Postmodern Philosophy
Postmodern Philosophy
Postmodern Philosophy
Preceded by Modernism
Postmodernity
Hypermodernity
Metamodernism
Posthumanism
Postmaterialism
Post-postmodernism
Post-structuralism
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Criticism of postmodernism
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Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the
20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist
philosophical ideas regarding culture, identity, history, or language that were developed
during the 18th-century Enlightenment.[1][2]Postmodernist thinkers developed concepts
like difference, repetition, trace, and hyperreality to subvert "grand narratives," univocity of
being, and epistemic certainty.[3] Postmodern philosophy questions the importance of power
relationships, personalization, and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views.
Many postmodernists appear to deny that an objective reality exists, and appear to deny that
there are objective moral values.[1]
Jean-François Lyotard defined philosophical postmodernism in The Postmodern Condition,
writing "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards meta
narratives...."[4] where what he means by metanarrative is something like a unified, complete,
universal, and epistemically certain story about everything that is. Postmodernists reject
metanarratives because they reject the concept of truth that metanarratives presuppose.
Postmodernist philosophers in general argue that truth is always contingent on historical and
social context rather than being absolute and universal and that truth is always partial and "at
issue" rather than being complete and certain.[3]
Postmodern philosophy is often particularly skeptical about simple binary oppositions
characteristic of structuralism, emphasizing the problem of the philosopher cleanly
distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from
submission, good from bad, and presence from absence.[5][6] But, for the same reasons,
postmodern philosophy should often be particularly skeptical about the complex spectral
characteristics of things, emphasizing the problem of the philosopher again cleanly
distinguishing concepts, for a concept must be understood in the context of its opposite, such
as existence and nothingness, normality and abnormality, speech and writing, and the like.[7]
Postmodern philosophy also has strong relations with the substantial literature of critical
theory.[8]
Contents
1Characteristic claims
2Definitional issues
3History
o 3.1Precursors
o 3.2Early postmodern philosophers
4Criticism
5See also
6Notes
7Further reading
8External links
Characteristic claims[edit]
Many postmodern claims are a deliberate repudiation of certain 18th-century Enlightenment
values. Such a postmodernist believes that there is no objective natural reality, and that logic
and reason are mere conceptual constructs that are not universally valid. Two other
characteristic postmodern practices are a denial that human nature exists, and a (sometimes
moderate) skepticism toward claims that science and technology will change society for the
better. Postmodernists also believe there are no objective moral values. Thus, postmodern
philosophy suggests equality for all things. One's concept of good and another's concept of
evil are to be equally correct, since good and evil are subjective. Since both good and evil
are equally correct, a postmodernist then tolerates both concepts, even if he or she
disagrees with them subjectively.[9][10] Postmodern writings often focus on deconstructing the
role that power and ideology play in shaping discourse and belief. Postmodern philosophy
shares ontological similarities with classical skeptical and relativisticbelief systems.[1]
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that "The assumption that there is no
common denominator in 'nature' or 'truth' ... that guarantees the possibility of neutral or
objective thought" is a key assumption of postmodernism.[11] The National Research
Council has characterized the belief that "social science research can never generate
objective or trustworthy knowledge" as an example of a postmodernist belief.[12] Jean-
François Lyotard's seminal 1979 The Postmodern Condition stated that its hypotheses
"should not be accorded predictive value in relation to reality, but strategic value in relation to
the questions raised". Lyotard's statement in 1984 that "I define postmodern as incredulity
toward meta-narratives" extends to incredulity toward science. Jacques Derrida, who is
generally identified as a postmodernist, stated that "every referent, all reality has the
structure of a differential trace".[3] Paul Feyerabend, one of the most famous twentieth-
century philosophers of science, is often classified as a postmodernist; Feyerabend held that
modern science is no more justified than witchcraft, and has denounced the "tyranny" of
"abstract concepts such as 'truth', 'reality', or 'objectivity', which narrow people's vision and
ways of being in the world".[13][14][15] Feyerabend also defended astrology, adopted alternative
medicine, and sympathized with creationism. Defenders of postmodernism state that many
descriptions of postmodernism exaggerate its antipathy to science; for example, Feyerabend
denied that he was "anti-science", accepted that some scientific theories are superior to
other theories (even if science itself is not superior to other modes of inquiry), and attempted
conventional medical treatments during his fight against cancer.[13][16][17]
Definitional issues[edit]
Philosopher John Deely has argued for the contentious claim that the label "postmodern" for
thinkers such as Derrida et al. is premature. Insofar as the "so-called" postmoderns follow
the thoroughly modern trend of idealism, it is more an ultramodernism than anything else. A
postmodernism that lives up to its name, therefore, must no longer confine itself to the
premodern preoccupation with "things" nor with the modern confinement to "ideas," but must
come to terms with the way of signs embodied in the semiotic doctrines of such thinkers as
the Portuguese philosopher John Poinsot and the American philosopher Charles Sanders
Peirce.[18] Writes Deely,
The epoch of Greek and Latin philosophy was based on being in a quite precise sense: the
existence exercised by things independently of human apprehension and attitude. The much
briefer epoch of modern philosophy based itself rather on the instruments of human knowing,
but in a way that unnecessarily compromised being. As the 20th century ends, there is
reason to believe that a new philosophical epoch is dawning along with the new century,
promising to be the richest epoch yet for human understanding. The postmodern era is
positioned to synthesize at a higher level—the level of experience, where the being of things
and the activity of the finite knower compenetrate one another and provide the materials
whence can be derived knowledge of nature and knowledge of culture in their full
symbiosis—the achievements of the ancients and the moderns in a way that gives full credit
to the preoccupations of the two. The postmodern era has for its distinctive task in
philosophy the exploration of a new path, no longer the ancient way of things nor the modern
way of ideas, but the way of signs, whereby the peaks and valleys of ancient and modern
thought alike can be surveyed and cultivated by a generation which has yet further peaks to
climb and valleys to find.[19]
History[edit]
Precursors[edit]
Postmodern philosophy originated primarily in France during the mid-20th century. However,
several philosophical antecedents inform many of postmodern philosophy's concerns.
It was greatly influenced by the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche in the
19th century and other early-to-mid 20th-century philosophers,
including phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan, structuralist Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, and the later work of Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Postmodern philosophy also drew from the world of the arts and architecture,
particularly Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and artists who practiced collage, and the
architecture of Las Vegas and the Pompidou Centre.
Early postmodern philosophers[edit]
The most influential early postmodern philosophers were Jean Baudrillard,Jean-François
Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Michel Foucault is also often cited as an early postmodernist
although he personally rejected that label. Following Nietzsche, Foucault argued that
knowledge is produced through the operations of power, and changes fundamentally in
different historical periods.
The writings of Lyotard were largely concerned with the role of narrative in human culture,
and particularly how that role has changed as we have left modernity and entered a
"postindustrial" or postmodern condition. He argued that modern philosophies legitimized
their truth-claims not (as they themselves claimed) on logical or empirical grounds, but rather
on the grounds of accepted stories (or "metanarratives") about knowledge and the world—
comparing these with Wittgenstein's concept of language-games. He further argued that in
our postmodern condition, these metanarratives no longer work to legitimize truth-claims. He
suggested that in the wake of the collapse of modern metanarratives, people are developing
a new "language-game"—one that does not make claims to absolute truth but rather
celebrates a world of ever-changing relationships (among people and between people and
the world).
Derrida, the father of deconstruction, practiced philosophy as a form of textual criticism. He
criticized Western philosophy as privileging the concept of presence and logos, as opposed
to absence and markings or writings.
In the United States, the most famous pragmatist and self-proclaimed postmodernist
was Richard Rorty. An analytic philosopher, Rorty believed that combining Willard Van
Orman Quine's criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction with Wilfrid Sellars's critique of
the "Myth of the Given" allowed for an abandonment of the view of the thought or language
as a mirror of a reality or external world. Further, drawing upon Donald Davidson's criticism
of the dualism between conceptual scheme and empirical content, he challenges the sense
of questioning whether our particular concepts are related to the world in an appropriate way,
whether we can justify our ways of describing the world as compared with other ways. He
argued that truth was not about getting it right or representing reality, but was part of a social
practice and language was what served our purposes in a particular time; ancient languages
are sometimes untranslatable into modern ones because they possess a different vocabulary
and are unuseful today. Donald Davidson is not usually considered a postmodernist,
although he and Rorty have both acknowledged that there are few differences between their
philosophies.[20][21]
Postmodernism
https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/postmodernism.htm
Postmodernism – A Description
Postmodernism is difficult to define, because to define it would
violate the postmodernist's premise that no definite terms,
boundaries, or absolute truths exist. In this article, the term
“postmodernism” will remain vague, since those who claim to
be postmodernists have varying beliefs and opinions on
issues.
Postmodernism – Politics
Postmodernists protest Western society’s suppression of equal
rights. They believe that the capitalistic economic system lacks
equal distribution of goods and salary. While the few rich
prosper, the mass populace becomes impoverished.
Postmodernists view democratic constitutions as flawed in
substance, impossible to uphold, and unfair in principle.
Related search
postmodernist philosophers
Jacques Derrida
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean Baudrillard
Søren Kierkegaard
Christopher Norris
Charles Winquist
Postmodernism
On the End of Postmodernism and the Rise of Realism.
Absolute Truth from True Knowledge of Physical Reality.
Postmodern Definition and Quotes
Plato, George Berkeley, Friedrich Nietzsche, J. Ayer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper,
Thomas Kuhn
Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be
false,
the claim that there is no true assertion. (Aristotle)
If anyone thinks nothing is to be known, he does not even know whether that
can be known,
as he says he knows nothing. (Lucretius)
And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to
know what the truth is?
For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they
really are. (Plato)
Introduction / Summary of
Postmodernism
The current Postmodern belief is that a correct description of Reality is
impossible. This extreme skepticism, of which Friedrich
Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn are
particularly famous, assumes that;
We CAN imagine things that DO NOT physically exist (e.g. dragons, particle-
wave duality)
We CANNOT imagine things that DO physically exist. (e.g. reality of matter
and human existence in universe)
(Source: https://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html)
Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be
false,
the claim that there is no true assertion. (Aristotle)
If anyone thinks nothing is to be known, he does not even know whether that
can be known,
as he says he knows nothing. (Lucretius)
The correct postmodern statement should be;
A distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much
rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a
clear and distinct intellection. (Leibniz, 1670)
Geoff Haselhurst
Postmodern Definition
Postmodernism is the belief that:
(3) It follows that theoretical concepts are 'open', or what logicians call
'partially interpreted'. Research continues precisely because they are
open; the research task is to 'close' them, although never completely.
https://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000088/
The more you see how strangely Nature behaves, the harder it is to make a
model that explains how even the simplest phenomena actually work. So
theoretical physics has given up on that. (Richard Feynman, 1985)
The solution is simple though. Just get rid of the 'discrete particle
and continuous field' conception of matter in 'space-time' and
replace it with the wave structure of matter in space. See the
Physics essays listed on the side of the page - the solutions are very
obvious once known!
If anyone thinks nothing is to be known, he does not even know whether that
can be known, as he says he knows nothing. (Lucretius)
If I ask you why you believe any particular matter of fact, which you relate,
you must tell me some reason; and this reason will be some other fact,
connected with it. But as you cannot proceed after this manner, in infinitum,
you must at last terminate in some fact, which is present to your memory or
senses; or must allow that your belief is entirely without foundation. (David
Hume, 1737)
And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to
know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean
knowing things as they really are. (Plato)
What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error to
the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true
philosophy. (Plato)
When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it
understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it
turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its
vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence.
(Plato)
The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about
reality. (Plato)
One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the
knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and
decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be
deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers
and men of ambition we described earlier on. (Plato)
What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he
were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and
the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind? (Nietzsche, 1890)
Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.
(Nietzsche, 1890)
But what are the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed? -
What are the simple constituent parts of a chair? - The bits of wood of
which it is made? Or the molecules or atoms? (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
.. each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it
dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its
opponent. .. no paradigm ever solves all the problems it defines .. (T.S. Kuhn,
1962)
.. the puzzles that constitute normal science exist only because no paradigm
that provides a basis for scientific research ever completely resolves all its
problems. (Kuhn, 1962)
For the time being we have to admit that we do not possess any general
theoretical basis for physics which can be regarded as its logical foundation.
(Albert Einstein, 1940)
Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be
endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It
is not good either to forget the questions philosophy asks, or to persuade
ourselves we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live
without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps
the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.
(Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy)
The Mediated concept of Truth, is that it first admits that there is no such
thing as absolute, pure Truth. there is a reality, which may be abstract or
sensual .. but one cannot access it/know it ..'in- itself'. One can only 'know'
it within the socially constructed (or species-constructed) 'mediative-
habits' of one's particular society/species/whatever. (Ediwina Taborsky)
This sounds like one of my own intuitions, that scholarly (aka "scientific" )
propositions are at best approximations to realities may never be fully
known. At it's best scholarship approaches reality asymptotically --
approaching Reality as a limit but never quite getting there. It then becomes
an interesting question how it is possible to assess some approximations as
better than others. The notion that some provide a closer "fit" to
observations that are, at least in principle, repeatable, seems like a good, if
conventional, place to begin. The "social/species" mediation enters into the
picture by constraining the kinds of observations made and the types of
inferences permitted from them. Interesting stuff to look at
anthropologically. (John McCreery)
Over much of the philosophical world in this century the doctrine of the
impossibility of metaphysics became almost an orthodoxy, and the adjective
'metaphysical' a pejorative word. Some of the reasons for this devaluation
should now be clear. The conceptual distortions and final incoherence of
systems, the abstract myths parading as Reality, the grandiose claims and
the conflicting results - these seemed to many the essence of the
metaphysical enterprise and sufficient reason for condemning it. ... Having
the avowed aim of arriving at profound truths about everything, it is
sometimes held to result only in obscure nonsense about nothing. (Twentieth
Century Philosophers, 1998)
My point is that from the fact that someone is convinced that something is
true, however firm his conviction may be, it never follows logically that it is
true. .. Except in the rare cases where the truth of the statement in
question is a logical condition of its being believed, as in the assertion of
one's own existence. (Ayer)
We may make the truth of some statements depend upon the truth of
others, but this process cannot go on for ever. There must be some
statements of empirical fact which are directly verified. And in what can
this verification consist except in our having the appropriate experiences?
But then these experiences will be cognitive: to have whatever experience it
may be will itself be a way of knowing something to be true. And a similar
argument applies to a priori statements, like those of logic or pure
mathematics. We may prove one mathematical statement by deducing it
from others, but the proof must start somewhere. There must be a least
one statement which is excepted without proof, an axiom of some sort which
is known intuitively. Even if we are able to explain away our knowledge of
such axioms, by showing that they are true by definition, we still have to see
that a set of definitions is consistent. To conduct any formal proof, we have
to be able to see that one statement follows logically from another. (Ayer)
And if we are asked what makes the law of logic true, we can in this and in
many other cases provide a proof. But this proof in its turn relies upon some
law of logic. (Ayer)
This is not to say that we do not know the truth of any a priori statements,
or even that we do not know them intuitively, if to know them intuitively is to
know them without proof. (Ayer)
For our enquiry into the use of words can be equally regarded as an enquiry
into the nature of the facts which they describe. (Ayer)
..A similar argument was used by Hume to prove that knowledge of causal
relations 'is not, in any instance, attained by reasoning's a priori '. ' The
effect ', he says, 'is totally different from the cause, and consequently can
never be discovered in it '. Or again, ' there is no object, which implies the
existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves, and never
look beyond the idea which we form of them.' As Hume puts them these
statements are not obviously tautological; but they become so when it is
seen that what he is saying is that when two objects are distinct, they are
distinct; and consequently that to assert the existence of either one of
them is not necessarily to assert the existence of another. (Ayer)
Words like 'intuition' and 'telepathy' are brought in just to disguise the
fact that no explanation has been found. (Ayer)
..the problem of certainty; the question whether there are any statements
whose truth can be established beyond the possibility of doubt. (Ayer)
The quest for certainty has played a considerable part in the history of
philosophy: it has been assumed that without a basis of certainty all our
claims to knowledge must be suspect. (Ayer)
Sometimes the word 'certain' is used as a synonym for 'necessary' or for 'a
priori'. It is said, for example, that no empirical statements are certain, and
what is meant by this is that they are not necessary in the way that a
priori statements are, that they can all be denied without self-contradiction.
Accordingly, some philosophers take a priori statements as their ideal. They
wish, like Leibniz, to put all true statements on a level with those of formal
logic or pure mathematics; or, like the existentialists, they attach a tragic
significance to the fact that this cannot be done. (Ayer)
If empirical statements had the formal validity which makes the truths of
logic unassailable they could not do the work that we expect of them; they
would not be descriptive of anything that happens. (Ayer)
Thus neither 'I think' nor 'I exist' is a truth of logic: the logical truth is
only that I exist if I think ... It is that their truth follows from their being
doubted by the person who expresses them. The sense in which I cannot
doubt the statement that I think is just that my doubting it entails its
truth: and in the same sense I cannot doubt that I exist. (Ayer)
The ground, then, for maintaining that, while one is having an experience, one
can know with absolute certainty the truth of a statement which does no
more than describe the character of the experience in question is that
there is no room here for anything short of knowledge: there is nothing for
one to be uncertain or mistaken about. (Ayer)
What we do not, and can not, have is a logical guarantee that our acceptance
of a statement is not mistaken. It is chiefly the belief that we need such a
guarantee that has led philosophers to hold that some at least of the
statements which refer to what is immediately given to us in experience
must be incorrigible. But, as I have already remarked, even if there could be
such incorrigible statements, the guarantee which they provided would not
be worthy of very much. In any given case it would operate only for a single
person and only for the fleeting moment at which he was having the
experience in question. It would not, therefore, be of any help to us in
making lasting additions to our stock of knowledge. (Ayer)
Inductive reasoning is taken to cover all the cases in which we pass from a
particular statement of fact, or set of particular statements of fact, to a
factual conclusion which they do not formally entail. The inference may be
from particular instances to a general law, or proceed directly by analogy
from one particular instance to another. In all such reasoning we make the
assumption that there is a uniformity in nature; or, roughly speaking, that
the future will, in the appropriate respects, resemble the past. (Ayer)
For the most part, attempts to solve the problem of induction have taken
the form of trying to fit inductive arguments into a deductive mould. The
hope has been, if not to turn problematic inference into formal
demonstration, at least to make it formally demonstrable that the premises
of an inductive argument can in many cases confer a high degree of
probability upon its conclusion. (Ayer)
..we have no access to physical objects otherwise than through the contents
of our sense-experiences, which themselves are not physical: we infer the
existence of scientific entities, such as atoms and electrons, only from their
alleged effects. (Ayer)
The problem which is presented in all these cases is that of establishing our
right to make what appears to be a special sort of advance beyond our data.
The level of what, for the purposes of the problem, we take to be data
varies; but in every instance they are supposed to fall short, in an
uncompromising fashion, of the conclusion to which we look to them to lead
us. For those who wish to vindicate our claim to knowledge, the difficulty is
to find a way of bridging or abolishing this gap. (Ayer)
It is the gap between things as they seem and things as they are; and the
problem consists in our having to justify our claims to know how physical
objects are on the basis of knowing only how they seem. (Ayer)
And we can then work out what the object must itself be like in order to
have, in such conditions, the effects on us that it does. It then turns out to
be just what science tells us that it is. (Ayer)
It is possible to maintain both that such things are chairs and tables are
directly perceived and that our sense-experiences are causally dependent
upon physical processes which are not directly perceptible. This is, indeed, a
position which is very widely held, and is perfectly consistent.(Ayer)
But here, as so often in philosophy, the important work consists not in the
formulation of an answer, which often turns out to be almost platitudinous,
but in making the way clear for its acceptance. (Ayer)
Or is there some difference between the past and the future which would
account for our making the distinction between them when we speak about
the possible effect of our acts?(Ayer)
Deconstruction
Derrida, Jacques (Post-structuralist, phenomenologist, phil of
language, metaphysician, aesthetician) 1930
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(Mohandas Gandhi)
Our world is in great trouble due to human behaviour founded on myths and
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around us are interconnected in Space we can then deduce solutions to the
fundamental problems of human knowledge
in physics, philosophy, metaphysics, theology, education, health, evolution and
ecology, politics and society.
This is the profound new way of thinking that Einstein realised, that we exist as spatially
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confirms the intuitions of the ancient philosophers and mystics.
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