Based on a detailed discussion of some of the central arguments of Pierre Bourdieu's Pascalian Meditations, this article looks to show that the sociologist's work contains a permanent tension between (the critique of) universalism and (the critique of) relativism. Firstly the text shows how even Bourdieu's earliest writings reveal certain relativist tendencies in which the notion of the arbitrary plays a central role. This set of propositions is then compared and contrasted with the critiques directed by Habermas and Bourdieu himself against Foucault and so-called postmodernist approaches, before turning to how the author presents an opposing set of arguments from the mid 1970s onwards that seek to ground reason on social bases. Finally, the two perspectives are compared in a way that exposes their paradoxical intersections as well as their potential points of reconciliation.
Reason; Relativism; Cultural arbitrary; Philosophy; Pierre Bourdieu