Volume 42, Issue 1, March 2002
Andrew W. Lamb
Pages 41-62
No Longer the Cave of History
Knowing the Universal in Context
This essay argues against David Carr’s relativism by clarifying the in principle requirements appropriate to non-relative truths and showing that de facto differences of conceptual frameworks threaten none of them. Non-relative truths are not threatened by history. This defense of non-relative truth belongs to a larger defense of Husserlian “science” that shows how essences, even those “delivered” by history, have a universal (non-relative) “governance” and can be affirmed in nonrelative truths-as such science requires. If history also allows the other qualities of Husserlian science to obtain, then, the essay concludes, such science can exist even as a “situated science.”