In Relativism: Cognitive and Moral, Jack Meiland & Michael Krausz, eds. University of Notre Dame Press, 1982; 84-108
Truth is the Achilles' heel of relativism. At least since Plato's attack on the Protagorean doctrine of homo mensura, truth has been a focal point in criticisms of relativism. To provide background for an examination of the notion of relative truth I begin by examining the general motivations for relativism. I then turn to recent work on theories of truth with an eye to relating it to the motivations for relativism. Next I investigate plausible conditions of adequacy for a theory of relativistic truth and show that, quite apart from standard charges that such a notion is self-contradictory, the very nature of the relativist's position makes it quite difficult for him to coherently formulate a claim to the effect that truth is relative in the strong sense that one and the same thing could be true for one group or culture while being false for another. I conclude by noting some implications of the discussion for other aspects of relativism.
Related work on relativism