Hmm …

… BWW REVIEW: Jonathan Leaf's DECONSTRUCTION Bravely and Brilliantly Delves Into The Difficulties of Truth. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

This gets at one of my biggest pet peeves (as a former student of then-Yale professor Carol Rovane): the failure of the National Review set, most of whom lack relevant philosophical training, to specify which type of relativism they abhor. Also, relativism, as a doctrine Analytic philosophers discuss, has precious little to do either with deconstruction orpostmodernism. Do these men (and yes, for whatever reason they do tend to be men) not understand that Donald Davidson or Bernard Williams, Paul De Man, and Jean-Francois Lyotard inhabit distinct intellectual planets, not to mention academic departments?

Well, that may well be, but it would be nice if at some point the writer had explained just what it is we should admire about deconstruction and what kind of relativism we should not abhor.