Postmodern Philosophy and Morality
I'd like to explore how moral choices might be informed by postmodern philosophy (which I recognize is an umbrella term for a range of positions). I hope we can keep this as jargon free and concise as is possible for such a famously recondite and sometimes a triggering, culture war subject. Obviously, the question is immense, but I'm just looking for a few salient clues or steppingstones. To any postmodernists, forgive the crudities or assumptions underpinning my OP.
It is often argued by traditionalists (simplistically perhaps) that postmodernism is mere ethical relativism. It does not allow for moral systems, since everything is perspectival, and the totalizing metanarrative has been dismantled. What can be the foundation for moral philosophy when there is just language and powerplay and where truth and absolute values elude us? Has postmodernism gone beyond binary structure, beyond good and evil?
We also know that postmodern philosophers do take moral positions on issues. Richard Rorty was famously progressive in an old, reformist Left sense and Derrida's later work explored notions of responsibility, he also took strong positions against the Vietnam war, the death penalty, South African Apartheid. What is the bridge a postmodernist can take to transition from a foundationless world to positions on justice?
How might postmodernism be helpful in determining how we should/could live?
It is often argued by traditionalists (simplistically perhaps) that postmodernism is mere ethical relativism. It does not allow for moral systems, since everything is perspectival, and the totalizing metanarrative has been dismantled. What can be the foundation for moral philosophy when there is just language and powerplay and where truth and absolute values elude us? Has postmodernism gone beyond binary structure, beyond good and evil?
We also know that postmodern philosophers do take moral positions on issues. Richard Rorty was famously progressive in an old, reformist Left sense and Derrida's later work explored notions of responsibility, he also took strong positions against the Vietnam war, the death penalty, South African Apartheid. What is the bridge a postmodernist can take to transition from a foundationless world to positions on justice?
How might postmodernism be helpful in determining how we should/could live?
Comments (294)
That being said, I wonder whether the notions of what health is changes in the various ways morality is established.
Same as it always was. Morality is just conventional practice. Norms.
Does that mean you don't fiercely hold what you consider to be correct in your encounters?
I act in accordance to the situation.
How does that relate to the norms you referred to?
Custom. Like saying hello to strangers or asking how they are.
Not really. I never experienced a moral dilemma.
So, you have never betrayed a friend, kissed the ass of a boss, represented your failures in the best possible light, or deferred blame to another as long as it wasn't you?
All part of life. I didn't create reality, I decide how to act in it.
As far as I can tell, p0m0 suggests "we should live" by transgressing – subverting – every "should" which, of course, is self-refuting (i.e. we could not live that way).
Undermine the powers that be.
That's a big claim. Can you demonstrate it? Isn't the act of making such a synthesis itself a reference point and value?
Quoting 180 Proof
A performative self-refutation and a potential moral quagmire, surely?
Quoting praxis
How do we know what the powers that be are, how do we even identify power apart from the crassly obvious versions? Isn't the statement that the metanarrative is dead itself a totalizing statement?
Of course I can demonstrate it: my daily life, second by second, is a continuous evidence of what I said. The act of making a synthesis is a temporary reference point: the synthesis is never made once for all; instead, it is always criticized, revised, changed, modified, and criticism as well is criticized in turn. There is no absolute, static, fixed reference point.
How is that more compelling than someone saying that their daily life is continuous evidence of Jesus working though them? I generally don't take people's word for things but consider it is part of a belief system that makes sense to them, but not necessarily to others. Your approach seems subjective and interpretive. Does it address the OP?
Yep. Idea's inform and modify each other.
The most telling criticism of post modern ethics comes from a critique of Feyerabend's dictum that anything goes.
If anything is permissible, then there is no reason to change what we are now doing.
Expressed as an aphorism: If anything goes, then everything stays.
Hence far from being progressive, post modernism becomes a model for conservatism.
There's a nascent essay here, explaining how Trump's ubiquitous lying derives from an acceptance of post modern notions of truth by the GOP.
Yes, exactly, my approach is subjective and interpretative and my intention is to address the OP. Jesus works on me, through me, on my daily life, and I don’t think he is the Son of God; he lives in me like other people I like live in me, like Socrates, Gandhi, Vattimo, Heidegger, Heraclitus and many others.
Nice.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Ok. And I am not trying to give offence here, Angelo, but why should anyone care? Are you saying that morality is simply a matter of personal preferences - between you and your god/abyss? In which case is there any position that can't be justified using this personal approach, from pedophilia to genocide?
? Jacques Derrida
If anything is permissible, there is no reason to preserve the status quo.
Expressed as an aphorism, if anything goes, there's no telling what we'll do next.
Hence far from being conservative, we have a model for progressivism.
Obviously, it's neither.
Do only redemptive figures live in you? How do you eliminate Pol Pot, Donald Trump, Mussolini, Genghis Khan, Adam Sandler?
This is an excellent, devastating criticism of not just post modernism, but most of what attempts to pass for ethical thinking hereabouts. Ethics is at its core about how we interact with others, hence any claimed ethic that does not tell us what to do in our relations to others is void.
The account given by starts with considerations of "history" - what I might call "background" or "being embedded" - but then slides into being "subjective", opening itself up to your critique. It has failed to follow through on the fact of our shared world, reverting to some form of solipsism, and as a result fails to deal with the problem of what we ought to do.
Yes, there is: inertia.
Yes, some of our first interactions here helped me towards an awareness of this. Morality is in the doing, not in the vast edifices of theory and principle. Its performative.
Inertia works for both sides.
:100: :smirk:
In other words, p0m0 is GIGO
Indeed.
So a competent defence of Post modernist ethics must show how it sets out what we ought to do. There may be some here up to that task, but I doubt it. It's essentially the same critique as that levelled against existentialism, that it leads equally to marxist coffee drinking in Paris, as to realestate investments in New York followed by buggering the Democratic institutions of the USA. Both affirm one's existence in the face of the void...
Deconstructing Derrida's "text", whatever it means is deferred, no? (i.e. meaning-less, or as Humpty Dumpty says "means whatever I say it means – nothing more or nothing less")
Is this your description of a post-modern ethical system? It seems like that could be your intention and it makes sense.
You cannot find anything able to definitely condemn pedophilia or genocide. There are answers and counteranswers to everything, so, you and me are in the same situation: a strong reference point to condemn paedophilia or genocide does not exist. They can only be condemned by a kind of everyday work, research, dialogue, exchange of experiences and sensitivities. Laws can give punishment, but punishment is not evidence that society has been able to find a strong reference point to show that paedophilia and genocide are evil. Punishment made by society is just a practical choice.
I make efforts every day to reduce as much as possible the influence in me of people that I consider negative.
I cannot call it a system, because it is not static, definitive. It is my today’s method, that actually I have been practicing for many years. But tomorrow I might change idea.
True, but if the tide turns in favor of progressivism, inertia will support that, for better or worse.
Yes, you're right. I didn't like "system" either, but I couldn't think of a better word.
Quoting Banno
Seems to me you two are doing something different from what @Angelo Cannata is doing. He is telling you how he determines what he has to do to act in an ethical manner, i.e. in accordance with his conscience. You're trying to set out rules by which you can judge other people's behavior. Those are two separate things.
Derrida is the man, as you've already picked up on, for this question. However, the reason for this is that "postmodern" is either a historical or a cultural category more than an actual philosophy -- and Derrida's work is unfairly judged by these cultural epithets. (Foucault and Delueze, I'd say, are similarly situated, tho Deleuze is flamboyant in his expression)
At least insofar as I understand his philosophy, he's basically the opposite of the post modern cartoon. -- to quote:
Does an epistemology concerned with purity and corruption sound like an ethos-less epistemology? Does it sound like "Anything goes"?
I'm always impressed with the contrast between the pop culture phenomena railed against, and the reality of the books they attribute said epithets to -- Derrida's day job was the history of philosophy, and his work draws from that knowledge. So it requires technical knowledge as a background for understanding (at least in explication -- you can certainly understand Derrida without having his day job! :D )
Further, his work is concerned with meaning and truth, and his style of writing reflects that concern.
It's for these two reasons that Derrida takes some effort to understand, and I'd say that initial impressions of his work in the anglophonic philosophy world were unfair and simply wrong-headed.
But then I think this gets at the problem pretty well -- just *who are these postmodernists*? Wouldn't it be more useful to simply name them and discuss them, if indeed there was an idea to discuss?
I think it's a phantom-idea of some kind that people believe others are, but no one believes of themself really. It's a philosophical antagonist, like the radical skeptic that no one is but we can think about.
And that particular phantom can't help anyone with respect to ethical thought. However, particular thinkers, depending on what they say of course, may.
EDIT: Just me back on my historicist bullshit . . . ;)
Large scale change happens because of seismic shifts in political, economic, or natural environments. Somebody invented iron, or a new trade route to India opened up, things like that.
You can enjoy your own local utopia, but if you want to see change in the world, you have to wait for something to trigger it. Planning for utopia is a good idea, though. When the change happens, then people will reach for an ethical anchor. It's nice if there's already one there.
Actually that's my take too. I'm saying that 'your own conscience' is not a good foundation as there is nothing one can't justify using such an approach. People justify slavery, sexual assault, murder, theft, anything horrendous, based on their own conscience (or lack of one). I also don't yet see how his answer relates to the OP. But I understand the broader point that perhaps all we have is personal preferences (conscience if you prefer). I do think however that even secular morality can rest on foundational imperatives, however contestable these might be.
If anything is permissible, then God is dead? per Jack Karamazov's brother, Ivan.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Digression - I prefer Zizek's restatement of that rather fatuous proclamation. Zizek: With God everything is permissible. Moral crimes may well be the presence of god. If you want a foundational justification for genocide, burning witches and heretics, torture, homophobia, misogyny, slavery, etc - then god and scripture provides this permission. If we want to see how it can be done well, go visit Islamic State.
Yes, I think this is what I was hoping for when I knocked out the OP. I asked for some 'stepping stones' and this could well include how Deleuze or Derrida, say, have conceptualized a particular moral question. I'm certainly a believer in examining examples.
If we were to take an example such as abortion - how might a given postmodern thinker approach this in a way that is of use to social policy?
Does "pedophilia" cause more needless harm than less? Does "genocide" cause more needless harm than less? Each Yes "definitely condemns" ... and No raises more questions. In any case, explain on what grounds can it be non-fallaciously assumed that 'needless harm' is not a disvalue.
Quoting Tom Storm
A "p0m0 thinker" would probaby say "the problem isn't abortion, the problem is 'interests' codifing / regulating abortion as / with 'social policy'". :mask:
Hrrmm... well, one thing, I don't think it's necessarily the job of philosophers to address particular concerns. So if one philosopher wishes to think about the history of thought and what it tells us about the nature of thinking, truth and meaning, and another wishes to apply ethical theories to real problems (like Peter Singer), then we'll get the most out of these philosophers by meeting them on their own terms. Insofar as abortion is concerned, and Derrida, I don't have the confidence or even would know where to begin.
So from that stance I'd say the usual suspects would disappoint -- they won't give you advice on the United States' abortion laws. And if we are to judge from their characters, Deleuze really was not a very good man.
They're kind of esoteric, honestly... I don't understand the cultural phenomena very well , the more I studied them -- "Post modern" seems so very disconnected from these thinkers.
But a stepping stone on postmodernism, at least -- if you are just wanting references -- would be Lyotard. He at least used the word "postmodern" :D
One need not abandon the standards that reliably guide one's own behavior to negotiate with others whose standards are quite different. Still, under the friction of interacting with both congenial and uncongenial people, one's own certainties may be weakened. For instance, uncongenial Christians and uncongenial religious people in general had a part to play in my distancing myself from religion. The less stake I have in theism, the easier it is to deal with theists.
Then too, I think everyone is a relativist whenever it is convenient. We may be against war, for instance, until our favorite ox is gored. Ukraine's ox excused arm sales that were not enthused about when the destination was Syria and other places.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm a bit lost. Here's what you asked for in the OP:
Quoting Tom Storm
How has @Angelo Cannata not responded to your OP? It makes sense to me that you may not like what he has to say, but his response is consistent with my understanding of how post-modern morals works. Post-modernism rejects the idea of restrictions imposed by tradition or social coercion. It is not ends-based, it's process-based. It's means, not ends that matter. I'm guessing that's mostly how you live your life - you follow your conscience.
I don't mean this to be obtuse -- I know generally who is meant, and generally what people say about the post-moderns. But if postmodernism is to inform our ethical thought, it really is very important to have an understanding of postmodernism, I think.
(part of me was tempted to pull up Walter Benjamin, but I nixed it for now... there's still conceptual work to be done)
That’s a political analysis of the postmodern. There is a general consensus within continental philosophy concerning what postmodern philosophy stands for. That is , what thinkers like Heidegger, Lyotard, Nietzsche , Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida have in common that distinguishes them from modernist philosophers like Marx.
I’ve been reading a lot of Deleuze lately. Why do you say he was not a very good man?
Quoting 180 Proof
Derridean differance tell us that experienced meaning differs and defers at the same time. What does that mean? It means that contextual change assures that the repetition of any sense always alters what it refers to in some respect. We continue to mean the same thing differently. This not loss of meaning, but a sliding of meaning.
Thats because they are not offering a “should” but an “is”. Transgression and subversion are not oughts, they refer to the way that experience comes to us already self-transgressing and self-differentiating. Pomo shows us the ethical advantages of becoming explicitly aware of what is already implicitly involved in sense-making.
Postmodern philosophers reach the the importance of the difference between history and geneology. History tends to be thought of in terms of a historicism, a chronological model of change. That’s what your notion history sounds like. Genealogy , on the other hand , is not a causal concept of historical change.
:zip:
Personal conscience is not a trope you’ll generally find among postmodern philosophers. For writers like Foucault and Deleuze , the ‘subject’ or ‘personal’ is just a veneer placed over forces that originate as unconscious as well as social.
Knowing my `self' as a mere strategy or role in social
language interchange, I can know longer locate a `correct' value to embrace, or a righteous cause to throw my vehemence behind. The only ethics that is left for me to support is the play between contingent senses of coherence and incoherence as I am launched from one local linguistic-cultural hegemony to another. To the extent that I know what such a thing as guilt or
anger is beyond the bounds of local practices, these affectivities would have resonance as my experience of relative belonging or marginalization in relation to conventionalities that I engage with in discourse. I am always guilty, blameful in the extent to which I am a stranger in respect to one convention or another, including those that I recall belonging to in the past. I am always guilty in existing as a dislodgement from my history. Even in my ensconsement within a community of language, my moment to moment interchange pulls and twists me away from myself, making me guilty with respect to myself (my `remembered' self) and my interlocutor.
Before Derrida and other post-structuralists , the tendency was to take the contextual meanings they demonstrated and tie them back into some totalizing meta-narrative ( scientific or cultural progress , political emancipation, dialectical becoming, linguistic structuralism). Name me some of these contextualists writing long before Derrida and I’ll demonstrate my point
I already have (by discipline)
Quoting 180 Proof
Also, again, see link to list of various discursive decenterings .
I disagree, a stable category of self and conscience is not a pivotal source of value in postmodern thinking as far as I know. For me the idea of a personal conscience as a source of your moral foundation sits more with existentialism's notions of authenticity, and you're right, I don't find this entirely convincing as a source of morality. Joshs explains conscience better than I can here:
Quoting Joshs
Quoting Joshs
Now this is fascinating and more what I was wondering about. I will need to mull over it a while. For me this is a lot to unpack and it could be considered ontologically unsafe territory, if that make sense. Thanks.
Godspeed!
Confusion has its merits, oui monsieur? Let sleeping dogs lie.
I am interested in philosophy as a way to understand and enhance our choices and actions.
Quoting Moliere
I'm not American - I raised this one, not because of Roe vs Wade but because it seems like a useful and complex issue to reveal potential approaches. I'm not looking for answers, just clues for how one might connect theory to practice.
Quoting Moliere
Indeed and I have read The Postmodern Condition which is probably responsible for most of my initial preconceptions, for good or ill.
:fire: :groan: :cry: :scream:
You cannot establish objectively that paedophilia or genocide cause more needless harm than less. You can establish it from specific perspectives only. There are not perspectives valid for everybody, everywhere, everytime. The same applies for the concept of “needless harm”: there is not an objective ground to tell if it’s a value or a disvalue.
I mean history as a set of elements that make our human condition. For this reason I specified that I mean all levels of history. I don’t mean it as a fixed system of understanding. It is just a starting point that seems efficient in connecting meaningfully most other points. By “history” I also include the present.
Quoting 180 Proof
When I say
Quoting Angelo Cannata
I don’t mean “valid in the opinion of everybody”: obviously, everybody can have different opinions. By saying “valid for everybody” I mean that we can find evidence of its objectivity against any objections. For example, if we think that the existence of a stone is objective, it means that we think we are able to give evidence of it against anybody thinking differently. In this sense the existence of that stone is valid for everybody, despite their opinion.
Quoting 180 Proof
Non-fallacy doesn’t exist, because it is everytime evaluated by human people.
:ok: Good luck with that.
"General consensus"? In philosophy? C'mon...
I think there are histories of philosophy which employ "modernism", and try to make a mark between it and where they are at. Like any philosophical movement there's a sense of unity between diverse thinkers -- and I'd say there was something of a particular zeitgeist in France and they were drawing from similar sources and attempting to do what philosophers do. So my motivation here is one of clarity and specificity more than one of denial -- but I'd say there are a few beliefs that will not remain after gaining clarity, such as Derrida is a relativist, or Lyotard created a post-modern philosophy. Neither of those two things are true, at least as I understand these words.
What? I mean, that's the one I'm thinking of. And if you've read it then those aren't pre-conceptions. Those are full on thoughts about a book! And that's what is important to me. The text is smarter than us, so it's worthwhile to keep some kind of text on hand or in mind when talking.
But I'd much rather talk about Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition over the vaguely understood "postmodern"
I agree! I think one of the things that drives me bananas is just how Derrida honestly reads like he's not just ethical, but rather it's one of his main impulses in writing -- but he writes about truth and meaning instead. Just reading on the relationship between Derrida and Levinas should convince anyone of that.
Sort of like the Tractatus, actually...
Agreed. Among the goals of deconstruction is the effort the keep "open" the very possibility of any ethics whatsoever, without which no ethics could take place. Derrida everywhere aims to foster ethical openings that would otherwise be shut down or covered over by systems in which the movement of différance is supressed. It takes a particularly poor reader of Derrida to charge him with any kind of reletativism or nihilism to which his project is entirely opposed.
Wtf :lol:
Of course, amongst the important post-moderns are also Nietzsche, Heidegger and Rorty. It's not just the French. :gasp:
Hah! Thank you for asking this. I tracked it down, and found out that I thought this because I mixed him up with Guattari, and Guattari's family life always struck me as sort of the worst ever, enough so that appeals from his character, at least, weren't enough for me to sign on with his philosophy. It had to stand on its own.
EDIT: http://www.critical-theory.com/13-deleuze-guattari-part-ii/ was where the belief came from originally though.
But it's important to note that this is just history of philosophy, I think. Right? So these aren't movements of thought, unless we are Hegelians, they are stories about thinkers which we tell to. . . well, many reasons. :D But they aren't a philosophy, is all I mean. So, in that sense, I'd say that post-modern philosophy couldn't tell us anything about ethics in a specific sense that you seem to want. There is no morality in the history.
So, if postmodernism is to have some kind of "say" on our moral choices, it must be something besides this historical category -- at least if you agree with the above statements.
Mainly because I keep seeing him classified this way (I also see the existentialist reading). But it seems to me that Nietzsche is so important to Rorty and Derrida and is therefore perhaps Proto-p0-m0. :gasp: Pretty sure @joshstags him as such.
Did you ever read Susan Haack's takedown of Rorty? There's the essay Pining Away in the Midst of Plenty. The Irony of Rorty’s Either/Or Philosophy. It's pretty funny.
Do postmodernists care? As long as they have tenure, they don't.
/dissing pomo
Ha! Yes, I think there are a lot of people who hold to this view.
Quoting Moliere
Maybe I need to clarify. When I asked the question about postmodernism and ethics I was asking about the postmodern disposition, not looking for specific answers. How would one go about approaching a particular ethical problem through the various potential lenses of postmodern. And I am pleased to hear of a range of approaches. My understanding is that @Joshs as a postmodern academic (if that's the term) often examines arguments presented on this forum form such a perspective.
Yes, it tends to happen.
I think we often tend to look to philosophers (and politicians, artists, etc.) for truth, for moral guidance, we tend to listen to them with the assumption that they are giving moral instruction or even moral orders (even when they don't specifically use the words "You should do such and such, you shouldn't do such and such").
I think we're often not even aware of this tendency; but it shows that it is there when we feel distinctly let down, confused after interacting with someone and not feeling any wiser afterwards.
My overall impression is that postmodernist philosophers want to shake off that role of teacher that is otherwise so often taken for granted when it comes to philosophers (and people of cultural importance). It seems that they're trying to make philosophy be about thinking, an exercise in thinking, in different modes, as opposed to being yet another form or source of ideology.
They do tend to come across as cold, aloof, uninterested, or at least what they say doesn't seem to have any real-world application. It's why we can readily understand memes like
Of course, the way we see the postmodernists also reveals what we expect(ed) of them. And this is something we can explore further, ask ourselves whether those expectations are justified or not wise or not.
Please explain this further.
How is such explicit awareness of what is already implicitly involved in sense-making an ethical advantage?
How is it an advantage at all??
(Personally, I think being more self-aware makes one a loser, a weakling. Unless, of course, one already has a massive ego.)
Ought we look to others for moral guidance?
This crystallises it - sorry about the formatting.
This is the kind of approach I was imagining - an outline which helps me understand the thinking process by laying it all out. You must find some of this pretty exhilarating, right?
Yay, glad to hear it! And yes I think it's awesome :blush: I will just add that Derrida's approach is Derrida's alone: he does not stand for something called 'postmodernism' in general - his ethics is one among a great many, and if I mentioned it it's only because it was already brought up in conversation.
I look to others to enlarge my ideas and learn from their mistakes. And others may be way smarter/wiser than me, or so different from me that I get lost in their thought.
Can you expand on this?
Isn't part of the calculation our own pessimism or optimism?
The more deathly pessimistic a person is, the more they'll attribute evil to the path that has brought us here, to what's happening now, and what kind of ethics we need, specifically, they'll say we need an ethical outlook that rains hell and brimstone down on everyone and everything just for good measure.
The optimist would obviously see a different picture, but maybe we could just be open to not fully knowing.
But only for as long as we're relatively healthy and wealthy.
What happens if we're not?
I’m aware of Derrida’s quote concerning relativism, but
give me an example of what you see in his work that defies relativism as you understand the term. I think Derrida is right to correct those who accuse him
of an ‘anything goes’ philosophy in which any claim to truth is as valid as any other. But I believe he also makes the following points: what is true is relative to contingent cultural formations, such that moral or empirical
correctness can only be determined within such structures, and such structures change over time in ways that do not form a progress. Derrida was no a realist. He did not assert a real world existing independently of our interaction with it. The absence of a concept of scientific progress in his work, his rejection of correspondence theories of truth and realism , and his placement of truth within local conventions would seem to be consistent with what realism means for many people.
As far as Lyotard is concerned. his philosophy has been treated as postmodern by many writers who embrace postmodern philosophy.
For example, Shaun Gallagher’s Conversations in Postmodern Hermeneutics discusses Lyotard’s work in the context of postmodern ideas:
“One can immediately think of objections to introducing the notion of universality into postmodern contexts. The emphasis in postmodern hermeneutics is on the local, the particular. Postmodernism challenges universality wherever it finds it -- from metanarratives to categorical imperatives, from performativity principles to Enlightenment politics.”
“The conversation of mankind fails as a model of postmodern hermeneutics not only because it is a metadiscourse and worthy of our incredulity, but because it hides exclusionary rules beneath a rhetoric of inclusion. The overarching conversation of mankind aspires to resolve all differends. But by requiring what is genuinely incommensurable (i.e., incommensurable with the conversation itself) to be voiced within the conversation, it denies it expression and helps to constitute it as a differend at the same time that it disguises it as a litigation. The very attempt to include something which cannot be included makes the conversation of mankind a terrorist conversation.
This is one of the issues between Lyotard and Rorty in their own conversation in 1984. For Lyotard, the conversation of mankind forms part of the modern Enlightenment tradition.”
“ The postmodern idea is not that there is one overarching conversation, but that there is a plurality of conversations, some constituting relative differends in relation to others. It is still possible that fusions can happen between conversations, not in the sense of unifying or reducing different conversations, but in the sense of creating new and different conversations by linking one to another; or again, not in the sense of a fusion of horizons, but in the sense of a creation of new horizons.”
Relativism, as I understand the term, is a boogeyman of either a cultural or philosophical variety. Almost anything counts as relativism, broadly construed, because knowledge deals in relations. What people mean by "relativism" isn't very specific -- it's usually coupled with some anxiety with respect to objective truth, or scientific truth, or some such.
Such notions, to my mind, are simply not what Derrida is talking about -- hence why I was trying to draw a distinction of postmodernism as a historical category -- where the topic of interest is in drawing inferences about the structure of various philosophers and trying to categorize them, draw out their similarities, and so forth -- from the cultural category.
So, in terms of history, Derrida is a post-modernist -- but this is not a philosophy, but a category of description of the rough place to put him in relation to other thinkers. He is opposed to certain modes of philospohy, by all means -- but all the baggage that comes along with "postmodernism", I think, just serves to confuse. I'd say he really is his own beast, and that's usually how I prefer to look at any philosopher -- to take them on their own terms, and leave that to be different from the act of historicizing philosophy.
But in terms a philosophy, my assertion is there is no such thing. It's more of a boogeyman, politically, or a philosophical antagonist, philosophically -- but a cultural phenomena, rather than a particular philosophy. So I'd say that one could take any of his works and you wouldn't find the cultural or philosophical antagonist that people seem to have in mind.
Or would you disagree there?
Cool. Now, I think, I'm ready to introduce Benjamin, with the understanding of how broadly we're construing post-modernism... will get to it tonight.
Fear of relativism is connected with anxiety over the lack of firm grounds for truth. As you say, there are many varieties and degrees of relativism. Popper’s falsificationist philosophy of scientific progress and coherence theories of truth offer a sort of moderate relativism, while still maintaining a ground for objectivity.
By contrast , the ‘radical’ relativisms of Derrida, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault , Lyotard and others are read as producing an infinite regress of relations with no ultimate foundation, nothing to justify science as progress or ethics as binding.
Quoting Moliere
I think it depends on which intellectual community you are involved with. In psychology and continental philosophy, the postmodern means something other or more than a mere historical dividing line. There are distinctions made between modernist and postmodernist constructivism, hermeneutics, psychotherapy and cognitive science. The publications in these areas are filled with such references , because the readers of the journals understand what theoretical differences these distinctions are referring to.
Things cannot be reduced to context for Derrida in the sense that context is not a centered structure. It is instead movement and differentiation. ‘There is nothing outside the text’ means that context IS this temporal movement. Skeptical empiricism cannot ‘hold fast to truth’ in that it alienates the formal conditions of possibility of truth from its object. Derrida’s project is not a skepticism because it does not see truth as something to hold fast to’.
"The phrase which for some has become a sort of slogan, in general so badly understood, of deconstruction ('there is nothing outside the text') means nothing else: there is nothing outside context" “…one cannot refer to this 'real' except in an interpretive experience." (Derrida, 1972, p.148).
I agree. In this case, I'd say the community is TPF -- so not specialized, by necessity, but open to those so specialized and -- at least as far as I'm concerned -- even encouraging people to use their specialization to add to the conversation or engage in the works to help us all learn a little more.
So I think there is certainly a chance that we could reach a semblance of an understanding given our little internet community here.
Oh yes! :clap: :smirk:
Not much of a takedown. Haack wants to hold onto the ‘reality’ of the natural , so of course she will be opposed to Rorty’s anti-realism.
Saving for later
Your stance against anti-realism forces you into a choice between two thriving movements within cognitive science. The first is inspired by Peirceian semiotics and Friston’s free energy neurological model. The second is anti-realist and embraces enactivist and autopoietic systems approaches inspired by phenomenology and pragmatists like James and Dewey. Haack is bound to the first group obviously ( I doubt very much she would be a fan of Feyerabend),and Rorty to the second. One of the founders of enactivism and among its most prolific and talented theorists is Shaun Gallagher, who has contributed to important work on autism, schizophrenia , empathy and perceptual body schemas. It is revealing that he has critiqued Rorty for not being relativist enough.
This shows that Haack and Peirce are a fair distance away from what I consider to be the most promising work in psychology today.
So I'm afraid I keep coming back to the question of postmodernism, as I've been doing throughout, and finding myself back where I started. We can pick someone, but then I'd call them by their name -- and there are various parts that I'd highlight if I'd want to include them, and parts I'd highlight if I didn't want to include them (for instance, Benjamin was a Marxist, and that could very easily be interpreted within the Modernist framework, given that Marx is not post-modern, at least as I see him. Too pro-structures to be counted, really)
Which I suppose, for me, is just to say that the question is ill-formed, because philosophers speak for themselves -- its the historians and scholars after the fact that make these generalizations and categories. And while they can be academically interesting -- I definitely have an interest in the history of philosophy! -- I don't think there is a moral to be derived from the category of post-modernists. Each one of them deals with anti-foundationalism in their own way, it seems to me. There are themes and concerns that tie these people together, but that's from the perspective of the reader and interpreter -- as I've been saying.
But for Derrida -- while his concerns are ethical, I don't think his concerns are specific to any individual choice. I don't think he's laying out a theory of goodness that we should conform to. If anything, I'd say he's trying to get people to question their received morality, that it is likely the result of the same patterns of thought that he sees in the history of philosophy -- that it likely sets up a binary so that one is good and the other is evil, (again, insofar as my understanding goes). But that's not what he says, so that's just an inference of sorts, an impression from what he does say -- he's certainly anti-foundationalist, though, so anyone who believes that foundations are necessary for goodness will of course think he's wrong.
In that vein: While I don't think there's a positive ethical theory, in the sense of a utilitarianism or what-have-you, there are reflections on the possibility of ethics, and one primary anxiety that I see in Derrida is totality or totalization -- with fascism, and French colonialism, being real world examples of totalization. Totality is the pattern of thought at least aligned with fascism -- to see and understand and control. But that pattern is buried deep. So deeply, at least as I understand Derrida, that there is this sort of super-transcendental plenum upon which thought rests -- one pointed out by Heidegger (ironic, isn't it?).
To assert some ethic would be totalizing -- it would tell you who is good and who is bad. And that's the exact thing which fascism does. But in the world we live in, there are no such things. There is no total perspective which finally proclaims This is The Good, and Now we may Bow to The State as The State is us and we are The State.
I don't think so. I don't find Feyerabend and Haack significantly incompatible or necessarily inconsistent with either enactivism and autopoiesis (neither of which I find "anti-realist"). Apparently your commitments and assumptions, Joshs, are quite different from – perhaps even incommensurate with – my own (e.g. actualism + irrealism (contra "anti-realism" & "realism")).
From my reading , the following are the core figures in enactivism. Most contribute to the same journals, attend the same conferences, co-author books on enactive cognition and phenomenology, and comprise a tight -knit community of scholars. I believe that I can extract quotes from every one of these writers indicating that they are anti-realists.
I think that Varela speaks for this group when he writes:
“…despite other differences, the varieties of cognitive realism share the conviction that cognition is grounded in the representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven subject.”( The Embodied Mind)
Shaun Gallagher, Jan Slaby, Matthew Ratcliffe , Thomas Fuchs, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Hanne De Jaegher, Kym MacClaren, Michel Bitbol, Rick Furtak, Joel Krueger, John Protevi, Joseph Rouse, Dan Zahavi.
Other contributors to enactivism , like Anthony Chemero, have waffles on the issue:
“ Situated, embodied cognitive science is all the rage these days. Some (including the present author) have argued that situated, embodied cognitive science is incompatible with realism (metaphysical and scientific). In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: there is no reason one cannot be both a proponent of situated, embodied cognitive science and a realist.” (Chemero)
Good observation. Postmodernists' critical theory world view is the extreme form of skepticism of all things humans. I don't subscribe to it. It puts doubt on your own thinking of what's really driving cruelty, suffering, ignorance, absurdity, goodness, benevolence. They complicate issues, leaving you with confused state of mind and existence. It can be a bad prescription for hopelessness.
Sometimes I think of them as securing their lucrative posts in the academia and beyond by publishing books that won't ever give definitive answers to human issues.
Sorry if this sounds like a rant.
Regardless of what we might call these periods later, I'd say that fascism will always leave a significant mark on history. Fascism strikes me as utterly alien -- and yet it was humans who were and are fascists. The very species I belong to has this capacity for fascism, to want to absolve oneself in an ethnic state cleansed of the degenerates through the purity of war.
What brought that about? What does it say about the human species, about myself, if we are capable of fascism? Don't the fascists say they are good?
In a post-fascist world, moral authority simply cannot be trusted.
This is far from a post-fascist world.
Yes, this is what I was hoping would be identified in this discussion.
How do you understand the idea of promising work or value in psychology? How does this operate without traditional foundational justification?
Have you ever tried to be "open to not fully knowing" when you're in a precarious situation with either your health or socioeconomically, or even both at the same time?
"The rich lady can cut in front of me in the waiting line in the grocery store, I must let her do so, because I am inferior, and in this world, might makes right, and there is no point in resisting this system."
Where is the ethical advantage in thinking this way?
I'm afraid @Joshs is ignoring this part of the discussion, though.
Elites tend to be prone to decadence.
Which is one more reason why run of the mill people should not get involved with philosophy.
I'm not sure I understand the nuances of your point about 'thinking this way'. Do you mean being aware of this? And what is the connection to being a weakling?
No one really cuts in front of others in grocery lines here unless they are just rude. Usually this can be settled with some words - social status is almost never an issue here but size might be.
I'm not sure if self-awareness connects to awareness of socially constructed status, unless some holds a specific value system.
But perhaps you also mean that rich people get privileges others don't get. I'm still not sure how this relates to self-awareness being for weaklings. And what exactly a weakling is? Do you mean that only those with no power practice self-refection because they are weak?
So far, the only criticisms I've encountered when it comes to postmodernism is that --they're hard to understand! lol. Then spend more time with it until one understands what the fuck they're talking about.
The nuance of postmodernism, most especially the deconstruction theory, gets lost in the narrative when explained by a professor. Often, it is explained through the lens of humanities, not philosophy, and I don't think the one doing the teaching doesn't know the difference.
When they relegate the questioning of hard-held assumptions by society, they turn to sociology, history, and political science, which is frustrating because the actual harm that results from such haphazard handling of philosophical theories gets lost in the mix.
Just because a postmodern philosopher questioned the status quo, it doesn't mean that philosopher had made his case. The learners just willy-nilly accepted such theory because it is explained as facts, instead of an analysis. For once, let's go against the prominent philosophers and make our case.
'Hard to understand' for some may be a euphemism for 'beyond comprehension'. I suspect that for many people, no amount of time will ever produce meaningful assimilation of the work. In these instances, learning complex philosophy might be like trying to teach card tricks to a dog. And then there's the question who has the time?
Even poverty stricken homeless people philosophise.
Whenever I hear talk of [s]culture[/s] 'organic value systems,' I release the safety catch on my Browning! Just kidding. Be well.
////////////////////
SCHLAGETER: Good old Fritz! (Laughing.) No paradise will entice you out of your barbed wire entanglement!
THIEMANN: That's for damned sure! Barbed wire is barbed wire! I know what I'm up against.... No rose without a thorn!... And the last thing I'll stand for is ideas to get the better of me! I know that rubbish from '18 ..., fraternity, equality, ..., freedom ..., beauty and dignity! You gotta use the right bait to hook 'em. And then, you're right in the middle of a parley and they say: Hands up! You're disarmed..., you republican voting swine!—No, let 'em keep their good distance with their whole ideological kettle of fish ... I shoot with live ammunition! When I hear the word culture ..., I release the safety on my Browning!"
SCHLAGETER: What a thing to say!
THIEMANN: It hits the mark! You can be sure of that.
SCHLAGETER: You've got a hair trigger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst
First of all, contrary to Peterson and other conservatives, CRT, BLM and cancel culture in general is not a postmodern movement. It is a form of moralistic finger-pointing arising of of Marxism and related thought, which postmodern philosophers do not support.
Second, postmodern ideas don’t reject truth, they recognize that truth requires human beings to construct constructs , and those constructs are incomplete and can always be re-construed in better and more humane ways.
I didn't call you a nazi. I do find 'organic values' a bit suspicious, hence the allusion. How exactly shall values be sniffed for their primordially organic legitimacy ? Of all animals on this planet, we seem the most unbound, the most self-creating, with a therefore to-be-determined nature.
Let me point out that you accused me of performing medical experiments on children. I'm not even offended. I'm just asking you to question yourself. If you are so quick to see such evil, you are at risk of justifying evil in your combat with it. While there are a few sadistic fucks out there, most evil is probably done by the self-righteous, who are haunted into becoming the kind of thing they fear...something cruel and unreasonable.
It seems to me that 'postmodern' often functions in political contexts and outside nerdier circles as a synonym for secular or modern. Post-enlightenment humanity has to make its own rules without appeals to its childhood toys. But this isn't easy. Hence Gods and organic values and every kind of substitute for difficult conversations and experimentation.
I don't know if the word is worth cleaning at this point.
Here’s a good argument in favor of making the distinction:
https://youtu.be/cU1LhcEh8Ms
Cool vid.
I guess my concern is that 'postmodernism' has taken on a new meaning in a new context. This meaning is legitimate inasmuch as it is consistent and popular. The cartoon has its own reality now.
Yep.
Quoting Joshs
This is an interesting way of describing it. Cheers. I can see how the complexity of the ideas and the fact that sacred cows are questioned can trigger some people like Peterson - even if he is just ripping off Stephen Hick's ideas in a desultory way.
Quoting igjugarjuk
Yes, it almost doesn't matter any more what the word refers to since it is now often used much like 'communism' was in the 1950's, as a smear and often as part of a thoroughgoing conspiracy theory about values subversion.
But for the purposes of this thread I think @Joshs has pointed the way for further discussions.
You have a right to be offended (there's no law against it, yet (joking)), but feelings alone are not justifications. Surely some are/were offended by interracial marriage, women in the workplace, the legalization of abortion, pornography, prostitution, or drugs. The first person to roll a wheel was probably viewed a threat to the good old days. This is not to say that every proposed innovation is good. It's just a reminder that all kinds of people have felt all kinds of ways about changes in norms. The end of the world has been just around the corner for centuries now.
More specifically, I doubt you can find many people who really no longer make the distinction between biological sex and gender performance. As far as I know, it's primarily a matter of shifting the meanings of pronouns away from what's in your underpants to how one performs one's personality in the public sphere. It's not unreasonable to object to such a shift, but such objections should take a reasonable form. Are the new bathroom arrangements really much of a problem? I'm not saying that all is well, but a case should be made for the alarmist tone. It may turn out to be no big deal.
Quoting karl stone
To me the phrases 'post modernists' and 'neo marxists' indicate something like a conspiracy theory. I don't know if Fucker Carlson is using them yet, but they belong on the shelf with all the other spooks and goblins used to rile up the base. Seems to me that all that's really meant is progressive, but viewed through a dehumanizing lens...the same way that self-righteous doxing and career-destroying progressives view their own enemies (which troubles me more than you'd credit probably, if largely for my own selfish reasons as a cis het contrarian male.) What I deplore is tribal chest-thumping and demonization of the other on either side. Fear is the mindkiller, the death of nuance ...the death of the science and reason you celebrate above.
Exactly.
gender, which determines patterns of behavior. Think about the difference in masculine vs feminine behavior in dogs and cats. This is psychological gender. Many in the lgbtq community argue that psychological gender is inborn , and can differ from one’s biological sex. This inborn gender-related brain wiring would explain extremely feminine acting males and extremely ‘butch’ females.
No, it’s strongly correlated to biology. Whatever biology can do , it will do, meaning that biological mechanisms of inheritance are capable of creating , and so do create, intermediate versions of just about every organismic feature. It creates intermediate versions of psychological gender all the time, which is why there are biological males and females whose parents report them having exhibited strong opposite gender behavior from birth. Your whole life you probably assumed they learned this from watching television or something , but they were born this way , with what I call a pre-wired perceptual-affective style that composes an enormous constellation of perceptual, gestural and vocal features that could not possibly have been simply learned, and of which sexual preference composes only an insignificant element. You may disagree that there are biologically formed intermediate genders, but what if you are wrong? What effect do you think your incomprehension might have on those around you, some of whom you may know?
You must be talking to an imaginary postmodernist behind me. That's the problem, man. It's a one-bit worldview. Only a commie penis-snipping transvestite could question your good common sense. Funny thing is...I keep my mouth shut around my more progressive acquaintances. Because I don't need them to think like me and I don't like to argue with 'religious' people. I guess my own little indulgent polarization of the world, my own self-flattering fairy tale, features irrational tribal types on the one hand and lonely contrarian assholes on the other. But that contrarian asshole is what he is in the name of a universal rationality, and is of course for just that reason the right kind of conformist, just like the rest. Happy ending.
So it's a mental disorder? Would you recommend conversion therapy?
I wasn’t talking about transgender. I was taking about gay men and women. There are many of them. I’m sure you know some. Your whole life you probably assumed they learned this from watching television or something, but many of them were born this way , with what I call a pre-wired perceptual-affective style that composes an enormous constellation of perceptual, gestural and vocal features that could not possibly have been simply learned, and of which sexual preference composes only an insignificant element. You may disagree that there are biologically formed intermediate genders, but what if you are wrong? What effect do you think your incomprehension might have on those around you, some of whom you may know?
I'm leaving your posts here because they've received some good replies, but I'm warning you: they are off-topic, evangelical, and plainly transphobic. Any more of those posts will be deleted, and you might also be banned.
Quoting karl stone
Here’s a reply from one of the right’s favorite punching bags, Derrida, the poster child of postmodern ‘relativism’:
“Of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let i t b e said i n passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preciSion, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.
Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”
Postmodernism isn't a religion you sign up for that specifies 'Thou can't condemn Nazis' or whoever. That's a really perverse way to look at it.
Plus, I don't know anyone that calls themselves a 'Postmodernist' without specifying some kind of field.
And even if there were to be some kind of contradiction between being postmodernist and condemnatory of who or whatever, so much the better. We are large, we contain multitudes.
Anyway, back to the OP please.
Thanks Jamal. I would prefer this thread not to get bogged down in yet another culture war rehash. Some interesting replies, you're right, but I would like to read more about how morality is understood through various post-modern thinkers.
Yes, it's a promising OP. Let's keep it on topic.
I have no issue with this.
This is a key quote, thanks. Is it beyond the scope of this thread to provide a small example of this in action?
...'reniscribe in more powerful, larger more stratified context' potentially could lead to a charge of hijacking meaning or reinterpretation. The idea of 'good faith' and evoking such rules of competence sounds fascinating - any chance of some elucidation?
OK, well, you've made the point and laboured it a bit. If that's it, please leave the less political and more philosophically minded posters here to get on with their discussion.
And what good does it do them?
Probably about as much good as it does everyone else.
:100:
I said earlier: I think being more self-aware makes one a loser, a weakling. Unless, of course, one already has a massive ego.
Do you think a poor, ugly person enjoys being self-aware, benefits from it?
It is precisely in relation to postmodernism that it is evident that higher education should have stayed reserved for those for whom it was originally intended: the elite. The problems some people have with postmodernism are due to their plebeian mentality. When people (of lower or middle class status) pursue higher education with the intention to climb on the socioeconimic ladder, they do not have the cognitive, emotional, and cultural wherewithal needed to understand phenomena like postmodernism (or art, literature, philosophy) in all their width, depth, and flexibility.
Quoting Tom Storm
The elites do. That's why they exist.
The description of those behaviors is culturally specific, though.
Where I live, there are no "butch females" or "tomboys", but there are "girls that lack feminine charms and graces". No boys are "girly", but some are "weak". (Or at least, this is how it used to be when I was growing up. But more recently, many people here uncritically adopt American psychology, as if it would be universal and the only relevant one.)
It doesn't occur to me to describe any woman in terms of "she's behaving like a man", or any man as "he's behaving like a woman". Even if she "manspaces", spits, never wears skirts or makeup; even if he has a petite physique with a high-pitched voice, fine hands with fine fingernails, etc.
The way the "aberrations from the gender norm" are interpreted is not universal, not a given. I think the culture you're describing is interpreting those aberrations in a way that supports its particular ideological agenda (which is hypersexed and politically hypercorrect).
This is one of those things that a postmodernist approach allows one to see.
Quoting Joshs
So others should be considerate, but you shouldn't have to be??
Quoting Joshs
If the postmodern ideas would be restricted to country clubs and other special elite venues, there wouldn't be a problem.
Postmodernism is a kind of luxury that most people cannot afford, and so are bound to deride it.
The poor, ugly person might be perfectly able to acknowledge both of these apparently unfortunate attributes, happily even, if their self-esteem is founded on their kindness or their intellect or their discipline or walk with god or ...
It's even feasible that one who has arduously attained a relatively sage-like equanimity is grateful for these attributes as goads toward the transcendence of the usual obsession with wealth and beauty. Such 'lower' goods could be viewed in retrospect additional obstacles to overcome. It's harder to transcend a world that'll worship your skin or your big tips.
When mocked about his criminal father, a forger, Diogenes answered : why do you think I became a philosopher?
I'm too handsome and rich of course to speak from experience.
More like:
[Philosophy] is a kind of luxury that most people cannot afford...
Hahahaha! I've never laughed harder while on this forum. :lol:
I would say that self awareness has no bearing on appearance or financial resources. You seem to be talking about self-consciousness or self-hatred.
Quoting baker
Depends on what you mean by elites. Those I have met don't read, they prefer gallery openings. And there are people I know who live on unemployment who study Kant... so I would say it's anyone with free time, which may have little to do with 'higher status'.
If you have small children, that's definitely true.
You keep twisting around what I say..
Well if I do it's by accident and/or perhaps that you lack clarity? Maybe we should move on then.
Quoting Joshs
Quoting 180 Proof
Going back to this exchange - I've decided I was wrong at the outset of this thread. Given that this is TPF, I think there's probably enough coherence of belief, here, that one could reasonably begin to speak about post-modern philosophy. My original position was merely instinctive and reactive, but unfair and not really based on considered judgment.
And, even more so -- given that this is where we landed after trying to discuss names -- well, then my proposed solution simply didn't work.
EDIT: Was hoping to be able to say more but -- can't! :D Nothing useful anyways. But it's a pondering silence...
https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/761/1/K_Gemes_Truth.pdf
EDIT: I should be quick to point out that I'm not endorsing the reading of Nietzsche, but using Gemes thoughts to springboard into the OP. Through all this meandering, I am trying to bring it back around
Because I think that the interpretation offered by this paper is basically modernist, in its outlook: Nietzsche as naturalist, which I'm not sure I'd agree with that statement. At the very least it's not apparent that he's a naturalist, and there it seems reasonable to have other readings of Nietzsche -- and it seems this particular interpretation is what the paper I linked is working through and with.
But in the wider sense of postmodern philosophy, we probably wouldn't read him this way. It was just a free and accessible source that could be shared amongst those still interested - something that could be shared other than impressions and opinions.
Yes, many analytic philosophers are doing this reading of Nietzsche as a naturalist. Similar to those doing a non-metaphysical reading of Hegel.
I'm meandering about, but my own madness has an eventual method when I allow me to get there.
Sounds good!
It occurs to me I've never considered N to be anything but a philosophical (though not scientific) naturalist, especially emphasized in his "middle period" from Human, All Too Human to The Gay Science (and also later with On The Genealogy of Morals). IME, N is neither an existentialist nor a (Jamesian) pragmatist nor a p0m0 'cultural relativist' (nor, if it still needs to be said, a proto-fascist).This paper may be helpful in highlighting those aspects of N's philosophy which are predominately naturalistic as well as referrng to other critical commentaries which corroborate this view.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1171285
[quote=TSZ, Zarathustra's Prologue]Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.[/quote]
If by that, you mean he didn't incorporate supernatural causes into his philosophy, yes.
For N, truth is always a metaphor, though, so he certainly wasn't a physicalist. His touchstone was Schopenhauer.
Yes, a touchstone, and also an adversary. Nietzsche’s starting point is in opposition to Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche’s naturalism is not Darwinian. It consists of the tension between affective drives rather than causal
relations among physical objects.
Opposition to Schopenhauer's pessimism, yes.
For Schopenhauer, the only way to keep the will active is by, well, creating drama, problems to be solved, evil to be overcome.
Nietzsche’s point is that what Schopenhauer is calling evil is only evil in a Christian framework (or some other life abdicating ideology).
According to him, our ancestors enjoyed a different set of values which lauded the very things we condemn.
Also opposition to his metaphysics, which Nietzsche thought was too close to Kantian idealism( his notion of will , for instance). Nietzsche considered himself to be making a radical break with metaphysics , and he thought Schopenhauer remained attached to it.
I missed that. Where does he shoot down Kant?
More on that here:
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/nietzsches-engagements-with-kant-and-the-kantian-legacy-volume-i-nietzsche-kant-and-the-problem-of-metaphysics/introduction?from=search
“The later Nietzsche’s uncompromising criticism of Kant places him in clear opposition not only to Schopenhauer, but also to the early ‘back to Kant’ movement.”
You're putting it a little too strongly, in other words.
There are many Nietzsches. That is , there are many interpretive camps when it comes to his work. There are right and left Nietzscheans, realist and postmodern Nietzscheans. The Nietzsche I understand and find still
radical and exciting is a postmodernist. The best interpreters of him I have found are Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Heidegger. Those who think he believes we ‘don’t know the world as it is’ are not postmodernists, they are neo-Kantians. They certainly have a right to their interpretation but I find it utterly conventional, missing everything that I find original in his work.
For the Nietzsche I understand , there is no way the world is in itself apart from our creative interaction with it. The world isn’t an external reality, it is a ceaseless becoming.
“Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –,
… we must make the attempt to hypothetically posit the causality of the will as the only type of causality there is. “Will” can naturally have effects only on “will” – and not on “matter” (not on “nerves” for instance –). Enough: we must venture the hypothesis that everywhere “effects” are recognized, will is effecting will – and that every mechanistic event in which a force is active is really a force and effect of the will.
– Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power. The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its “intelligible character” – would be just this “will to power” and nothing else.”
( BGE)
Most of the quote you posted isn't contra Schopenhauer. I didn't say he was a faithful disciple, but you seemed to be asserting that N turned against S in general. I don't think so.
Plus he had a huge mustache.
Had a headache today so didn't work on the thread, but thought I'd pop in and put out some of my intentions here.
Quoting Tate
At least he didn’t have mutton chops.
I would like to think he would say ‘Finally someone understands me.’( maybe not so much with Derrida)
:up:
Back when I read through him I always thought the naturalism was just a foil of some kind -- ala Kant's ethics, but inverted. Rather than having to believe in immortality, freedom, and God because without such regulative beliefs human beings wouldn't choose to follow the moral law out of respect, Nietzsche seemed to turn this on its head and say -- given the death of God, here is what you must believe about reality in order to save values from annihilation, but he seemed to leave it open to any sort of belief that works to save valuation itself, since that's what he's mostly concerned with.
So I guess I read him -- back in the day, and I'm only sharing to give a perspective -- as mostly anti-realist.
And then, if we are lucky, we might get over to ethics
(a) One can start with reading Freddy's (belated) prefaces to his books where the old philologist makes suggestions for how to read each work.
(b) I also read him in / against the cultural and historical context within which his books were written (rather than when they were actually published).
(c) Lastly, maybe most significantly, I think Freddy's books are more profitably read from the perspective of 'Freddy in dialogue with other thinkers & writers' (i.e. texts interpreted in their original historical-cultural-linguisric contexts).
Freddy's romantic anti-romantic–anti-platonic classicism is the prism through which I've learned to re-read his philosophical writings. So I guess, Moliere, that's a long-winded "Yes" to your question.
https://www.academia.edu/43664144/Heideggers_Nietzsche?source=swp_share
I think I'm good with there being a right reading. And I would certainly defer to your reading as a right reading, given our relative familiarity. Or, at least, I'd allow others to argue over which reading gets to be the right one -- I'd like that we still acknowledge there's a multiplicity of readings -- and if we are pragmatic in our analysis we'd want to understand those multiple readings so that we might use them to whatever ends we might choose.
These sorts of thoughts seem at least consistent with the philosophy of Nietzsche, as I understand it.
Freddy, Freddy, Freddy, like the two of you have a bromance.
You think he'd approve of your intimate advances?
And as for being masters: If that were true, Mr. Proof wouldn't have trouble with people believing things that he thinks are nonsense. Aquila non capit muscas and all that.
But my idea of a master may say -- over-familiarity is a virtue. And where you denounce my over-familiarity, I feel good, because I'm sticking to the code, to the passion that I've chosen to abnegate nihilism.
Nietzsche wouldn't like my attachment to good-feels or stablity or socialism. ;)
I wrote a similar paper, available here in draft form:
https://www.academia.edu/38288335/Heidegger_Will_to_Power_and_Gestell
“If we examine Heidegger's treatment of Nietzsche's Will to Power in 'The Word of Nietzsche:" God Is Dead"' , (located in The Question Concerning Technology), it seems that Heidegger identified Nietzsche's thinking of self-transformation of values-structures as the last stand of metaphysics. Heidegger argues "The will to power is the ground of the necessity of value-positing and of the origin of the possibility of value judgment." "The principle of value-positing" comes out of the ground of Being as Will to Power. According to Heidegger's reading, particular value-structures become stabilized by the Will, and present themselves to the subject. This "constant reserve"(William Lovitt's translation, seemingly closely allied with 'standing reserve') belongs to the sphere from out of which the will to power wills itself.
Moral relativism makes sense to the extent that pleasure (happiness)/pain (sorrow), their antecedent causes differ from people to people, culture to culture, individual to individual and they do; however, the brain's pain-pleasure system is, to some extent, uniform with respect to what induces pain and pleasure.
Some more thoughts for where I'm going with this. I can see Nietzsche in a similar to to how I see Kant -- sitting in a place between he can be read towards both poles -- in this case, between modernism and postmodernism. This is a pretty common feature of philosophers in general, given the propensity for interpretive categories like "the early/late (philosopher's name"
Would anyone add anything else?
Hagglund:
Quoting Streetlight
Why use postmodernism:
Quoting Joshs
Analytic Nietzsche found through Google search engine:
Quoting Moliere
Quoting 180 Proof
Interpretation of Heidegger's Nietzsche paper found through academia.edu's portal:
Quoting Joshs
The brain’s pain/pleasure system is correlated with the success or failure of anticipatory sense making. So the question is, how uniform is sense-making? The answer:
Quoting Agent Smith
The N-word isn't offensive when it's black on black but it is when white on black.
Something occurred to me that perhaps this was a too large conceit for lil' ol' me, given the talent available. But I have been enjoying the work. It's been a minute since I've done anything like this, and I have missed philosophy.
Not true. In my experience, that word is always offensive, regardless of color, except when used among intimates – old / close friends & (birth) family.
Here’s something to add to your reading, Postmodernism
and our understanding of science. It’s a solid summary of one of the best representatives of postmodern philosophy of science, Joseph Rouse.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hennie-Loetter/publication/281652523_Postmodernism_and_our_understanding_of_science/links/55f33b3508ae63926cf23bda/Postmodernism-and-our-understanding-of-science.pdf?origin=publication_detail
:ok:
A bit off topic to the thread, but I immediately went "Exactly!" :D
To all concerned: finite metadiscourses are fine within the highly academic sphere, but then what about dissemination, which requires some level of mass appeal? Is the education system in the US and perhaps elsewhere failing because of this perspective of maximum intellectual relativity? Is enlightenment divided and conquered?
At this stage of the debates on postmodernism, there is
still a lot of controversy about the exact definitions of
modernity and postmodernism. What is clear, however, is
that postmodernism presents us with a wide variety of
ideas that can be used in different combinations to
enlighten aspects of our reality. Thus, different sets of
ideas can be classified as being postmodern, and it is not
at all clear that all these ideas can be helpful in a specific
quest for a better understanding of our world. Sometimes
they are helpful and sometimes not. In typical
postmodern fashion one will have to cut and paste
amongst postmodern ideas; appropriate, transform or
transcend diverse ideas; construct them into a pastiche
and apply it locally to determine its worth.[/quote]
A good frame -- it's the uncertainty of modern/post-modern that leads me to assert things like "there is no post-modern philosophy". However, that doesn't mean we can't apprehend a partial understanding of what this post-modernism is about anyways, in broad strokes -- even if we must make ourselves more explicit, and thereby less universal, down the line.
And what might a purpose be in this understanding? Well, here, we're interested in illuminating ethical implications of post-modernity. And while I started with Derrida I'm switching to Nietzsche because he's just easier to understand :P :D . Furthermore, he's more popular here-abouts. And furthmore, in a way this has been thrust onto us by the would-be culture warriors, as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU1LhcEh8Ms&feature=youtu.be demonstrates -- and, indeed, it's the sort of cultural narrative of post-modernism which also leads me to assert things like "there is no post-modern philosophy" -- because, in the sense that Peterson means the term, there really isn't.
So our social world is such that an understanding of post-modernism would serve us well, even if it's the sort of understanding that isn't something that would be read by academics. In the spirit of a post-modern philosophy, even this understanding is a bricolage thrown together by the vagaries of accessibility on the internet. But hopefully we'll be in a better place than before.
I want to start with a brief quote from Leiter to hedge off any sort of argument on what's true in Nietzsche:
[quote=Nietzsche's Naturalism Reconsidered, top of p11]I do not think there is text in Nietzsche that settles this matter, and so this is more a matter of giving the most philosophically appealing reconstruction of his actual explanatory practice.[/quote]
Given that our purposes are not to give a philosophically appealing reconstruction of Nietzsche's actual explanatory practice, but to use his work as a better place to understand post-modernism than our own little thoughts, we can easily step aside what the real Nietzsche meant, and leave that question to historians of philosophy and scholars.
*******
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/706954
This "using a crowbar" that @igjugarjuk mentioned in the deconstruction thread is a move which Nietzsche uses in his criticism of truth and morality. Leiter points it out well:
[quote=Leiter, p12]the Therapeutic Nietzsche has (as I argued in Leiter [2002: 159, 176]) a variety of other rhetorical devices at his disposal beyond the Humean Nietzsche?s understanding of morality: for example, exploiting the genetic fallacy (leading his readers to think that there is something wrong with their morality because of its unseemly origin) or exploiting their will to truth (by showing that the metaphysics of agency on which their morality depends is false).[/quote]
He aims for common beliefs which people hold, and he attempts to unseat those beliefs with other beliefs which said persons tend to hold -- so he performs a deconstruction of Christianity by exploiting its desire for Truth.
Something I think that is kind of funny with Leiter's reading, especially in relation to post-modernism, is that he employs a binary in order to demonstrate why another reading is wrong. While his reading is interesting to me, the article begins to delve too deeply into opinions of academics to be very interesting for our purposes -- but I think his reading serves as a pole in understanding, with Leiter's Nietzsches' playing the part of the Modernist Nietzsche -- Nietzsche as naturalist.
What makes him a modernist, in this interpretation?
Let's visit Lötter again to take his frame on modernism vs. postermodernism.
[quote=Lötter, p3]
(Moliere: Nancy Murphy's)... view does however demonstrate that no clear and generally accepted demarcation is possible between modern and postmodern thought.
[/quote]
Again emphasizing here that we aren't looking for necessary or sufficient conditions across all possible scenarios, **6but proposing such things in a particular conversation to bring about clarity**6. In that light, here's Murphy's thesis on modernism:
[quote=Lötter, p2]
... three central philosophical theses have dominated modern thought up to the middle of the twentieth century. The first is epistemological foundationalism, which she (Murphy 1990:292) defines as the view that knowledge can only be justified by "reconstructing it upon indubitable 'foundational' beliefs." Another dominating modern philosophical thesis is the representational or referential theory of language. Murphy (1990:292) defines this view as one which says that language gets its primary meaning "by representing the objects or facts to which it refers." The third philosophical thesis of modern thought is individualism (atomism) (Murphy 1990:292), which takes the individual "to be prior to the community."
[/quote]
But given the diversity of post-modern writers and ideas, it's important to emphasize that these theses aren't some sort of programmatic set of theses to refute, ala post-modernism -- merely a conceptual bracket, among brackets that we could possibly use, to begin to elucidate modernism, and hence, post-modernism.
Moving over to Rouse, since he discusses modernism in detail as well:
[quote=Lötter, p 5]Joseph Rouse's discussions of modernity and postmodernism with respect to the philosophy of science revolves around the Lyotardian idea of "global narratives of legitimation" (Rouse 1991b:610). In philosophy of science these metanarratives refer to the importance of the ability to tell a certain kind of story about the history of science which would justify the cultural authority of (natural) science in the Western world (Rouse 1991b:611). Such metanarratives touch on two issues. The one is the crucial role of the story of the spectacular growth of modern science and its wide-ranging influence through its technological applications in the narrative legitimation of modernity, as well as in the counter narratives which subvert the story of modern progress into one of unfolding disaster (Rouse 1991b:611). The other issue touched upon by the metanarratives of modern science is the attempt to justifiably view the history of science in terms of modernist ideas of progress or rational development (Rouse 1991b:611). [/quote]
I think that the function of meta-narratives within the philosophy of science works well for the function of meta-narratives in the philosophy of philosophy as well -- narrative legitimation of modernity, and grounding the history of philosophy(edit:spelling) in modernist ideas such as progress or rational development. "narrative legitimation of modernity" is a bit of a "big picture" idea, but let's take Leiter. He seems adamant to put Nietzsche squarely within the rationalist camp, to the point of inventing two Nietzsche's so that he can put the rationalist attributions in that category, and the irrationalist ones in the other, then justify the use of irrationality on the basis of a rational appraisal of the human soul -- so that Nietzsche isn't irrational, but his targets are.
On the whole that gets along with the theses(SP-correction) on modernity which Nancy Murphy put forward: Foundationalism, Representationalism, and Individualism. The Humean Nietzsche, as Leiter puts it, believes in a human nature which is governed by rules and he is speculating upon the possible rules (representations) which accurately portray the natural human psyche -- located within the body. The sciences serve as foundation within his speculative realism, and I hope no one feels the need to argue the point on Nietzsche and individualism.
I sort of wonder how Leiter's Nietzsche would exactly stack up to Rouse's division, though, since it's not as clear cut. In the modernist reading of Nietzsche, even, it seems difficult to me to parse what is meta-narrative and what isn't -- and actually this way of reading modernity shows how Nietzsche is sort of in this between place, since he frequently criticizes big-story type philosophies, and as I read him at least, the big stories he puts forward are not meant to be taken literally. (though, I take it, the M-Naturalist Nietzscheans disagree)
Still, this is a beginning -- a modernist Nietzsche to compare to our post-modern Nietzsche's, and a definition of modernity that at least cites scholarly work.
****
What about post-modernity in Nietzsche?
I pulled the following from @Joshs reference in his paper linked above:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj92Muu1tf4AhXEmmoFHaBtD_EQFnoECCcQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmonoskop.org%2Fimages%2F4%2F44%2FHeidegger_Martin_The_Question_Concerning_Technology_and_Other_Essays.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0ZeQp-ZJbe8J5UtZGkhvbw
[quote=Heidegger, p99 of pdf linked above]
In a note from the year 1887 Nietzsche poses the question,
"What does nihilism mean?" (Will to Power, Aph. 2). He answers
: "That the highest values are devaluing themselves."
This answer is underlined and is furnished with the explanatory
amplification : "The aim is lacking; 'Why?' finds no answer."
According to this note Nietzsche understands nihilism as an
ongoing historical event. He interprets that event as the devaluing
of the highest values up to now. God, the supra sensory world
as the world that truly is and determines all, ideals and Ideas,
the purposes and grounds that determine and support everything
that is and human life in particular-all this is here represented
as meaning the highest values. In conformity with the opinion
that is even now still current, we understand by this the true,
the good, and the beautiful; the true, i.e., that which really is ;
the good, i.e., that upon which everything everywhere depends ;
the beautiful, i.e., the order and unity of that which is in its
entirety. And yet the highest values are already devaluing themselves
through the emerging of the insight that the ideal world
is not and is never to be realized within the real world. The
obligatory character of the highest values begins to totter. The
question arises : Of what avail are these highest values if they
do not simultaneously render secure the warrant and the ways
and means for a realization of the goals posited in them?
[/quote]
Heidegger says much more, but I think this paragraph is enough for my purposes -- in particular I want to zone in on both nihilism and truth -- and how the first move in the nihilistic pattern, as Heidegger describes Nietzsche, is the devaluation of The Good, The Beautiful, and The True: Plato and Christianity's holy trinity.
It's this movement of Nietzsche's that can easily be seen as post-modern, especially with respect to his treatment of truth. So I'll switch over to Gemes here who treats of Truth in Nietzsche exclusively. I'll caution -- I think Gemes fits in a place perefectly between Heidegger and Leiter: He wants to redeem Nietzsche of his irrationalism, so to speak. But in so doing he is a lot clearer than Heidegger! :D So I begin with the Heidegger quote because I think H's interpretation of N is a good place for understanding post-modernism in general, and here specifically focusing on Hiedegger's focus on Nietzsche's response to nihilism, which gets us to the overturning of Truth. Be that a weak or strong version of overturning seems to me to be a good point of demarcation between modern and post-modern Nietzsche's -- and hence, as I was hoping, gets us to see the beginnings of a framework -- a distinction -- between modernity and post-modernity that we could share.
How one treats truth in Nietzsche -- ironic, but really believing in naturalism, or ironic, and spurring big-picture stories of the world, including naturalism -- is a defining feature between these types of thinkers within the frame of modernism/post-modernism.
Interestingly, Gemes picks up on the same passage of Heidegger -- the madman's story from The Gay Science. Heidegger quoted it in full in his essay, so I'll do so here as well considering these very different thinkers saw inspiration for talking about truth by way of the death of god in Nietzsche:
[quote=Nietzsche, The Gay Science]
The Madman. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern
in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly,
"1 seek God ! I seek God !" As many of those who do
not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked
much laughter. Why, did he get lost? said one. Did he lose his way
like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has
he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his
glances.
"Whither is God" he cried. "1 shall tell you. We have killed him you
and 1. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this?
How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to
wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained
this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we
moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or
down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do
we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?
Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not
lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the
noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell
anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is
dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we,
the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was holiest
and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to
death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? What
water is there for us to clean ourselves ? What festivals of atonement,
what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness
of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become
gods simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater
deed; and whoever will be born after us-for the sake of this deed
he will be part of a higher history than all history hitherto./I
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners ;
and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last
he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out.
"I come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. This
tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering-it has not yet
reached the ears of man. Lightning and thunder require time, the
light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they
are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more
distant from them than the most distant stars-and yet they have
done it themselves."
It has been related further that on that same day the madman
entered divers churches and there sang his requiem aeternam deo.
Led out and called to account, he is s aid to have replied each time,
"What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and
sepulchers of God ?[/quote]
I quote in full because the passage is important to two of our thinkers on Nietzsche, and also to lay out the aphoristic style -- "True", "truth", "good", "beautiful" are not words used, and yet the paragraph is interpreted in that way. I put this here because that style, I think, is also something that is post-modern about Nietzsche. He forces the reader to pick an interpretation, thereby proving his point by way of the interpretive mechanisms one must use to understand the text -- like all great philosophy, he sets traps for his readers to shake up their beliefs. But unlike a lot of philosophers, he never gives an answer. He just hints at an answer, and makes attempts. THE TRUTH is not at stake -- that is dead. But how we live with that is, because here we are.
To use Gemes' description:
Obviously there's more in the Gemes paper -- and Gemes is still concerned to retain Nietzsche's naturalism, but he gives a very clear explication of the nature of truth in Nietzsche, i.e., that it is well conceptualized as a pragmatic theory of truth, or rather, that Truth is abandoned in favor of Will as a value. For Gemes I'm guessing he'd be like myself in endorsing some kind of non-correspondence theory of truth that still seems to work, but I think Heidegger's interpretation -- and Nietzsche's style -- show how we don't need to make this move. And, given our purposes of trying to understanding post-modernism as distinct from modernism through Nietzsche's philosophy, we won't make this move here.
But we can see, from the readings here, coming around to @Joshs conclusion from way long ago that it's Nietzsche's conception of truth that serves as a good focal point for understanding this transition.
Truth itself loses its value as a supreme good in the post-modern concept.
****
So then, if we agree to the above, what to make of a post-modern ethic?
I think a focus on the particular, as well as an understanding of ones own desires, seem to me to be reasonable beginnings. Truth, The Good -- these are things that we like. We have a part in making these values. They don't exist outside of us at all. One frame for talking about these goods is through desire, and it's an easy enough frame too. It just requires us to say things like "I dislike murder" rather than "Murder is bad"
It's not that murder is wrong and therefore I follow the law. Rather, it is I who sees murder as wrong and therefore I enforce the law, or pursue the creation of such a law. I am a participant in the moral order, responsible for its activities even though they are not all exclusively "my" activities.
But this is the fun part, no? I'll leave the above to see if others find it useful in making a distinction between modern/post-modern without relying upon a poster's word for it, at least :).
6**but proposing things in our conversation to bring about clarity**6 -- couldn't figure out the "edit" well enough, but documenting the change. (also moved this down here for clarity, like a proper footnote)
significantly influenced by Plato's 'Early-Middle Dialogues' (e.g. Socrates versus Protagoras / Gorgias / Euthyphro...) Simply put, I read Nietzsche or Peirce or Wittgenstein against the likes of Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida & Rorty whereby the latter, IME, flounder in 'discursive relativisms' (i.e. sophistries) from deliberately mis-reading the various conceptual-pragmatic doubts raised by the former.
I grant you the truth over Nietzsche -- or, at least, I'm not using Nietzsche to understand Nietzsche, the man -- I'm using Nietzsche's writings to build a collective understanding of modern/post-modern.
Here you're proposing using Plato's dialogues to understand modern/post-modern -- would you say Nietzsche is somehow modern in this sense? Seems a bit odd, on its face.
I suppose part of what I'm trying to do in the above, as well, is not rely upon myself. I'm not trying to argue for my distinction, because then what I'd have to say would only be as interesting as me -- which, while I have my moments, I'll have you know I'm an unbelievably boring fuck ;)
And, as I said, I grant you the truth on Nietzsche the man. What Nietzsche meant by isn't quite as important to the thread as what we mean by modern/post-modern, and we can only mean something by those terms if we have some coherence of belief, some textual reference, some kind of background -- well, something besides the little thoughts in my head, at least.
A good scene for reflecting upon truth and Truth -- the kind of Truth Paul seeks in this scene has nothing to do with truth, in the small sense.
An ubermensch, or a slave? Hard to say.
I think Putnam stands as a transitional figure between
the realisms espouses by analytic philosophy up through Davidson and Quine and a full-fledged relativism. He has one foot in the postmodern world but didnt dare cross the threshold. I think Putnam’s conceptual relativism quantifies as a ‘discursive relativism’. He was only a realist when it came to empiricism and valuative criteria of rightness. I’m curious as to whether you, like Banno, side with Davidson against Putnam.
[quote=Ecce Homo, Preface][i]Now I go alone, my disciples. You, too, go now, alone.
Thus I want it.
Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.
The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.[/i][/quote]
:fire:
We are all students, but of no one in particular.
And as the anarchist in my would say: no gods, no masters -- including me.
IIRC, I favor Putnam over Davidson. (I'm not as conversant in either of their works as I once was in 1990s, so don't ask why.)
Ethics, at its core, is how we interact with others.
There we are in agreement. And I may be tripping over words here so excuse me if that's the case: I feel that post-modernism has no normative ethic. And I think that's a *feature*, rather than a bug.
Post-modern philosophy questions truth, in my analysis -- so I think we agree there.
And I think I agree that truth is important for the left. Especially now -- truth, coherence, communication... these things are becoming more than threats. I often find myself feeling alienated, even in day to day life.
I suppose, given all that, I wonder -- what's the use of moral realism? I am uncertain that a statement of my convictions is really any different from a statement of fact... but only because both are words spoken to some end.
"Moral realism" is another philosopher's dream. A dream people who are not philosophers use to feel good about living in bad situations.
So, to bring it back to post-modern ethics (at least as I have outlined it thus far) -- whilst we lose truth, we gain responsibility. We are the ones who are responsible for the world we live in, fascism and all.
What post-modern philosophy does is refuse its readers the excuses we come across, in bad faith. It demands the reader accept their role.
Consider this variation on "moral realism" expressed in an old post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/679623
Explain how the following is not an instance of moral realism (i.e. ethical naturalism) ...
[quote=Hillel the Elder]What you find [harmful], do not do to anyone.[/quote]
:chin:
Casebeer is the person I sort of use as the best modern representative of ethical naturalism, but I'll admit that's probably outdated at this point. He had a real sense for what mattered though -- he used Quine's attack on synthetic/analytic as a means for undermining Moore's naturalistic fallacy/open-question argument and establishing that factual matters... well, matter.
With the Hillel quote, it's a boring explanation -- since the quote is in the form of a demand, it does not fit the criteria for a fact. But you could reformulate the sentence to say something like:
"What any person finds harmful, if that person does the harmful thing, then they are bad" or something like that.
It relativizes morality to the individual, but it's at least in the form of a fact.
But that relativity... well... for many it doesn't matter: for us, for example, I think we're mostly interested in this stuff because we'd like to be happy, and happy with others too.
That relativity is seen as a threat is worth mentioning.
********
More in the spirit of what I wrote on modern/post-modern, the natural facts about our desires aren't really bad things. After all, I immediately went to desire as a frame for talking with one another. I am pretty close to epicurus in my way of looking at the world, in terms of ethics. However, post-modern ethics only ask you realize that your desire is yours -- there is no good, even of a natural kind, there is simply you and me and everyone who has these feelings to navigate. And, on top of that, there is no me per se -- there is, but I'm connected to others. So the others I'm connected to matter, in spite of our phenomenal disconnection.
I like Woody Allen’s take on reality:
“Can we actually 'know' the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown. The point, however, is: Is there anything out there? And why? And must they be so noisy? Finally, there can be no doubt that the one characteristic of 'reality' is that it lacks essence. That is not to say it has no essence, but merely lacks it. (The reality I speak of here is the same one Hobbes described, but a little smaller.)”
I don't know what you mean. What "fact/value distinction"? There aren't any value-free facts for a naturalist (of my persuasion). For instance, suffering (e.g. harm, deprivation, bereavement, etc) is a functionally disvalued fact, no?
As for Hillel's maxim: "what you find hateful" – whatever is harmful to your kind – "do not do to anyone" of your kind. It's not a "command", it's a normative observation.
This is what I mean -- dithering the distinction between fact and value means there aren't value-free facts. Where Hume states the logic between the copula and "ought" creates a non sequiter, the ethical naturalist will say it creates a condition of satisfaction, or something like that -- a natural, ethical fact.
Yes, I agree.
Quoting 180 Proof
I just mean the form of the sentence -- it's in the form of an imperative, rather than in the form of a statement.
"If you and yours functionally avoid harm, then you ought to avoid harm"
So the first part of this conditional is a statement, and the second part is also a statement that switches out "is" for "ought" - what Hume calls into question. One response to Hume is to point out that this is exactly how one would "derive" an ought from an is within our logic, and point out that a conditional is in the form of a statement -- that is, it's functionally truth-apt, regardless of how we might feel about "ought" being spooky.
And, as you note, there is certainly regularity in nature -- a regularity that, as long as we're not obsessed with universality, is still pretty dang regular: human beings, on the whole, seem to want remarkably similar things when we consider the formal possibility within existential ethics, whereby master can smash the old table of values and posit new ones in their place.
***
It sounds funny to our ears which have been trained on Christian ethics, but I'd say one thing in favor of Epicurus' ethics is that it's actually hard to be happy. It takes effort. We have an irrational aspect to ourselves which allows us to attack our natural desires, or create desires which run away with themselves.
As scientists these divergences are as important as the convergences: there's nothing ethical or good about any one path except insofar that a path helps that person become happier.
But if that's the case, then we're back at the problem Hume pointed out: just because there are many humans who are happy by being married, with children -- not all humans want to be married, with children. It may be the case that Man, as posited by modernity, is the master of his destiny, but should he be?
Basically Moore's open question argument still punches, for me, in spite of all the attempts at making a natural ethics.
What is this from? I want to know more! :D
It wouldn't be the first time on this forum, or for myself. :)
I'll give a direct response instead.
Quoting 180 Proof
It is.
I think it shows itself to be relevant, but I'm fine with dropping it for now.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm fine with this counting as moral realism and ethical naturalism. My charge is that moral realism nor ethical naturalism are ultimately helpful in making decisions -- Moore's open question argument still works, even dropping fact/value.
After agreeing with my – conceding my point about – ethical naturalism, why do you still think so?
Let's take the tetrapharmakos:
The Gods do not care about your life (so do not try and appease them with your actions)
There is no afterlife (so live the life you have, and not for a life hereafter)
What is good is easy to get (all you need are the basics to be happy)
What is painful is easy to endure (so you need not worry about the diseases you might experience later)
A simple enough set of beliefs meant to target what Epicurus saw as sources of anxiety in people's lives.
But one that only makes sense if you want to be happy, first and foremost. You have to care about living a tranquil and happy life in order for it to matter at all.
And it may sound strange, but not everyone seems to care about that. The choice remains, and people frequently choose unhappiness over happiness. I think Epicurus points out some of the ways in which we can hedge that choice off -- and, if we're dedicated Epicureans, the cure is more important than what some other person wants or wills.
But surely you see how people make choices other than an Epicurean life. Seems to me the diversity of choices, of ethics, makes the question make sense: you can say this will bring you happiness, but is that happiness good?
Sometimes, yes. Actually, almost always yes, given my perspective.
But one can be lulled by sweets and feel good while living badly, I think. What else to make of a person who owns people and lives blissfully, for instance?
Referring to Schelling, "On his account, we have to think of reality as an original unity (ursprüngliche Einheit) or a primordial totality (uranfängliche Ganzheit) of opposites that is internally differentiated in such a way that every particular item within reality can be seen as a partial, incomplete, or one-sided expression, manifestation, or interpretation of the most basic dynamic opposition characteristic of the whole of reality."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/#GermIdea
This sounds like post modernism except that there is a center of comprehension to the system. The world is so relative that it comes around full circle and is absolute. This is how it must be. As Aristotle and Aquinas said, an infinity must have a ground. They may have been wrong about a physical infinity, but in terms of knowledge and systems they are correct. Contingent facts alone will always be solely a relative interrelation of instability, just like the ouroboros, unless there is truth as the anchor
Oh, that's not your fault. I have more than a few threads I'm thinking through :D
Let's take Jeff Bezos. The man seems to be doing well for himself. I doubt he feels anxiety. He very likely has more good days than bad. While he doesn't follow the model of Epicurean bliss, I doubt that he needs to. He's probably feeling quite dandy.
But his life requires others to suffer, at least in our way of looking at the world: there's no free lunch, and the rich get rich on the backs of the poor.
So he's an example of a man living in equanimity, who doesn't worry -- but because the social system is set up in a way where others must labor for him.
That's hardly fair.
But by a bio-ethics, Bezos is basically a good person. Specifically, Aristotle's bio-ethics would say he's not just a good person, but the pinnacle of ethics -- and that being good is reserved to those like Bezos who are among the elite. (or, at least, he serves as an example -- due to the nature of ethics, of course we could posit someone else or interpret Aristotle differently, but I'm trying to use a real person due to the concern you brought up about philosopher inventions)
Moore's open question argument still punches because I can ask -- while Jeff Bezos is living a good life, is he good?
Just that the question works is all that matters, from the meta-ethical point. But I can understand that such things are rarified in relation to how one lives their life.
So, from my perspective -- and not because it is true -- I say Jeff Bezos shouldn't be allowed to exist in the first place, that his life is a bad life because it's not fair, even though he's living a naturally happy life (I doubt tranquility is his M.O., which is where the Epicurean would criticize him -- but the Peripatetic could very well say, yes, Bezos is the pinnacle of human goodness, and we are justified in so saying due to our biological nature)
I agree with that. As far as we know, Bezos could be as much of a psychological mess as Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. It may come with the territory.
Maybe as a class but not, by definition, as individual members of the elite. Bezos et al are "business elites" with corrupting influences on matters of state and not engaged in daily statecraft for the good of the polity – they are not 'virtuous persons' striving for eudaimonia. Doing well =/= doing good (pace A. Smith).
So, who counts?
Aristotle and Alexander the Great?
Anyone alive today?
Eureka! Post-Modernism revealing itself as a philosophical Stream of Consciousness. There is no refuting this kind of writing - it is sublime and invalid at the same time. The tone is something confessional, psycho/religious
This is a quote from Martin Hagglund, attempting to interpret Derrida. Hagglund is more of a Marxist than a postmodernist.
More generally, the postmodernist view on morality (the version I would defend) in fact transcends the binary good and evil, quite simply by observing the historical development, and therefore the severe imperfections of moral systems. There is no such thing as morality, instead there are moralities, and it is ultimately up to each individual person to make personal judgments as to which moral systems they should subscribe to, if any.
A clear illustration of this, is that growing up, I was raised in a Catholic household and I played Ice Hockey, before I would go to a game, my mother would tell me that I shouldn't hurt anyone on the ice, by being too rough and playing physically. At the rink, my coach would tell me that I shouldn't let the team down by being too soft and not playing physically. Both of these "shouldn't"s were in the moral sense, and the conflicting sentiments at play can pretty clearly be traced historically to what Nietzsche calls Christian, altruistic, slave morality, and Pagan, assertive/ ability based, master morality.
Which moral system should I follow? Ultimately I had to make my own judgment, because any appeal to morality would be entirely contingent on which moral system I independently decided I preferred. To oversimplify, this is where power dynamics become incredibly important because since there is no perfect universality for any one moral system, the moral system which has the most sway is decided by its cultural prevalence. This is (partly) why holy wars, inquisitions, educational projects, laws, prisons, social stigmas, and other means of propagating and enforcing moral standards are typically used, rather than some objective appeal to the "logical merit" or what have you of moral systems, at least as it applies to humanity's practical, day to day use of moral behavior.
Another thing Nietzsche would have pointed out is the inherit danger of morality. When (and usually only when) you understand another person to be evil, it becomes okay to hurt them. Ideally, evil people "deserve" to be hurt, but in practice, all you need is some really good rhetoric or some blatant lies to turn people against each other, with the powerful (and very dangerous) emotional vindictiveness that comes using with moral language. In the 201st aphorism of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche says:
"Is it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why should we still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!"--with these questions gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear, one would have done away with this morality at the same time."
Sounds anarchistic.
Keep in mind that poststructuralists like Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida situated their approaches in direct opposition to Sartre’s existentialist notion of subjectivity and freedom.
The most significant force of postmodernism is actually in NA conservative politics. There is a puzzle I set my mind to sometimes regarding the schizophrenia of capitalism manifesting a profascist pomo doppleganger that lacks rationality, objectivity or truth. The puzzle is if the form of french intellectualism is individualistic like conservatism but the content has an inaccessible complexity in contrast to low brow conspiracies, how the leftist schizophrenia will do anything more than influence art and academia.
Whether marxist or postmodernist they are pseudo-religious ideologies. Both have something valid to offer as critiques but neither offers anything practical. They aren't even preventative but act merely as a kind of cultural post traumatic therapy. Well done to Martin for making it so clear.
Postmodernism is a big category, as is marxism. For instance, there is cultural postmodernism, which focuses on economic, political and social dynamics affecting large numbers of peoples. A TV show can be postmodern in this sense. Then there is philosophical postmodernism, also a very broad category, which is my interest. Summarized very generally , it includes much more than critique. As far as its practical applications , there an emerging movement of scientific thinking that applies postmodern ideas to the understanding of the nature of scientific practices , as well as to specific theoretical approaches within psychology( perception, neuroscience, schizophrenia ,mood disorders, autism), biology and even physics. This is anything but ‘pseudo-religious’. On the contrary, it reveals the remnants of religious thinking still influencing modernist forms of science.
Doesn't Nietzsche says something like, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar”? To what extent (if any) do you think modernism influences post-modernism?
I have been wondering whether Euripides Play - MEDEA - written circa 500 BC - isn't essentially post-modern? We see Medea directly attack Greek assumptions concerning Patriarchy, Heroism, Hierarchy, Gender, Status... The poor woman, in her personal despair, fights singlehandedly against the entire classical greek narrative. A narrative that was not very different from our own until very recently.
Medea continues to be a difficult play to read even to our modern sensibilities. For what it is worth, Euripides was not as well admired by his contemporaries as Sophocles and Aeschylus. The later two tended to reinforce and glorify the prevailing myths, gods and heroes. Whereas, Euripides liked to reveal the shadow side of things the culture did not readily perceive of itself.
Postmodernism during the 20th and 21st Century has confronted many of the same themes as those dramatised by Euripides, so long ago. But this later version of Postmodernism has come to eschew the clarity of language that Euripides used so powerfully in favour of obscurity, where only those initiated into something like the Delphic Mysteries can hope to decipher its meaning and profundity.
If Medea is not a timeless exemplar of the essence of the postmodern project, then what is it? And if Medea does indeed contain the essence of PoMO, then, postmodernism is not something new but something with an ancient history.
Consider how Early-Christianity, challenged Roman Imperial sacred cows over 2 centuries before its ascension to the state religion.. That was some clash: Roman aristocratic honour against Christian forgiveness. This is not completely dissimilar to the project that postmodernism undertook to challenge Anglo-European Cultural assumptions during the 20th and 21st Century.
You're happy with the current distribution of power?
Generally straight, and white, and male.
That’s not an assimilation of postmodernism ( or at least philosophical, as opposed to cultural or political postmodernism). Understanding Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida ‘objectively’ and ‘rationally’ is failing to move beyond a modernist understanding.
Yes, in education and other disciplines where the postmodern refers to widely shared practices that are not necessarily correlated with the any particular metaphysical framework. But postmodern philosophical ideas can’t be assimilated into modernism since within philosophy these refer to incompatible metaphysical
positions.