A READER WRITES: “I must object to your response to my question. I can’t believe that you don’t prefer the excitement and originality of postmodernism to dry, boring, passionless analytical philosophy. What a yawn it is! At least the postmoderns aren’t boring – they are saying something new and fresh.”
BB SAYS: There’s nothing modern about postmodernism. People have been saying the exact same things that postmodernists say since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks. For example the Ancient Greek sophist Gorgias wrote a book called On the Non-Existent in which he made the following three claims:
1. There is no such thing as reality.
2. Even if there was such a thing as reality we couldn’t know anything about it.
3. Even if we could know something about reality, we could not communicate it using language.
Well, that’s basically what all the postmodernists say. Whether it’s Derrida (pictured above trying to look enigmatic), Lacan, Foucault, or Braudrillard. All these writers are making the same three banal points. If you look beneath all their jargon, and all their self-important posturing, they are just saying the same things that Gorgias said over 2000 years ago. But they dress it up in fancy language in order to make it appear more original, more complex and more mysterious than it is. What they are saying is neither original nor interesting.
Postmodernism is what happens to many people who spend too much time in university arts departments. They start thinking that there is no reality for words to refer to. And why wouldn’t they think that?
So again, I reject BOTH the continental, postmodern approach to philosophy AND the pro-science, ultra-rational analytic approach. True philosophy consists in the Golden Mean between these two approaches. A great philosopher is both a scientist AND an artist, both a Presocratic AND a Sophist. For example, the Platonic dialogues, in which Socrates is the hero, provide a way of speaking about human life and the world that is both scientific and poetic, both rational and passionate, and hence superior to either science or poetry.
I object to your description of postmodernism. Some of our greatest writers - Joyce, Kafka, not to mention the German Romantics - espoused, in various ways, this idea of meaning being arbitrary, unstable etc.. and that language is an imperfect way through which to transmit ideas. Surely your dismissal of postmodernism is a little trite, given the great minds who clearly had a lot of time for it. Do you think Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses are merely the utterings of someone who has spent too long in a university arts block?
ReplyDeleteDear Brian,
ReplyDeleteI noticed an alarming lack of comments on your blog recently and thought I would do my bit to help.
Your commenter above seems to have confused the description of the thing with the thing being talked about. I'm sure there is some technical clever philosophical way of putting this but I am far too unphilosophical to know what it is. Perhaps you could assist?
P.s. I think Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses are the very definition of utterings of someone who has spent too long in a university arts block.
Finnegan's Wake is arguably the utterings of a man who has spent too much time with his head stuck up his own backside. But it would be interesting to see what Joyce or Kafka would think of post-modern theory, if they were still around today. We have no way of knowing for sure whether they would approve or not.
ReplyDeleteI concede to the original poster that my characterisation of post-modernism was, in some respects, a bit of a caricature – but I think there was also a good deal of truth in it as well.
Now, the main point of my post was to say that “postmodernism” has been around since at least the time of Ancient Greece – that there is nothing original about it. Perhaps the postmoderns, at their best, have a point – but it’s not an original point at all. Nor is the point that complex or difficult to express, as Gorgias showed over 2000 years ago. So why all the incomprehensible gibberish from post-modern theorists? Personally I am skeptical that they have much of a point in the first place.