Abstract
Considers some attempts to answer attacks on the relativizing tendencies of multicultural approaches to knowledge (such as E. Gellner's 1991 'Postmodernism, Reason and Religion)' without rejecting the gains made by multiculturalism and postmodernism. In 'Telling the Truth about History' (1994), Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob attempt to bridge the gulf between relativism and rationalism by arguing for a "practical realism" in the style of Dewey, painting the heritage of the Enlightenment in its most positive light. However, as Gertrude Himmelfarb points out in "Not What We Meant at All," 'Times Literary Supplement' 1994 10(6), historians such as Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob who have done so much to dismantle the Western tradition will have difficulties in putting it back together again.