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Ever since his famous warning about a "dictatorship of relativism" shortly before his election three years ago, Pope Benedict XVI has been trying to kick-start a global conversation about truth. In particular, Benedict yearns for a new look at truth within the Western secular academy, that exotic region where Jacques Derrida's relativist maxim "there is nothing outside the text" has, ironically, achieved the status of a near-absolute.
This weekend, in the enchanting Alpine setting of Lugano, Switzerland, a cross-section of prominent Western intellectuals is taking up the papal challenge. Organized by the Balzan Foundation, which each year awards the Swiss-Italian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, this unique gathering of scientists, philosophers, and eggheads of all stripes, most of them without any specific religious conviction, is titled, simply, "The Truth."...

Despite the presence of two prelates, this is definitely not an "orthodox" crowd. ... Yet philosophy, a bit like politics, tends to make strange bedfellows. At least on the subject of truth, Benedict and many of the luminaries in Lugano seem to have some common ground.

Blackburn offers an interesting case in point. In his book Truth, Blackburn acidly denounced "something diabolical in the region of relativism, multiculturalism or postmodernism, something which corrodes and corrupts the universities and the public culture, that sweeps away moral standards, lays waste young people's minds, and rots our precious civilization from within."

It's language that, in another context, easily might have flowed from the papal pen. In his keynote address this morning, Blackburn returned to the theme.

"Relativism attracts suspicion and hostility for a good reason," he said. "Suppose I voice an honest and heartfelt opinion about anything, from mathematics to aesthetics. The conversation stopping remark 'that's just your opinion' is not only beside the point, but more importantly dehumanising. It signals that your words do not deserve to be taken seriously, but only taken as symptoms, like signs of a disease."

"It is not only the conservative half of each of us who cannot stand this patronage," Balckburn said. "It is each of us in toto, agents attempting to reason our way through the practical problems with which life tries to trip us up.

On the other hand, Blackburn was not ready to sign up for Benedict XVI's muscular sense of absolute truth, and certainly not truth rooted in a personal deity. Instead, he advocated a position known in the philosophical guild as "deflationism." Blackburn's advice is to forget the debate between realism and relativism, and just get on with analysis of specific questions. He offers the example of capital punishment: "If we hammer this out, and decide that it should be [abolished], then we do not increase the theoretical temperature by adding 'what's more, that's true.' "

Blackburn is aware that the deflationist position is likely to seem a bit, well, deflating for realists such as Benedict XVI -- a thin gruel, compared to the meaty stew of absolutes which the pope likes to dish up. Yet Benedict may take comfort that even someone like Blackburn, obviously worlds away from Catholic thought on most matters, is nevertheless on his side in opposing a "dictatorship of relativism."

I had the opportunity to sit down with Blackburn on the margins of the Lugano symposium this morning. The following are excerpts from our conversation.

Are you familiar with the writings of the pope on truth?

I'm afraid that I don't follow the pope's pronouncements very much. Of course, I do mention him in my paper this morning. I am aware of his views on relativism, the danger of relativism.

You're referring to his warning about a "dictatorship of relativism."

Yes. Myself, I'm not sure that I share that diagnosis of the modern condition. That is, people may say they're relativists, but nature is too strong for them. They actually have opinions, quite passionate ones. My own sense of things, at least as far as morality goes, is that there's as much passion and commitment as there ever was, even in Western Europe. Of course, it not necessarily passion and commitment in the direction the pope approves, but that's another matter. As far as people being able to take a stand goes, I don't see that sort of failing in the modern world. I think people find it quite easy to take a stand....

Pope Benedict's desire is to stimulate a broad cultural conversation about truth. Is he succeeding?

I do think there's a movement which he must approve of, though he might not always approve the particular directions it takes. It seems to me that ten years ago, what goes loosely under the name of post-modernism was much more an "item" in the general cultural conversation. That is, people like Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida in France, some aspects of Heidegger, had led people in academic and semi-academic conversation to doubt authority and to doubt even their own judgment, to become, as it were, sort of paralyzed because of familiar thoughts about plurality of opinions, the difficulty of proof, cultural relativism. I think it's fair to say that in the discourse of intellectuals, that was a major wave.

I think its heyday was in the '80s and '90s. It's sometimes said that as far as America goes, it was killed off by the events of September 11. I suspect there's some truth in that. You know, there comes a time to be serious. The playful, ironic, "anything goes" sort of attitude may have suited the '90s, but not anymore.
Atheist scholar is ally (with reservations) in Benedict's fight against relativism