Feyerabend, truth, and relativisms: Footnotes to the Italian debate

•There are few specific studies of the ways that Feyerabend's writings and ideas have been taken up among the non-academic public.•This paper offers a study of how Feyerabend's ideas have been deployed by Italian intellectuals and cultural commentators—including the current Pope—and critically assesses them.

There is a substantial literature on Feyerabend's relativism—including a few papers in this collection—but fewer specific studies of the ways that his writings and ideas have been taken up among the non-academic public. This is odd, given his obvious interest in the lives and concerns of persons who were not ‘intellectuals’—a term that, for him, had a pejorative ring to it. It is also odd, given the abundance of evidence of how Feyerabend's relativism played a role in a specific national and cultural context—namely, contemporary Italian debates about relativism. This paper offers a study of how Feyerabend's ideas have been deployed by Italian intellectuals and cultural commentators—including the current Pope—and critically assesses them.