Religion and the Threat of Relativism

Roger Trigg

doi:10.1017/S0034412500015250

Religion and the Threat of Relativism

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008

Roger Trigg

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Roger Trigg: Affiliation:
Reader in Philosophy, University of Warwick

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Relativism has always proved tempting when people who had previously lived a settled and complacent life have suddenly been confronted with new and different ideas or practices. The obvious example is the ferment produced in ancient Athens when the contrast with Eastern ideas chronicled by Herodotus showed vividly that not everyone thought like the Athenians, or even the Greeks. The result was a far-reaching scepticism. Protagoras, according to Plato, maintained that man is the measure of all things and anything ‘is to me as it appears to me and is to you as it appears to you’.

Type: Articles
Information: Religious Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 297 - 310

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500015250 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

^{page 297 note 1} Theaetetus 152A.

^{page 298 note 1} ‘On Grading Religions’, Religious Studies, XV (1981), 456.Google Scholar

^{page 298 note 2} Op. cit. p. 467.Google Scholar

^{page 299 note 1} For a discussion of realism, see my Reality at Risk: a Defence of Realism in Philosophy and the Sciences (Harvester Press, Brighton, 1980).Google Scholar

^{page 299 note 2} The World to Come, p. xiii (SCM Press, London, 1982).Google Scholar

^{page 299 note 3} P. xiv.

^{page 299 note 4} For a discussion of these views and what I term ‘conceptual relativism’ see my Reason and Commitment (Cambridge University Press, 1973; latest reprinting 1982).

^{page 301 note 1} ‘Jesus and the World Religions’, The Myth of God Incarnate (SCM Press, London, 1977), p. 182.Google Scholar

^{page 301 note 2} Op. cit. p. 183.Google Scholar

^{page 301 note 3} P. 184.

^{page 303 note 1} See my Reality at Risk.

^{page 304 note 1} Philosophical Investigations, §304.

^{page 306 note 1} Culture and Value (trans Winch, P.) (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1980), p. 32.Google Scholar

^{page 306 note 2} The Point of Christology (SCM Press, London, 1982), p. 54.Google Scholar

^{page 307 note 1} P. 62.

^{page 307 note 2} P. 55.

^{page 307 note 3} P. 56.

^{page 307 note 4} P. 59.

^{page 308 note 1} I Corinthians 15:17.

^{page 309 note 1} For a more detailed consideration of this point, with some of its implication for theology, see my book: The Shaping of Man: Philosophical Aspects of Sociobiology (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

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