“Explaining Postmodernism” book excerpts

Postmodern cultural themes … in turn inform our more specific cultural debates.

1. Whether the Western canon of great books is a distillation of the best of the West and reflective of a multi-faceted debate—or whether it is ideologically narrow, exclusive, and intolerant.
2. Whether Christopher Columbus was a modern hero, bringing two worlds together to their mutual benefit—or whether he was an insensitive, smugly superior point man for European imperialism, bringing armed force that rammed European religion and values down indigenous cultures’ throats.
3. Whether the United States of America is progressive on liberty, equalities, and opportunities for everyone—or whether it is sexist, racist, and class-bound, e.g., using its mass market pornography and glass ceilings to keep women in their place.
4. Whether our ambivalence over affirmative action programs reflects a strong desire to be fair to all parties—or whether those programs are merely a cynical bone thrown to women and minorities until they seem to be helping, at which point there is a violent reaction by the status quo.
5. Whether social conflicts should be defused by encouraging the principle that individuals should be judged according to their individual merits and not according to morally irrelevant

……..

[Georg W. F.] Hegel’s place historically is to have institutionalized four theses in nineteenth-century metaphysics.

1. Reality is an entirely subjective creation;
2. Contradictions are built into reason and reality;
3. Since reality evolves contradictorily, truth is relative to time and place; and
4. The collective, not the individual, is the operative unit.

……….

The legacy of the irrationalists for the twentieth century included four key themes:

1. An agreement with [Immanuel] Kant that reason is impotent to know reality;
2. an agreement with Hegel that reality is deeply conflictual and/or absurd;
3. a conclusion that reason is therefore trumped by claims based on feeling, instinct, or leaps of faith; and
4. that the non-rational and the irrational yield deep truths about reality.

………

[Martin] Heidegger offered to his followers the following conclusions, all of which are accepted by the mainstream of postmodernism with slight modifications:

1. Conflict and contradiction are the deepest truths of reality;
2. Reason is subjective and impotent to reach truths about reality;
3. Reason’s elements—words and concepts—are obstacles that must be un-crusted, subjected to Destruktion, or otherwise unmasked;
4. Logical contradiction is neither a sign of failure nor of anything particularly significant at all;
5. Feelings, especially morbid feelings of anxiety and dread, are a deeper guide than reason;
6. The entire Western tradition of philosophy—whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Lockean, or Cartesian—based as it is on the law of non-contradiction and the subject/object distinction, is the enemy to be overcome.

Source: Explaining Postmodernism:  Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault     Expanded Edition (2004) by Stephen R. C. Hicks.

A glimpse into irrational (mad? insane?) minds. An interesting and informative book.