ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests how a transition can be made from phenomenological relativism to objective rationality. It provides an Edmund Husserl's emphasis on phenomenological description which tends to give rise to epistemic and other relativisms. Husserl's claim to provide, or at least to promise, rigorous knowledge and, by implication, unquestionable criteria of rationality. In contrast to relativistic tendencies emanating from Husserl's emphasis on description there stands his own belief in eventual non-relativistic cognition or, to use an umbrella term, objective rationality. The argument put forward by I. C. Jarvie and Martin Hollis rests on the supposition that rationality is instrumental rationality: that rational action is one which is the most efficient in the circumstances to achieve a posited goal. The criticism of the notion of rationality current among the theorists who work with conceptual system or with 'universes of meaning' is that they fail to distinguish between rationality and rationalization.
