that suburban ethos. The form of relativism I embrace is not that criteria of truth, ex nihilo, exist, but that the construction and destruction of criteria of truth is much like speciation � a process of conflict, provisional collaborations, extinctions, and arm races. It is, in other words, a modification of the Dewey position. And far from being a defense of Western values, the kind of absolute truths Rothstein holds to be self-evident are just those the U.S., in its formative phase, rejected � for the idea that there are two realms, one in which the form of truths are preserved, has historically gone along with a politics of truth preservers that is allergic to the Open Society. Far from being in the American grain, Rothstein�s is an import from Leo Strauss-land � the Eurogrumbling cohort that arose on the right after WWI, but distinguished itself from the vulgarity of fascism as well as the eschatology of leftism. The American grain runs through Emerson and Whitman, rather than Xenophanes and Machiavelli.

Rothstein attack on post-modernism is rather far from the original core idea of post-modernism, which was the claim that the culture � Western culture, if you will, or the culture of globalization � was undergoing a crisis of meta-narratives. Postmodernism started out not as a position to take, but an observation about what was happening in the culture itself. True, it has become a position to take. Rothstein takes it, however, as simply an ideological special interest, one that could be corrected by a few thwacks in the NYT.

LI believes that, contra R., what 9/11 and the current Enronitis indicate is that another meta-narrative � call it globalization � is breaking up. The idea that there is no alternative, which was grooving and moving in the high nineties, looks to be in pretty bad shape, currently. We can distinguish that, as an observation, from the idea that all the alternatives to globo are to be commended. And we can even say, we don�t need a foundation in the absolute for our moral claims, or our truth claims. Wow. In fact, going with the Dewey theme for a second, we�d further claim that the one position left blank in the relativism we advocate is the null set � the idea that we can make no claims about truth or value.