My guess is as good as anybody's, but I recall that Charles Taylor made his contribution
some time ago, with his radio talks and booklet. He called Foucault some kind of a devil
(proving he didn't know where he was talking about) and his motives were clearly to make
the pope more popular.
As Rorty makes clear: PM combines tolerance with criticism. It's not monotheistic,
monological or monothetical. Maybe this doesn't go along with the monopolistic structure
of the neoliberal mind, maybe it's threatening for the lonely mass of workers which
console themselves with the flowers which blossom on the grave of God. Of course those
critics don't read Foucaul or Ecco, they cannot imagine that philosophy is the refined art
of discussion and not the preaching a gospel.
BTW they're more postmodern then they think, because they try to convince not by
discussion or research, but by blunt primitive retorics. They think they're right only
because they're howling with the many wolves in the forest, as if truth is decided upon by
majority of votes.
Maybe we should read more Nietzsche.
erik
John Ransom wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________________
> Get 100% FREE Internet Access powered by Excite
> Visit http://freelane.excite.com/freeisp
some time ago, with his radio talks and booklet. He called Foucault some kind of a devil
(proving he didn't know where he was talking about) and his motives were clearly to make
the pope more popular.
As Rorty makes clear: PM combines tolerance with criticism. It's not monotheistic,
monological or monothetical. Maybe this doesn't go along with the monopolistic structure
of the neoliberal mind, maybe it's threatening for the lonely mass of workers which
console themselves with the flowers which blossom on the grave of God. Of course those
critics don't read Foucaul or Ecco, they cannot imagine that philosophy is the refined art
of discussion and not the preaching a gospel.
BTW they're more postmodern then they think, because they try to convince not by
discussion or research, but by blunt primitive retorics. They think they're right only
because they're howling with the many wolves in the forest, as if truth is decided upon by
majority of votes.
Maybe we should read more Nietzsche.
erik
John Ransom wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________________
> Get 100% FREE Internet Access powered by Excite
> Visit http://freelane.excite.com/freeisp