What then, my friends, is the penalty for refusing to reason together?
To be governed by those who do not.
— Socrates, if he were watching cable news.
Let us suppose, for a moment, that the gods (all that is Good) have grown silent—not in their being, but in our capacity to hear them. The agora is no longer a place of deliberation, but a shouting match. The great halls where laws are debated echo with talking points, not dialectic. And into this cultural silence—this absence of the logos—emerges a well-meaning suggestion: reasons relativism.
I do not wish to mock the impulse. On the contrary, it arises from a noble desperation: to salvage conversation in a time of epistemic decay. But to relativize reason—even partially—is to flirt with dissolving the very glue of the polis. Justice does not survive as a mood. It requires structure. And that structure begins in our mutual demand for reasons.
But I am not alone on this stage.
Enter: Relativus, the Voice of Reasons Relativism
RELATIVUS: Surely, friend, you do not mean to suggest that everyone must justify their beliefs by some neutral standard? Have we not already seen that the dream of universal reason was born in a context—European, post-Enlightenment, often blind to the very voices it claimed to represent? What you call “reason,” another might call “coercion dressed up in formality.”
SOCRATES (DANIEL): And yet, what do you offer in its place? A world where each person justifies themselves only to their own? Where belief is measured by resonance within a tribe? That is not plurality—it is partition. A society of solitudes.
RELATIVUS: No, I offer hospitality. I offer the hope that we might reason within our contexts, not in spite of them. You appeal to some grand, shared standard—but look around. Do you really believe such a thing still exists?
SOCRATES (DANIEL): I do not believe it exists. I believe it binds. And there is a difference. Reason, my interlocutor, is not a cultural artifact. It is a moral demand. Its power does not come from its origin, but from its function: it compels us to account for ourselves before others. Not our group. Not our echo chamber. Others.
I. Reason as the Form of Justice
To ask for reasons is to elevate the other. It is to say: I believe you are more than your impulse. I believe you are accountable to truth. In this, reason is not cold logic. It is a form of love—philia of the deepest kind.
Justice cannot exist without this. A society that does not expect reasons cannot be just, because justice requires justification. It is not mere preference or cultural texture—it is the shared grammar of being bound to one another.
J. Aaron Simmons
II. Zackary Jolly’s Challenge: Tolerance and Its Limits
In response to the original article, Zackary Jolly poses a sharp and necessary question:
“How much relativism do we—as a society—tolerate?”
He invokes Herbert Marcuse’s concept of repressive tolerance, asking whether some communities of discourse—those that refuse even to acknowledge their perspective as perspectival—may threaten the very ideal of pluralism they exploit.
This is not an abstract concern. Jolly is right to warn us: not all communities of discourse are equally safe for democracy. Some actively undermine it, precisely by abandoning reason altogether in favor of belief without burden.
But even here, I submit: the solution is not relativism. It is the careful policing of reason’s outer boundaries. We must welcome perspectives—but not at the cost of abandoning our obligation to justify them.
III. Back to Relativus
RELATIVUS: So what then? Are you prepared to exclude those who cannot give reasons you deem valid? Are you not doing exactly what you claim to oppose—dismissing the other?
SOCRATES (DANIEL): No, friend. I am prepared to invite them—repeatedly, patiently, even lovingly—into the circle of accountability. But I will not pretend that silence is a reason. That force is a principle. Or that tribal certainty is a substitute for justice.
IV. Justice, Bound in Logos
Let me offer an image.
In ancient Athens, aikos was not merely a legal order—it was the embodied harmony of the city’s soul. It reflected a cosmic alignment: each person in their place, each voice given space to speak, each reason held in tension with another, until truth emerged—not as consensus, but as something closer to recollection.
Today, our cities remember this only faintly. But the memory is not lost. It lives on in those who still insist on reasons, even when the crowd jeers. It flickers in the classroom, the courtroom, the forum, the lonely tweet that asks, “Why do you believe that?”
Let us not extinguish that light by calling it relative. Let us name it for what it is: the last defense against the encroachment of force.
V. To Zackary, and to Relativus
I am grateful for Zackary Jolly’s provocation. It deepens the inquiry. It sharpens the stakes. And to my imagined friend, Relativus, I offer not scorn but warning:
What begins as empathy must not end as abdication. To care for others is to hold them—and ourselves—to the standard of shared justification.
What begins as pluralism must not end in nihilism.
We live in a time where belief has become spectacle, and discourse a costume. But beneath it all, reason still abides. Wounded, yes—but waiting. It waits in the gaps between outrage and silence. It waits in the question we still dare to ask: Why?
So ask. Expect reasons. Offer reasons. And when they are not returned, name that absence for what it is: a refusal of justice.
Because being reasonable does not mean agreeing with one another.
But being unreasonable means refusing to even try.
And on that front, we must not yield.