In view of the occasion, the genre of discourse in which they appear, and the speaker's role at the time, one need not see anything intellectually significant—informative, weighty, or unusual—in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's statements regarding relativism in his homily to the conclave meeting to elect the new pope.¹ Embedded in a homily—which is to say, a sermon—and delivered at a solemn and momentous religious convocation ("in quest'ora di grande responsabilità") to a body of fellow high prelates by the chief defender of its orthodoxies, his remarks operate singly and together in the way one might expect: that is, as a ritual reaffirmation of just those orthodoxies. If there is anything notable in the homily for observers at large (those seeking signs, for example, of how Vatican winds are blowing or how much its windows may yet be opened; or those caught up with contemporary intellectual trends and hopeful of securing elevated—and, to be sure, powerful—company in certain favored views), it is the explicitness, strictness, and comprehensiveness with which the homily censures questioning, [End Page 227] dissent, and nonconformism with regard to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

While Ratzinger's recent statements about relativism are of limited general significance for the reasons indicated, they may nevertheless prove useful to the intellectual community at large as an impetus to reflection on comparable invocations and denunciations in contemporary secular discourse. At the same time, aspects of those statements, including the functions they seem designed to serve for their most immediate or relevant audiences, may be illuminated when considered in connection with a broader historical review of such invocations and denunciations. The present essay, which begins with a reflection on the contemporary secular scene and concludes with a focused consideration of the homily, is a contribution to that double project.²

I

If relativism means anything at all, it means a great many things. It is certainly not, though often treated as such, a one-line "claim" or "thesis": for example, "man is the measure of all things," "nothing is absolutely right or wrong," "all opinions are equally valid," and so forth.³ Nor is it, I think, a permanent feature of a fixed logical landscape, a single perilous chasm into which incautious thinkers from Protagoras's time to our own have "slid" unawares or "fallen" catastrophically. Indeed, it may be that relativism, at least in our own era, is nothing at all—a phantom position, a set of tenets without palpable adherents, an urban legend without certifiable occurrence but fearful report of which is circulated continuously. Of course, even a phantom position may be consequential. No matter how protean or elusive relativism may be as a doctrine, it has evident power as a charge or anxiety, even in otherwise dissident quarters and even among those otherwise known for conceptual daring. It is this phenomenon that I mean to explore here: not relativism per se, if such exists, but the curious operations of its contemporary invocation and something of how they developed. [End Page 228]

As indicated by my title, the historical angle will be significant. "Today" alludes both to invocations of relativism in contemporary intellectual discourse and to Cardinal Ratzinger's reading of passages in Paul's letter to the Ephesians as anticipating certain features of our own era. Thus, in one translation of the homily, a key passage reads: "Relativism . . . looks like the only attitude acceptable by today's standards."⁴ This "today" is presumably in contrast to some earlier era, for example before the Reformation or the Enlightenment, or perhaps to an ideal nontemporal era when a certain spiritual condition would prevail ("having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church") in contrast to what the homily represents as the vertigo of relativism. In any case, while "today" alludes here to the contemporary intellectual scene, the "yesterday" of my title is meant to evoke a previous era of relativistic thought...