ABSTRACT
One could say of relativism what Hermann Ebbinghaus once observed with respect to psychology: to wit, that it has a “long past but a short history” (1908, 3). Although relativistic motifs have always played a significant role in philosophy, their systematic investigation – and thus the explicit formulation of different forms and strengths of relativism – is a child only of the twentieth century. Perhaps one could even maintain that most of the really important, detailed and systematic work on relativism was done by philosophers alive today. This volume documents both the long past and the short history of relativism.
