Abstract

Bernstein's recent book examines the extensive debate on the nature of human rationality. He suggests that this debate is beginning to converge — from the varying perspectives of philosophy of science, hermeneutics, sociology, anthropology, and moral and political philosophy — on a new conception of rationality. This new conception breaks with the standard opposition between objectivism and relativism, the terms in which the debate has previously been conducted. His reading of the debate attempts to show that some of the participants do not properly belong in either category. A coherent alternative to the standard dichotomy emerges from their contributions and this development may point us to a transcendence of the Cartesian legacy and its search for certainty.