I think we can all agree that there has been going on for a long time now a
broad and sustained campaign directed against postmodernism. It has been
going on for so long and the individuals who engage in it are so insular,
that they long ago stopped trying to make arguments about anything and
satisfy themselves instead with what passes for polemic and ridicule these
days. They're not very good at it, but they really seem to enjoy it. The
image I have sometimes is of groups of sniggering publicists and low-level
intellectuals constantly checking publishers' new books offerings for
anything that looks like it might be another example of silly postmodernism,
so they can dash off the nastiest review they can manage. Writing pieces
like this has now officially become a fad. There's a web site called
'Humanities Daily' that gets articles everyday from a wide variety of
publications. The most recent selected articles are at the top of the page;
older selections are pushed down the page for a week or so until they
disappear. Due to the format, the site is like a waterfall of bitter
antipostmodernism as one essayist after the other takes up the cry. The most
recent one like this is at http://cybereditions.com/aldaily/. Go there and
click on the article about Lakatos. Here's an excerpt from the author, James
Franklin:
Not quite all of science escaped the spirit of the age [in the 20th
century], unfortunately, and a few of the parts most visible from outside
the scientific world caught some unpleasant philosophical diseases. High
theory in physics was good science, but in its journey to popularization it
acquired some German idealism that left it coated in prose about reality
being ?dependent on the observer.? [end Franklin excerpt]
Such comments miss their mark by so laughably wide a mark that it makes one
wonder what is going on. Because notice: it's not the case that Franklin
takes a swipe at 'postmodernism' above. This is signalled by the mention
made of German idealism. In fact, it is virtually *all* of modern academic
philosophy that the author takes issue with. We can assume, I imagine, that
by 'German idealism' Franklin means who? Hegel? But in so many ways that's
the least best fit. A much better one is -- Kant! Another good one would be
-- Hume! Except that Hume isn't German. What's going on, I speculate, is
that under the cover of an attack on allegedly silly postmodernism, such
authors are ignorantly and perhaps unselfconsciously attacking the *whole
corpus* of modern philosophic knowledge. That is, they want to *make fun* of
Derrida and Lyotard and Foucault and other people with sissy-sounding names,
and accuse them of suffering from 'unpleasant diseases' -- but this making
fun is just a cover for a more radical goal and battlecry, which isn't "Back
to the phenomena!" or "Back to Kant!" but rather "Back to precritical
dogmatic slumber!" And it's a lot easier to carry on that battle against the
symbols 'Lyotard' or 'Batailles' than against the rather more established
'Kant' or 'Hume' or Hegel or Fichte or Schelling or Husserl.
Then the question is: *why* do these thinkers want to negate not just 'the
60s' but also the whole of modern philosophy? And not only that, but lots of
ancient and even Enlightenment thought as well?
-- John
_______________________________________________________
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broad and sustained campaign directed against postmodernism. It has been
going on for so long and the individuals who engage in it are so insular,
that they long ago stopped trying to make arguments about anything and
satisfy themselves instead with what passes for polemic and ridicule these
days. They're not very good at it, but they really seem to enjoy it. The
image I have sometimes is of groups of sniggering publicists and low-level
intellectuals constantly checking publishers' new books offerings for
anything that looks like it might be another example of silly postmodernism,
so they can dash off the nastiest review they can manage. Writing pieces
like this has now officially become a fad. There's a web site called
'Humanities Daily' that gets articles everyday from a wide variety of
publications. The most recent selected articles are at the top of the page;
older selections are pushed down the page for a week or so until they
disappear. Due to the format, the site is like a waterfall of bitter
antipostmodernism as one essayist after the other takes up the cry. The most
recent one like this is at http://cybereditions.com/aldaily/. Go there and
click on the article about Lakatos. Here's an excerpt from the author, James
Franklin:
Not quite all of science escaped the spirit of the age [in the 20th
century], unfortunately, and a few of the parts most visible from outside
the scientific world caught some unpleasant philosophical diseases. High
theory in physics was good science, but in its journey to popularization it
acquired some German idealism that left it coated in prose about reality
being ?dependent on the observer.? [end Franklin excerpt]
Such comments miss their mark by so laughably wide a mark that it makes one
wonder what is going on. Because notice: it's not the case that Franklin
takes a swipe at 'postmodernism' above. This is signalled by the mention
made of German idealism. In fact, it is virtually *all* of modern academic
philosophy that the author takes issue with. We can assume, I imagine, that
by 'German idealism' Franklin means who? Hegel? But in so many ways that's
the least best fit. A much better one is -- Kant! Another good one would be
-- Hume! Except that Hume isn't German. What's going on, I speculate, is
that under the cover of an attack on allegedly silly postmodernism, such
authors are ignorantly and perhaps unselfconsciously attacking the *whole
corpus* of modern philosophic knowledge. That is, they want to *make fun* of
Derrida and Lyotard and Foucault and other people with sissy-sounding names,
and accuse them of suffering from 'unpleasant diseases' -- but this making
fun is just a cover for a more radical goal and battlecry, which isn't "Back
to the phenomena!" or "Back to Kant!" but rather "Back to precritical
dogmatic slumber!" And it's a lot easier to carry on that battle against the
symbols 'Lyotard' or 'Batailles' than against the rather more established
'Kant' or 'Hume' or Hegel or Fichte or Schelling or Husserl.
Then the question is: *why* do these thinkers want to negate not just 'the
60s' but also the whole of modern philosophy? And not only that, but lots of
ancient and even Enlightenment thought as well?
-- John
_______________________________________________________
Get 100% FREE Internet Access powered by Excite
Visit http://freelane.excite.com/freeisp