'Postmodernism' - we all use the phrase, but do we really understand what it means? It sounds so 'cool' so trendy, so 'on message'. It sounds as though we ' our finger on the cultural pulse'. In short, it shows we are intellectual heavyweights, worthy of esteem and respect!
I am sure that I am in good company when I find that much of what is labelled ‘postmodern’ in art, sculpture, philosophy, poetry or film is often totally incomprehensible. One has the sneaking feeling that the ’artist’ is deliberately using language and semantics to disguise the fact that there is very little in the way of logic or content in their work. Indeed, the more incomprehensible it all is, the more ‘artistic’ we are made to feel that it must be. The unmade bed, the dead animal in formaldehyde, the graffiti, or the deconstructed syntax that passes for poetry MUST be incredibly clever BECAUSE we cannot understand it! One may have a deep suspicion that it is all ‘smoke and mirrors’, but one can never quite pin down the actual source of our inner confusion.
This is why I was delighted to come across a very interesting article on the website of ‘Classical Home Schooling’ on the whole subject. (By the way, the only person I home school is myself - but I thoroughly recommend this site, as it is full of very challenging - but accessible and interesting - articles by many modern philosophers and writers.)
The emphases are mine - and this is only a small portion of the whole article, but it helped me to articulate, even if only to myself, what is wrong with Relativism.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpts from:
POSTMODERN IDOLS OF THE EDUCATION TRIBE: THE ABOLITION OF EDUCATION by Curtis L. Hancock
Read the full article on: http://classicalhomeschooling.com/?page_id=176
Postmodernism … implies a radical scepticism, of course, because consciousness cannot grasp reality. ….postmodernism asserts that knowledge, including awareness of goodness, rightness, and the human subject, is a cultural construction. Since there are no objective standards, nor human nature to establish natural law to dictate how human beings ought to behave, reason is a rule for self-invention.
(According to philosopher ) Richard Rorty, postmodernism represents the last stage of the Enlightenment Project, which has already passed through Rationalism and Romanticism. We are now in a third stage, bringing to a close the Enlightenment Project. This last stage he labels “ironic,” because, while philosophical claims to objective truth are empty, each self has its best opportunity to live autonomously on the pretence that talk about truth matters. ….. Rorty believes that there are no standards of justification for our narrations…. “Truth,” to the extent the word should be used at all, is relative to social consensus. ….
… Accordingly, philosophy is not bound by objective standards, nor can it pursue public truth …. In such a state of affairs, the aggregate “we” trumps the individual.
Since one cannot ultimately justify one worldview or moral behavior over another, one must demonstrate unlimited openness. For postmodernists intolerance is added to the original list of deadly sins. Social dialogue, along with institutions that support it, is a social priority. …
Postmodernists disagree whether tolerance is negative or positive. For Richard Rorty, tolerance is a condition for liberal democracy. But for other postmodernists, such as Michel Foucault, tolerance requires that we make the world safe for tolerance. This view calls for a liquidation of all cultural bases of intolerance. Intolerance is defined as wilful perpetuation of our self-imposed immaturity, to use Kant’s language again, and something we must transcend, perhaps with the aid (or coercion) of others, as enlightened participants in historical progress, to use the language of Rousseau. Hence, curiously, postmodernism is, for some, supportive of democratic politics; for others, collectivist politics.
… postmodernists themselves do little more than assert their views. … Of course, this will not do. By this strategy, postmodernists find themselves in a quandary. On the one hand, if they argue for their position, they contradict themselves. On the other, if they do not, what reasons do we have philosophically for accepting their worldview?
….Richard John Neuhaus makes this criticism effectively:
(The postmodernist) knows that people do and do not fear, he knows that Freud has given us a way to understand human behaviour that is more adequate than earlier descriptions, he knows the course of history toward maximizing freedom, goodness and truth will take care of themselves. He even knows that “scientific discoveries” have discredited belief in an immortal soul. The ironist’s final vocabulary turns out to be not so formal as it appears; it is filled with contents that other people call facts, and about which, contra the first article of his ironist’s creed, Rorty gives no indication of having “radical and continuing doubts.”
…Of course, sceptics have to deride common sense. Once the consensus among intellectuals is to accept beliefs that are counterintuitive to people untrained in departments of philosophy, their criticism and bemusement can be dismissed as the doubts of the unsophisticated. This fosters a Gnostic culture, as Eric Voegelin explains, in which modern and postmodern intellectuals seek to create a Magisterium of secular intellectuals. This is the consensus of Enlightened intellectuals who qualify for what Kant called “public speech,” by which even common sense is criticized. In this way, modern and postmodern intellectuals can use education and other arms of culture to monopolize discourse about their definition and interpretation of the social contract. They can protect public speech from intolerance. They can root out intolerance wherever it occurs. People who are not qualified for “public speech,” that is, those who live by the guidance of common sense, can be forced to be tolerant, just as Rousseau said Enlightened leaders can force citizens to be free. In education and in practice, this is political correctness….
No comments:
Post a Comment