A work that treats relativism without mentioning Nietzsche, the foundations of liberalism without mentioning Locke, and universalism without discussing any of the great philosophers from Plato to Hegel is apt to be defective. Yet Graham Long's book proves that such a work can still merit serious attention. Through his taste for rigorous arguments, his seriousness of purpose, and his knowledge of the literature written in the spirit of English analytical philosophy and academic liberalism more generally, he has succeeded in producing a book that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Long is a defender of relativism of a particular kind. He defends moral relativism—the thesis that morality is relative to different frameworks or cultures—without defending the relativity of human thought in general. The moral relativism that he defends is not normative but “metaethical”: He is concerned with relativism as a position about the nature of morality and not as an endorsement of tolerance, though he is at pains to show that “metaethical relativism” plays an important part in the liberal argument for tolerance. In short, he defends the view that there is no single, true morality and that there are a number of moralities, some of which cannot be found objectively superior or inferior (p. 17).

That Long believes relativism needs a defense sets him apart from many contemporaries who simply accept relativism as self-evident truth or as the opinion of all right-thinking human beings. His openness is perhaps partly due to his background in analytic philosophy, which has prominent adherents who are critics of relativism, but ultimately it is due to his own sense that adherents of relativism have not yet given an adequate account of our moral life, an account which is in accord “with the way we use moral language” and which presumably preserves the moral character of that life (p. 41).

The first and the longer part of the book is an attempt to remedy this failure. Long focuses on three difficulties for relativism: that it seems unable to give an adequate account 1) of moral disagreements, that is, an account that does not reduce them to mere misunderstandings; 2) of our sense that our moral views are true and therefore can be applied to others; and 3) of our sense that some moralities are abhorrent. In each case, he tries to show that relativism properly understood both explains and preserves the phenomenon. His treatment of contemporary defenders of relativism and universalism is generally intelligent and insightful, but his own position for all its merits is ultimately unsatisfactory. I will limit myself to two key difficulties.

Long maintains that his version of relativism can reject abhorrent moralities. Although his relativism insists that there is no single universal morality, it does not accept all moralities as equal because some moralities are inconsistent or incoherent in various ways. For instance, he argues that fascism can be rejected because it is based on a racial theory that is contradicted by scientific evidence. Yet even if we assume that all abhorrent moralities are inconsistent, this criticism is not a sufficient account of our abhorrence. What most people find abhorrent about fascism is not its inconsistencies but its cruelty. In fact, as we learn from Plato, people often accept a contradiction because they want to avoid a view that seems abhorrent to them. Moreover, as Long himself admits, it is possible for an abhorrent morality to be consistent. Indeed, there is no reason to think that attractive views are more likely to be consistent than unattractive views. Is Martin Heidegger, who spoke of the inner truth and greatness of national socialism without embracing any racial theories, more incoherent than the average man?

According to Long, one can legitimately criticize an action that is based on a system that is coherent and thus as justified as one's own (he calls this evaluative criticism, as opposed to compelling criticism, the kind that can compel others to change their position), because as universalists admit, the application of a theory can extend beyond its justification: A theory can apply to all men, even though it can only persuade reasonable men. But one may object that what is true for universalists may not be true for relativists. Long argues that a Christian can legitimately criticize the Confucian belief that one should not repay injury with kindness, even though he cannot show the Confucian convincing reasons to follow the teaching of Jesus (p. 164). But it seems to me the Christian can make this criticism because he believes in the objective reality of Jesus as the son or prophet of God. Yet earlier in the book, Long rejects this kind of objectivity in favor of objectivity as “intersubjective agreement” or “community of reasons” (pp. 146–47). This rejection was necessary to defend relativism from the “self-contradiction in affirming that there is no single justified morality, but that this view should be taken as universally correct” (p. 147). His account of evaluative criticism is also in tension, if not in contradiction, with his argument for toleration, part of which rests on the premise that “it is wrong to take action to impose our views on others unless ours are better justified” (p. 183).

Whereas Part I of Long's work is an attempt to explain morality on the basis of relativism; Part II is an attempt to defend relativism as the basis of liberalism through a sympathetic criticism of contemporary liberals, especially Rawls. Rawlsian liberalism attempts to avoid a political system based on notions of the good because of the controversial character of such notions. Instead, it seeks a neutral basis; Long argues that it fails to find such a basis, because the arguments that Rawls and others use for neutrality are themselves controversial. For instance, Rawls's contention that evidence regarding the merit of a moral view is conflicting and complex is in sharp tension with a religious doctrine that presents itself as “universally accessible to clear minds and open hearts” (p. 209). As Long argues, the mere existence of disagreement about the good is not a sufficient basis for Rawls's position: One must show that the disagreement is not based on an error. In other words, Rawls's theory needs relativism, and Long convincingly shows certain relativist tendencies in Rawls's thought.

At first, one gets the impression that for Long, relativism provides the neutral basis sought by Rawls. He is certainly concerned with the possibility of communication between relativists and religious believers (pp. 151–52). But in the final analysis, he admits that relativism is not neutral and that no neutral basis is possible (pp. 241–42). His hope for consensus rests not on a relativistic justification of liberalism but on the possibility that liberal principles could be supported on a variety of grounds. While nonrelativists could agree to liberal principles for their own reasons, the establishment of “liberal institutions would encourage a ‘liberal culture’ of views which saw moral justifications and truth as relative, the eventual result being a society which affirmed liberalism for largely relativistic reasons” (p. 249). This is a puzzling position. Relativism, which is not universally persuasive, can hope to be universally accepted with the help of institutions that it was meant to justify. Long may be right about the relativistic effect of liberal institutions, but it seems to me that one can be satisfied with this position only if one regards liberalism and relativism as objectively true in the old sense of the term, something which he does not even attempt to show in this defense of relativism.

Thus, in the end, Long's attempt to isolate moral relativism from the question of general relativity of human thought fails. His treatment of relativism would have benefited from a thematic consideration of the complex relation between our concern for morality and our concern for truth. A good place to begin such a reflection is by studying the confrontation between Heideggerian relativism or existentialism and the twentieth-century revival of Platonism—two contemporary developments that are largely absent in Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism.