“Give me a student through his sophomore year and he will be a relativist for life”—thus runs the boast of certain Eng. Lit. professors and other wannabe philosophers. Unfortunately, the prediction is often fulfilled since undergraduate students are not in a good position to distinguish a philosopher manqué from the real thing. Moreover, people who have been to college tend to overestimate the intelligence and originality of the professors who first introduced them to “new” ways of thinking.

Moral relativism is now endemic in Western society, though presumably it had its beginnings in the academies. It boils down to the view that nothing is right but thinking makes it so, the view that, if you and I disagree about some moral issues, we are both right because my thinking makes my opinion right and your thinking makes yours right.

Moral relativism appeals to folk who feel baffled about how best to argue against obnoxious behavior and insulting opinions. Some feminists, for example, having experienced male condescension and ordinary male rudeness in job interviews and conferences and college venues supposedly devoted to a pure, calm, unprejudiced search for truth, have come to blame “masculine ways of thinking” for their unhappy experiences. They are right in the sense that masculine thinking has been known to start from selfish or prejudiced premises but wrong to conclude that male and female thinking are essentially different from one another. Even supposing that last proposition were true, it would not follow either that