Johannes Steizinger interviewed at 3:AM

Johannes Steizinger, one of the postdocs on our project, has been interviewed over at 3:AM. He talked (amongst other things) about the development of relativism in the 19th century, Simmel's response to the self-refutation argument, and the (supposed) connection between relativism and Nazi ideology.

​Here's a teaser quote, but do click through to the full interview if you're interested to learn about these topics:

"Most Nazi philosophers were aware of the tension between the relativistic tendency and the non-relativistic assumptions of their view. Thus, they claimed that the Nazi worldview overcomes the opposition between absolutism and relativism. They developed argumentative strategies to present NS as a third way in philosophy, but could not resolve the inner tensions of their position. Nevertheless, the general ambition to solve the problem of relativism made their ideology attractive to contemporary philosophers. Anti-relativist sentiments were a strong motivating factor for the philosophical collaboration with NS. Equating NS with relativism hence obscures an important feature of Nazi ideology that partly explains its widespread philosophical acceptance in the historical context. Many German philosophers, from most camps of early-twentieth-century philosophy, welcomed NS and attempted to show its philosophical significance.

​I believe that we can learn a political lesson from this shameful episode in the modern debate on relativism: Anti-relativism is no sufficient strategy against Nazi racism or similar kinds of racism."