Abstract

Some critics have not found this answer to be entirely satisfying, and in chapter 3, Lutz again defends MacIntyre against the charge of relativism. To this end, he distinguishes between the relativity that is a perduring “condition of human inquiry” and the philosophical doctrine of relativism, the dogmatic claim that “truth is relative to culture”. Lutz argues that MacIntyre adopts the former position and—unlike his critics—never equates or conflates the rationality of moral judgments with truth itself. Thus, while sensitive to the constraints of relativity, MacIntyre insists that it is the “objectivity of the real” that remains “the telos of moral inquiry”.