Anti-Climacus

LINK: Good defense of George Orwell, and, in the process, moral realism:

"For The New Yorker's authority on Orwell, the danger lies not in the fading of the concept of objective truth, but in the clinging to the concept of objective truth. Menand thinks that truth is merely a warrant for terrorism, that objectivity is just an early form of fanaticism, that certainty only kills. "Moral certainty of any kind can lead to bloodshed," he asserts in Raritan, in a piece that is critical of the abolitionists of the nineteenth century. "Of any kind": All certainty is like all other certainty, its content is insignificant, all that matters are its consequences. Menand has risen above substance. He is indifferent, and afraid. His fear is understandable: When one has renounced the inquiry into truth and falsity, certainty must seem terrifying. Every conviction must look like an absolute."