I would really appreciate some reaction to these four sentences on postmodernism. As you know I'm an Analytic guy so I'm struggling to understand postmodernism. If these four sentences aren't on the right track then I may just have to give up.
We live in a postmodern age and what this means is that there is a consensus that the intellectual synthesis that was the Enlightenment is no longer acceptable and must be replaced. But the consensus does not go much farther than that. The Enlightenment is a complex phenomenon and the debate does not become substantive and interesting until we have identified which elements of the complex we intend to reject and what we intend to offer in their place. The Enlightenment variously stood for many things: laissez faire capitalism, democracy, human rights, the scientific method, individualism, mass education, free speech, cosmopolitanism and progress.
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I think this is a good way of phrasing it. I like particular philosophers who are considered postmodern, but I'm always surprised by who else gets lumped into that category. Similarly, the criticisms I've seen of "postmodernism" often seem beside the point, because they don't apply to the people I'm reading. Each rejects aspects of the Enlightenment they find objectionable, but as your concluding list suggests, it's a manifold target without an agreed upon center.
That is reassuring.
Richard,
I agree with an interpretation of postmodernism that is mostly negative; the "post" of "postmodern" suggests that the modern is past, but there is no indication of what will take its place. But I do not think that choosing what it is in particular that the postmoderns are rejecting and offering alternatives is necessary to this being "interesting and substantive." We have lost faith in the modern, whether particular arguments against it work or do not work, just as the larger culture has lost faith in God without any particular arguments against God being definitive or even overwhelmingly persuasive. That a cultural mood (Zeitgeist) can emerge largely independent of arguments (which is itself a kick at modern faith), sometimes despite them, is fascinating. It is not that there are no arguments against the Enlightenment, but these seem to support rather than precipitate the postmodern moment.
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