Pick Up A Refutation Of Moral Relativism: Interviews With An Absolutist Imagined By Peter Kreeft Displayed As Leaflet

appreciate the dialogue style of the book and his desire for his readers to think like Socrates, Great arguments No issue is more fateful for civilization than moral relativism, History knows not one example of a successful society which repudiated moral absolutes, Yet most attacks on relativism have been either pragmatic looking at its social consequences or exhorting preaching rather than proving, and philosophers' arguments against it have been specialized, technical, and scholarly.


In his typical unique writing style, Peter Kreeft lets an attractive, honest, and funny relativist interview a "Muslim fundamentalist" absolutist so as not to stack the dice personally for absolutism.
In an engaging series of personal interviews, every conceivable argument the "sassy Black feminist" reporter Libby gives against absolutism is simply and clearly refuted, and none of the many arguments for moral absolutism is refuted.
This ebook is absolutely filled with typographical errors, There were some things I didn't like about the book but it still made some very good points, The first half of this book was really good, but it slowly turned into a one sided discussion and quickly lost my interest.
A good resource which summarizes all the important things I needed a brushing up on in metaphysics, ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, modern philosophy, epistemology, logic, etc.
The dialogue format was a bit annoying at times, but allowed for some pretty succinct explanations/arguments, I didnt actually finish this, but not because it wasnt a good book, Rather, the author was, as they say, preaching to the choir, I find moral relativism to be distasteful, or worse, Peter Kreeft addresses it by setting up a series of interviews between a moral relativist and a moral absolutist, wherein he trots out all of the modern arguments in favor of relativism and refutes them by means of logic and formal philosophical principles.
A worthy effort on his part, but since I already agree with him, I chose not to finish it, This book gives a fictive debate where the author creates an imaginary Socratic dialogue between two characters, a black feminist named Libby and a conservative Middle Eastern man named 'Isa who debate over the course of eleven imaginary interviews over the legitimacy of relativism and absolutism.
The interviews contain as their subject matter such delightful subjects as the importance of moral relativism and its threat to salvation, what is moral relativism there are at least four strains of relativism, the history of relativism, the data that allows us to make a judgment on it from history and experience, the arguments and rebuttals for relativism from selfesteem and cultural relativity social conditioning, freedom, and tolerance and situations, intentions, projection, and evolution arguments for moral absolutism, the philosophical assumptions of absolutism, and the cause and cure of relativism.
If you like reading a lot about the philosophical arguments over ultimate and absolute truthand you have a high tolerance for imaginary dialogues where the author

plays both sides of a topic in order to encourage a particular worldview and belief, you may enjoy this book, although it made for some deeply unsettling reading for me, and it was probably a mistake on my part to read this book mainly at night.


The reason why this book was so deeply unsettling is that the author stacks the deck against the absolutist by making him an unappealing and possibly Muslim man and then has him completely demolish the arguments of his progressive interlocutor in a very unpleasant way.
The arguments themselves take on rather unpleasant argumentative angles, and the way that the author tries to make this less unappealing is by assuring the reader that the two people got along better while fishing and enjoying the beach imaginary conversations not recorded in the book than they did in the testy and even nasty debate between them.
The author also points out, in a way that does not sound appealing, that the two of them met together while staying in the same house in the late's with a few other imaginary people that the author threatens to write about as part of an allegorical work about the big tent of Catholicism.
It is hard to imagine this book being less authentic and less appealing despite the strong interest of its subject material.


Somehow the author managed to take the subject of defending moral absolutes and turned it into a ugly and nasty argument that would be pretty easy to imagine taking place in real life, only without the relativists admitting their errors.
This book also manages another interesting feat, and that is demonstrating that the mere admission of moral absolutes is not very far along the path to salvation.
The book seems to spend its entire twohundred pages or so on second things rather than first things, The arguments over philosophy, over the misuse of Occam's Razor and the evils of nominalism and the foolish giveaway that Kant made in order to preserve the view of some sort of moral absolute in his own philosophical worldview all have the air of unreality.
After all, neither of the people in the argument are godly or Christian people, The author may want to build a big tent of moral absolutists to join with the Catholics in defending a culture of life, and in this he apparently is furthering the interests of the Roman Catholic Church.
However, this task does nothing concerning salvation, as these people are not converted, not obedient to God's ways, and are spending their time arguing about philosophy and seeking to be wise in the world's eyes.
This book is a misstep, sadly, It is intelligent and learned, but for all that still a misstep,

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sitelink blog/ Pretty good. The believability of the characters wasn't as strong as in Socrates Meets Jesus, But some great points are made very clearly, i really didn't enjoy the characters and the fighting because i felt like their snarky comments and desire to one up one another took away from the points they were trying to make and convey.
their arguments would've been stronger if they had not fallen into so many logical fallacies and unnecessary jabs at each other.
it was also really hard to read because i had to finish it in a day for school, and a lot of the terminology and vocabulary was verbose or confusing to me.
Had to read this one for a class but quite enjoyed it, I'm not one for dry philosophy but I am one for both reading and writing fiction which means I quite enjoyed Kreeft's falseinterview format with his two characters.
I found both of them to be very well drawn and, from a fiction standpoint, their dialogue to be impeccably written.


I also think Kreeft did something great here in that he gets us invested in both 'Isa the absolutist and Libby the relativist as people rather than just roles and I think the true stroke of genius is that Libby is the more sympathetic character.
'Isa may be the one who the book says is right, but he's a dogmatic, selfinflated jerk, He's fun to read, and you do get to the point where you're kind of just waiting for his next lascerating verbal jab, but I think most readers would rather have a beer with Libby than 'Isa.
We as readers want Libby to win, even if we disagree with her, because she's a nice person, but the entire point of the book is that feelings don't make something right,

I definitely would recommend this to people including those who won't be convinced by it and those who hate philosophy because it's a relatable way to wrap your brain around some really mindbending philosophical concepts.
Entertaining, enlightening and hella annoying. It's the transcription of an interview between a liberal journalist and a Muslim professor on the nature of relativism vs absolutism.
It's entertaining because of their interplay, enlightening because of the professor and annoying because of the liberal journalist, Even though she agrees with the logical refutation of relativism she refuses to accept it as truth, . . because it isn't her truth,

Mein gott.

Absolutely fascinating look at where morals come from and why the relative stance is a recipe for disaster, highly recommend it.
I'm not totally on board with what this author is selling, and I am flat out uncomfortable that he feels the need to highlight that his antagonist, Libby, is a beautiful lesbian black liberal.
. . when the only relevant part of that description is that she is liberal and believes in moral relativism, . . but I give the author points for super witty and snippy dialogue that is similar in cadence to something Aaron Sorkin or Amy ShermanPalladino might write.
But the deck is stacked in this book so that the moralabsolutist wins every argument I would have preferred a fairer fight, even if I'm not a moral relativist, per se.
This was a book that was assigned for a grad school class, .