Abstract

Are there principles of human knowledge which define a standpoint for impartial rational judgments between men from different cultural and historical backgrounds? There is a distinctive kind of relativism—a relativism which appears at least not to be a conceptual confusion, though it may well be a mistaken view—which denies that rationality has a historical and cultural invariance, denies that is, that there is a universal system of substantive principles of human understanding and action without which there can be no cross-cultural and cross-historical comparisons.