and culturally limited perspectives to find an Archimedean point, an
absolute standpoint above the particular and competing points of view?

This problem haunts the modern intellectual landscape. One sees
variations of it everywhere in different fields of study, and everywhere
it produces doubts among reflective persons about the possibility of
justifying belief in objective intellectual, cultural, and moral standards.
Many modern thinkers, to be sure, deplore the resulting drift toward
relativism or skepticism, arguing that we need to restore belief in objec-
tive truth and value. But it is one thing to say this and another to show
how it can be done. For the problem of finding an Archimedean point
above the pluralism of competing points of view is a complex one,
which thinkers have been wrestling with for centuries.

I no longer believe the older ways of solving this problem will
work as they did for past generations, and we will see why in chapter 2.
If we are not to drift into relativism, therefore, some new ways of think-
ing about the problem of value are needed. Alasdair MacIntyre is right,
I think, to say that the current state of moral discourse is one of grave
disrepair, but I am not entirely satisfied with his or any other contem-
porary suggestion for repair. ³ Some fundamental possibilities, it seems
to me, have been overlooked in all traditional and modern searches for
absolute value. These possibilities will be explored in the chapters to
follow. I have no illusions about the finality of what I have to say about
these topics, but I hope my thoughts will stimulate others who under-
stand that the problems of relativism cannot be wished away by simple
nostrums and lamentations, without confronting the deep philosophi-
cal problems that lead to them. ⁴

These themes are explored in the first four chapters of the book
and then applied to current debates about public morality and social
ethics (chapter 5); politics and democracy (chapter 6); religion (chapter
7); the environment, feminism, and multiculturalism (chapter 8); and
moral education (chapter 9).

The issues at stake are deeply philosophical, but they have practical im-
plications. Many distinguished figures have raised the question of
whether democratic and pluralistic societies can withstand the erosion
of common beliefs about right and wrong that have traditionally sus-
tained them. As the old ideological struggle of the Western democra-
cies with communism has wound down, we are warned by noted exiles
from the communist world, like Nobel laureates Aleksandr Solzhenit-
syn and Czeslaw Milosz, that a new and more difficult struggle looms

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