What is "postmodernism?"
The
word “postmodernism” is used in many different situations, and means many
things. When applied to art,
literature, politics, architecture, and philosophy, it has specific
connotations. That is a way of
saying that people are very sloppy in their use of the word.
What
most versions of postmodernism share is a sense of meaning—that we now
live without accepted transcendent truths. The things we believe to be true, beautiful and good might
not be true, beautiful and good.
Philosophy
and religion are no help here, postmodernists say. Some accept this or that philosophical approach, or
religious faith, but there is no good reason why others should join them. We must work out the problems of human
existence without extrahuman standards and judges.
Jean-François
Lyotard said that postmodernism is “incredulity
toward metanarratives.”*
Here
is a propositional account of postmodernism.**
1. There is no such thing as transcendent truth. What we
call "true" is simply what we agree with. So-called truths or facts
are merely negotiated beliefs, the products of social construction and
fabrication, not ‘objective’ or ‘external’ features of the world.
2. Knowledge,
reality, and truth are the products of language. There is no
language-independent reality that can make our thoughts true or false.
3. If there were
any transcendent or objective truths, they would be inaccessible and unknowable
by human beings, hence unavailable for any practical epistemological purposes.
4. There are no
privileged epistemic positions, and no certain foundations for beliefs. All
claims are judged by conventions or language games, which have no deeper
grounding. There are no neutral, transcultural
standards for settling disagreements.
5. Appeals to
truth are merely instruments of domination or repression, which should be
replaced by practices with progressive social value.
6. Truth cannot be
attained because all putatively truth-oriented practices are corrupted and
biased by politics or self-serving interests.
Sheldon
Wolin uses ‘postmodern’ in a way similar to Lyotard, and not as part of an epistemic claim. “For theorists of a postmodern era… the
contrast between appearance and reality no longer holds. Appearance is all there is…. dependent
upon incessant and insistent changes that undermine confidence in the existence
of a reality principle.”*+ Wolin adds later: “Foremost among the changes from modern
to postmodern power is that the directive role of the state is now shared with
the power-forms hitherto conceived primarily as economic in character.”**+
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*The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.
xxiv. See next note. Lyotard did
say this was “(s)implifying to the extreme….”
**These 6 propositions, a quote, are presented as "criticisms of
truth-based epistemology" in Alvin I. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (Oxford, 1999), p. 10. The six propositions, says Goldman, are
demonstrably wrong. Worse than
that, he says, they are silly.
That is why people who consider themselves to be postmodern philosophers
are uncomfortable in departments of philosophy, where colleagues ask pesky
questions. It should be noted that
Goldman is not directly addressing the kind of propositions referred to in the
reference to Lyotard. We make useful distinctions between broad propositions about
society or history and specific claims which we pursue because we wish to have
true belief (as opposed to being misinformed or uninformed). (Goldman, 24, 26)
*+ Politics
and Vision (Expanded Edition, Princeton University Press, 2004), p.
395.
**+ Ibid., p. 563.