Thrasymachus: The battle over moral relativism isn't a matter of absolutists versus relativists. That is a false distinction which undercuts the authority of what most people take to be clear cut moral norms.

This view may be very simple minded, but it seems to be that absolute and relativism agree on one thing, that the moral principle is valid only if it doesn't reach any limit.

Both are really saying that the only moral truths are those which are true for all people for all situations. The absolutist thinks that such rules exist. The relativist does not. But both have the same notion of moral truth, and to me they both seem off base in this regard.

Gorgias: So they are playing the same game?

Thrasymachus: Exactly. Yet in Aristotle, there is sense, that there are moral truths that apply "for the most part". For Aristotle, the idea that a moral truth is not absolute does not undercut its validity.

Plato: And, are there are at least some things that aren't just true for the most part, but always true?

Thrasymachus: You would think so but some truths that would seem to be always true might not be in certain situations. Take respect of another's right to personal freedom. Let me give you an illustration. I visited for a weekend at the Kennedy Institute and I spent a weekend there at the institution for the retarded.

In the course of that visit, there were two women who were in charge of the patients and at one point they spent an hour on teaching about wrestling holds. Learning how to get hold of someone when he hits us in the eye--how to break his arm if necessary.

Laches: What was the purpose of that training?

Thrasymachus: Some of the retarded are given to violence in certain circumstances and the nurses said that if we don't teach our staff these maneuvers, they will either put them in a straight-jacket or put them in a room and lock the door. But if they are holding that person, creating a straightjacket out of their arms, the staff will only do it as long as is necessary before the patient simmers down. This is a nice illustration something that is good absolutely and something that is good for the most part.

I mean on one hand, it is on the whole good to honor liberty. But on the other hand, there is a question of protection of the person and also third parties. The patients can do damage both to themselves and to others and, on the whole, you want them to be as free as possible. But there is a certain circumstance under which the well-meaning third parties and also themselves "trump" that good, but you do it only when there is no alternative. You do it with as minimal restraint as possible and for as short a time as possible.

You've got two important goods and values. One, the good as process, liberty and so forth coming against one of the good of social ends, so to speak. The good of personal liberty at the bottom of Liberalism doesn't evaporate even if is overridden in certain circumstances. It maintains it's pressure on the occasion and even on how you honor the good of ends that takes precedence in special circumstances.

Take this same anecdote into some of the areas we have been talking about. If you think of the political analogy to the institute setting, a society is threatened by crisis or disorder, it might be justifiable to trespass on human liberty to teach people specific conceptions of the good in a public education environment. The alternative is to let things go and have a tyrant come in to impose order. The tyrant then exploits the crisis to clamp everybody down and then doesn't release the clamps even though the crisis has passed.

Plato: Liberty or personal autonomy still is an absolute good but it gives way in certain circumstances, if you can justify it in terms of potential harm to the social context or to third parties?

Gorgias: This illustration is pertinent to our question of how much content you could justify putting in a curriculum on civic virtue and whether critical inquiry should be a part of it. If done properly we would not be trespassing on human freedom, autonomy and being illiberal as a result.

The critical inquiry or dialectic properly understood would not be objectionable if properly conducted, if it is a joint exercise, not an adversarial exercise based on my power to show that you are wrong or that what I am saying takes precedence over what you are saying. Both parties are working together to find the moral truth that applies. The first step is to analyze the circumstances and state the case and the second is to test it, working together. The dialectic isn't used to force, trick, or subtly coerce people into thinking a specific way, if it is used honestly and properly.

Thrasymachus: To return to the general point I was making earlier on critical inquiry as it applies to the absolutism/relativism debate. Critical inquiry and the dialectic helps deal with relativism and its cohorts skepticism and cynicism.

I think one of the justifications to give to the parents who are fearful about the critical process in middle school of high school is to point out that without it their own kids become excessively vulnerable to the well-placed doubt at University, or later in life. Many fall prey to relativism precisely because they have never dealt with situations highlighting the limits of absolutism in the moral life. And so, they are vulnerable and they move from being absolutists to relativists and to a certain extent, there is not an inconsistency there. Because the status of the absolute, dependent upon its always been valid and so once they discover, you've got a point here where it isn't valid, well you are then awash in the sea of moral relativism.

Parmenides: We might suppose that there are a few things that are not subject to relative variations. It seems to me by now in the Human Rights literature we have established a few of those, that is to say torturing children for political objective is truly always wrong; there are no competing values against that.

Gorgias: Well, that is one way Galston moves by the route of the "via negative" to some notion of common good. What I mean by the via negative is we all say what is intolerable and will not be tolerated and the things we come to some consensus on become the basis for a notion of the common good.

Parmenides: These would be invariable and there might not be that many but they are very important.

It may be terribly important to state these as a "moral floor" on which then you begin to develop the other aspects.

Meno: Well, you want to be careful because you don't necessarily want to tie yourself to saying that other values are built on or deduced from these absolutes that constitute the moral floor. You could have the absolutes as "constants" of the moral universe, and other moral rules might apply "in most cases".

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