ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how postmodern rehabilitation of rationalism should be undertaken. It explains why the confusion of radical scepticism with radical relativism is such an insidious one. The chapter also shows how radical scepticism and rationalism may be brought into harmony. Unfortunately there is a yet more fundamental obstacle to a general return to rationalism. And that is that rationalism is usually presented, as it is by Sokal & Bricmont, in a way that so unedifyingly infringes its own standards of honesty that the only conversions that it can hope to procure are conversions to irrationalism. Unless the champions of rationalism can make their candidate decidedly more presentable, postmodernist fads will simply give way in due course to other fads that are equally scornful of reason. Critical rationalism rarely receives a good press. It is time and time again arraigned on trumped-up charges of being 'ambiguous' and 'inadequate', 'chilling' and 'gloomy'.
