common criticisms

Critics of PM never tire of writing paragraphs like these:

"The worst of it is that this deficiency is not a matter of institutional structure, nor of misplaced priorities, nor of temporary inattention. It arises from the hollowing out of Western culture as a whole. This a sententious, even grandiose, way of putting it, perhaps, but if we avoid thinking about the malaise of our larger society, across decades rather than years, I doubt we'll be able to plumb the morass into which American higher education - and, probably, the community of scholars throughout the world - has fallen.

"We not only lack guidelines and precepts to conduct us through the life of the mind, we lack the sense that such principles are even possible. The needed vocabulary hasn't vanished from our language, but it is sodden with irony, rotten from years of coarse abuse. Consider words like 'justice', 'objectivity', 'beauty', 'integrity', 'nobility', 'progress', 'honour', 'virtue', 'fairness' and 'righteousness': it's not only the postmodernists among us who reflexively snicker at these terms; all of us do so, automatically."
see: http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CADAC.htm

The above does represent a bit of an advance over the usual: at least the author does not exclusively blame postmodernists. But I certainly want to deny that all these terms are just meaningless. In fact, I would bet that postmodern types use words like 'justice' and 'fairness' all the time. Some of the other values mentioned seem like hangovers from the pre-modern period: nobility, honour, and virtue do sound strange in the mouth, and seem vague in the head. Maybe today we use other words for some version of the same thing. If someone comes to a meeting of, let's say, a department on a campus, and right after the meeting goes running to the dean to rat out someone who criticized the dean, we might not go up and accuse that colleague of 'lacking honour.' Instead we would say, "Hey rat -- I hear you went scurrying over to the dean's office to report on confidential conversations. Did you get an extra portion of rat food in exchange?" But in both cases an ethical judgment is being made.

Denying that terms like 'justice' have universal meaning is not the same as claiming that the word 'justice' has no meaning. One almost feels like saying 'duh' here, but I swear to God that's the way anti-postmodernists (APMs) think (namely, that to deny that justice has universal features is the same as to deny that the term 'justice' has any meaning at all). And pointing to the limited and even exclusionary features of a dominant notion of justice is not the same as saying "forget justice."

But also: the APMs display their ignorance of the philosophic tradition when they claim or imply that the challenge to justice is of such recent vintage. What does Hume say, for instance -- someone who I bet the APMs don't have the courage, much less the theoretical chops, to confront. All we need to do is look at the heading from _Treatise_, Book III, Section I.

Book III, Part I, 'Of virtue and vice in general'

Section I: 'Moral distinctions not deriv'd from reason'

I want the APMs to attack Hume! Hume doesn't just say that reason has nothing to do with morality. He's *dismissive* of the idea. Contemptuous. He says:

"Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, 'tis said, is oblig'd to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose it, 'till it be entirely subdu'd, or at least brought to a conformity with that superior principle."
(_Treatise_, Book II 'of the passions,' in section III, itself titled 'of the influencing motives of the will')

And here comes his contempt:

"On this method of thinking," Hume continues, "the greatest part of moral philosophy, antient and modern, seems to be founded . . . "

Let me interrupt Hume to note that he is opposing not just Platonic moral theory but also 'modern' moral philosophy; that is, the kind associated with the Enlightenment. To continue:

" . . . nor is there an ampler field, as well for metaphysical arguments, as popular declamations, than this suppos'd pre-eminence of reason above passion. The eternity, invariableness, and divine origin of the former have been display'd to the best advantage: The blindness, unconstancy, and deceitfulness of the latter have been as strongly insisted on. In order to show the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove *first*, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and *secondly*, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will." (From Book II, Sect. III, 'Of the influencing motives of the will')

The phrase above that quickens my perhaps-too-easily-quickened heart is this: "In order to shew the fallacy of all this philosophy . . . " Hey Hume, don't hold back. Don't be so cautious. Go on ahead and really tell us what you think.

It is, then, a long established claim in the Western tradition that morality is a purely subjective phenomenon -- which doesn't mean it can't be disputed. But the APMs project this onto a much more recent philosophic turn, and confuse their readers by saying or implying that no one in their right mind has ever thought along such lines before.

Comments

[John S. Ransom]

I want to respond more seriously but may I say one thing in a 'late at night' mode? Just one thing: it's not true that a majority of Germans supported Hitler. I am not trying to be some German apologist. But Hitler came to power without a majority vote. There was never a majority vote in favor of Hitler. An awfully big minority vote -- no argument there! And if I'm wrong about this, I'll be more than happy to grant it. But my understanding of the actual voting that brought Hitler to power is that the Nazis never received a majority vote in their favor. -- John

[ricia]

I'm gonna take a leap right out of this debate altogether, but state: You know what really hasn't changed even a wee bit over the whole course of written history?

Relentless and irrelevant debate over what to call / classify / catergorize / name / identify an author or authored work 'as'.

I find that more time is spent with these objectives, than there is spent upon progressing the dialogue about that which has been written. Logic would dictate that evidences of an author belonging to this or that camp can be found in any theoretic writings... Catergorizaion is only valuable in the need for briefity in making reference, and is otherwise a distraction from the intellectual pursuit that is being presented by author(s).

There is a PoMo response from a PoMo observer of (much of) this debate. Although because of it, I must admit, I skipped reading the final comments - and am certain that the discourse did most certainly progress therein. I'll come back and try reading it again, and start somewhere near the bottom of the comments list.

Sorry - as one that is too frequently immersed in conversations of this nature and who doesn't have the energetic tools to contend with it - I simply had to say it.

[bob slocum]

What threatens the analytic philosophers who deride "postmodernism" is not so much its relativism, but its willingness to make and object of philosophical (or scientific or literary or literary-critical) discourse and question it or problematize it. I've encountered so many times Oxford-trained philosophers (say in the 50s to the 70s) who would point, when questioned about the nature and purpose of analytic philosophy to the excesses of the British Hegelians. This lack of an ability to account for what they are doing is what makes wankers like Simon Blackburn so cranky, in my experience.

[Matt]

Of course there is also the uniquely Puritan and brutal "all-American" sentimentalism...that um, strange hybrid of hard-nosed, Anglo resistance to complexity/urge to purify, and dogmatic knee-jerk simplicity or Dear Abbey "faith" in emotional (dare we say cheaply psychoanalytic) soundbites or truth "from the gut", to wit:

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/001000.html

(The comments there are especially revealing of these general tensions. A thread from two years ago, granted, but the discussion remains as important as ever; as Michael Bérubé also seems to think: the time is beyond ripe to get a more substantial grip on this 'postmodernism' monster, etc.)

[Jason]

Of course there is also the uniquely Puritan and brutal "all-American" sentimentalism...that um, strange hybrid of hard-nosed, Anglo resistance to complexity/urge to purify....

Yeah that really describes Quine or Kripke or Rawls, man. Quine a Puritan. Uh huh.

Analytical philosophy and logic are all about Complexity--real, mathematical complexity ; it's the theological and metaphysical muck of continentalism that is tradition-bound and simplistic

[Matt]

Behind the "beyond ripe," I should perhaps have made explicit, one can only hope would be heard a rather tired annoyance with any lingering tolerance for the institution of clichéd, lazy and habitual know-nothing dismissals, cf. here:

http://charlotte-street.blogspot.com/2004/10/insulting-dead.html

Of course logic and math are complex. Unfortunately so is the metaphysical stain.

[Pete]

Let's see one valid postmodernist thought or idea or argument. One. Not Marx, or Kant: Postmodernist. In terms of ethics, politics or psychology.

And I have yet to read anyone indicate whether pomo denies the analytic/synthetic divide, or instead is situated on it.

If you want to compare our notes on Kant lets have at it. PoMo is not in the tradition of Kant--someone like Carnap is; I suspect Hegel--quite a conservative and also a theist of some type--would not have supported it at all.

[Pete]

Really tho it is PoMo relativism and obscurantism which is conservative as various marxist types have admitted (tho not giving credence to marxist views).

Someone like Russell did far more in terms of pointing out the absurdities of Catholicism and religion as a whole than PoMo ever did--in fact it is now the Xtians and catholics upholdong PoMO. Russell also discussed "Power" and the pathopsychology of fascism, and was willing to expose the brutalities of the Bolsheviks (he visited Russia in the 20s). Russell may not be very hip to current belle-lettrists, and he was a bit of a Tory, but he had a far more profound mind that some clown like derrrida

[Patrick J. Mullins]

Pete--most upsetting to this group is surely Lyotard's 'Libidinal Economy', one of the most thrilling books I've ever read, and somewhat more 'miraculous' than the October Revolution, which has recently caused a febrile breathlessness among the old rusted Soviet tanks. Lyotard called it his 'evil book' and denounced it, but it is the key to very many confusing things, with its long narratives about 'little girl Marx.'

It doesn't matter whether he, Mister PoMo himself, condemned his own great book, that he had the gall to do it within the pressures of the French establishment is amazing. One really great book is more than enough from any one writer or thinker.

[Name]

"Let's see one valid postmodernist thought or idea or argument. One. Not Marx, or Kant: Postmodernist. In terms of ethics, politics or psychology."

You two should really go on the road with this act; it's simply fantastic. At the end of each puppet show-down between Quine and Lyotard, you could have the hero spit into the dirt, or on the corpse: "Not Marx, or Kant: Postmodernist. One valid thought."

I can see it now; it would be grand.

Tell me, are both of you collecting unemployment? Why the hostility? Why the hours upon hours of free time spent in jubilatory corpse-dancing on the side of the stage, ignored by everyone? (Every once in a while you are addressed by the odd new-comer, on whose blouse you have just spilled some Port). But we love you, comic duo, we really do. In a way. It's the trolls that make the blog, or at least so you flatter yourselves, immune to any intellectual embarassment. Drunk and drunker.

Well, keep dancing. After all you're entitled; the beer is free. So, cheers. Do bear in mind, though, there ARE other dumpsters about, in which your presence may be allowed to evolve in ways ultimately far more rich and rewarding.

[Patrick J. Mullins]

That book of Lyotard's really does prove that a book has power. Rushdie said that just the writing of a book was all it took for a book to do its work, but that's more convincing when it comes from one not so rich and famous, better applied, as here, to one who wrote the 'evil book' and figured out a way to keep living without imprisonment by the inevitable pedants.

How adorable that you think we are ignored, when we are routinely deleted in a most unscrupulous Orwellian fashion. And your writing is a bit choleric at the moment, perhaps you're a bit too thin-skinned? Too much heat in the kitchen?

Unfortunately, I am not on unemployment at the moment, but I did enjoy very much the two times I was. I don't know about Pete, but I only have 2 glasses of wine per week, and never beer. I've never been especially fond of virtual food and beverage very much, but thanks for the observation, if not the offer. That's what you have.

But I enjoyed the interview, to be sure--as you well know, I go for the Big Name, not that lower-middle-class small-time stuff.

I'd actually consider it a privilege to go on the road with Pete, but there's no money in Marxist-blog troll acts in real clubs. Also, I'm in the middle of getting my portrait painted for a gold oval frame that used to hold a mirror like its twin.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Urbane capitalist

[Name]

"How adorable that you think we are ignored, when we are routinely deleted in a most unscrupulous Orwellian fashion."

Right. We don't actually read the comments before deleting. Sorry if that was confusing. Usually the first diarrheic sentence succeeds in giving you away.

[Matt]

John, fantastic post. But must we call it "PM?" This proclivity for acronyms is destroying our virtual country. I mean that seriously.

[John S. Ransom]

Hi Matt, I will stop using acronyms.

One thing that confuses me is the "let's see one valid postmodern thought" that isn't Kant or Marx, etc. argument. My view, anyway, is that postmodernism is part of a tradition. It's called postmodernism in part because it is linked to modernism. Perhaps everyone has seen it already, but Dr. Mary Klages at the University of Colorado English department has a nice comparison of modernism and postmodernism located here:
http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
Dr. Klages emphasizes the continuity and changes of emphasis that link postmodernism and modernism.

Part of what fuels postmodernism is the fact that modernism was not a monolithic intellectual movement. So, for instance, we have Hume saying that the commitment to morality produced by unacknowledged, subjective, psychological pathways. Kant, on the other hand, promotes a purely rational notion of morality that relies on humans self-consciously arriving at laws they give themselves. They are both theorists of 'modernity.'

The cheap shots against postmodernity made by Pete and Jason are intellectually unearned. They don't go up against the real thing, where part of that real thing is that lots of the elements associated with postmodernism can be found in this or that state of development in the modernist tradition. Thus, if they were to be honest, they would go beyond the tactically useful, but intellectually worthless, insults against postmodernism, and instead count up all the philosophers from whatever period they do and do not like; that they do and do not think is a "clown," as they so shamefully describe Derrida. So far they like Kant and Russell, though the latter, they admit, isn't read anymore. Hume, I gather, is a clown.

Pete says: "PoMo is not in the tradition of Kant." But Kant introduced the whole critique of (pure) reason. The whole idea of subjecting reason to a justificatory analysis -- where did it come from? Kant tells us: it came from Hume, who woke Kant from a deep dogmatic sleep.

One of the first things Kant did not do was call Hume a 'clown,' which probably wouldn't have been that hard to do at the time, as there was a great deal of hostility to Hume's thesis, and we're told that the original Treatise of Human Nature was widely ignored when it wasn't being dismissed. Really, critics of postmodernism think they have a lovely dichotomy to play with: real philosophy over here and silly philosophy over there -- now let's go on the Internet and find people who treat the silly stuff seriously and write in telling them how silly they are! But this pleasing simplicity, as Matt has pointed out, isn't worthy of them or of the topic.

[Jason]

As I said before (on one of the deleted post I believe), you are oversimplifying if not misreading both Hume and Kant by viewing them as primarily concerned with ethics. And I suspect that Derrida and most Postmods, inheritors of the Marxist tradition, would not care to be viewed as ethicists.

As I also said above, Postmods continually assert PM is part of the "tradition" while never engaging at all in the tradition--which does revolve around questions relating to analytic/synthetic divide (raised by Leibniz, Hume and Kant), to truth and verification, as well as materiality (even addressed by orthodox marxists), and intention/determinism and any number of other "traditional" issues which the PMs evade. Philosophy doesn't begin with Hegel; indeed perhaps this discussion should be, what are the necessarily true concepts or ideas, if any, contained in the Hegelian system? (Hint: unlikely) Then proceed from there. Like the usual liberal they do go with the ethics stuff--i.e. "Hume appears to be ethical relativist or subjectivist so he's PM"--deeeeep- while avoiding any of the meatier issues.

PMism has a lot vested in its dogma ( as do the marxists) so any sort of say basic Humean points--i.e. that PM is based on observations and facts of some sort or another (it's certainly not axiomatic) and thus the "truth" of its claims ( anti-claims?), are contigent and inductive to some degree--are skirted over in hopes of keeping the appearance of some sort of consistent body of knowledge intact.

(Big Mary Klages? I've yet to read her massive "Theory of Sapphic Culinary Technique")

[John S. Ransom]

Jason writes: As I said before (on one of the deleted post I believe), you are oversimplifying if not misreading both Hume and Kant by viewing them as primarily concerned with ethics. (end Jason)

First, I responded to the supposedly deleted posts. Second, you're wrong. Hume was primarily concerned with morality, which is why he titled his book on Human Nature the way he did, as I have previously pointed out. That's also why the section on morality is the culmination of the Treatise on Human Nature. So if what I'm saying is not deep it at least has the merit of being accurate. Wrong about Kant too, and indeed the whole German idealist tradition he belongs to. But maybe it's a mistake to talk to someone who regards the sentence "Postmodernists are idiots" as an analytic proposition.

The little comment about Mary Klages is merely insulting. Gratuitous insults a big part of your 'tradition,' are they? Here's what she actually has written about:

(begin book description)
Woeful Afflictions
Disability and Sentimentality in Victorian America
Mary Klages
256 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus.
Cloth 1999 | ISBN 0-8122-3499-5 | $45.00s | £29.50 | Add to shopping cart

"Locating disability at the center of the problem of bodily identity, Woeful Afflictions represents an innovative contribution to the fields of nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature and culture."—Shirley Samuels, Cornell University

From Tiny Tim to Helen Keller, disabled people in the nineteenth century were portrayed in sentimental terms, as afflicted beings whose sufferings afforded ablebodied people opportunities to practice empathy and compassion. In all kinds of representations of disability, from popular fiction to the reports of institutions established for the education and rehabilitation of disabled people, the equation of disability and sentimentality served a variety of social functions, from ensuring the continued existence of a sympathetic sensibility in a hard-hearted, market-driven world, to asserting the selfhood and equality of disabled adults.

Unique in its focus on blindness and its examination of the interplay between institutional discourse and popular literature, Woeful Afflictions offers a detailed historical analysis of the types of cultural work performed by sentimental representations of disability in public reports and lectures, exhibitions, novels, stories, poems, autobiographical writings, and popular media portrayals from the 1830s through the 1890s in the United States.
(end excerpt from book description)

[John S. Ransom]

Jason writes:
E.O.Wilson, socio-biologist and Harvard professor on PM:

Wilson sees post-modernistic philosophy “...as the polar antithesis of the Enlightenment; ...[whereas] enlightenment thinkers believed that we can know everything, radical postmodernists believe we can know nothing.” According to Wilson, “postmodernists challenge the very foundations of science and traditional philosophy. ... [They see] ...reality as a state created by the mind, not perceived by it. In the most extravagant version of this constructivism, there is no “real” reality, no objective truths external to mental activity, only prevailing versions disseminated by ruling social groups. (Wilson, Consilience, p. 40)

There's a real APM for you. It would seem if the PM were consistent he would srop driving his car, quit using his computer, and not visit his doctor: all of which are based on techniques derived from science and Enlightenment rationality. (end Jason note)

Let me focus in on part of the quotation from Wilson:

(begin Wilson)
In the most extravagant version of this constructivism, there is no “real” reality, no objective truths external to mental activity, only prevailing versions disseminated by ruling social groups. (Wilson, Consilience, p. 40)
(end Wilson)

But the idea that there is no real reality, no objective truths external to mental activity -- aside from being completely and even obviously true -- is exactly what Kant thinks. Not to mention Hume. Now, true, Kant doesn't talk about dominant social groups, so let's leave that off for a moment. What Kant does say is: for something to count as real, it must fit into our categories, for instance of space and time. Nothing will count as real -- how could it? -- that does not conform to the human mental configuration that Kant details in his magnum opus. But comrades, that's IDEALISM. I've always thought that as a response to Hume this move by Kant was both brilliant and a failure. We have hardly banished subjectivity and enshrined the independence of reality by claiming that, to count as true, everything that comes greeting us must fit into pre-fab slots, while those that don't will simply not be counted as true (for the simple reason that they have not been perceived). Kant is idealist and subjective -- the only real advance is that his idealism and subjectivity is *organized* because, he claims, all humans have the same mental configuration, which is why we can now have something like 'truth' to talk about. But immediately after Kant was done everyone started jumping up and down with very 'postmodern' type concerns -- again, Beiser's book details this. "Oh we're all have the same mental make up do we? Well, what about language? How about national or ethnic characteristics? How about male and female?"

Conclusion: Wilson is not a good guide to this discussion. But if you want to continue reading pre-Kantian, pre-Critical texts that verify and endorse the pre-Critical view expounded here, I have a serious suggestion: pick up Lenin's _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_, circa 1908, available at marxists.org. Lenin was furious with neo-Kantians like Mach, and Lenin writes some of the most naieve bits of "realism" you're likely to find anywhere. You might try this chapter titled "Is there such a thing as truth?"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/two4.htm#v14pp72h-122

[roger]

John, I do wish you would write a full post about postmodernism.
The devil's party would say something like this about the postmodernist moment:
It was bracketed by the very local intellectual climate of the end of the Cold War. It arose from, but was also distinct from, both the Foucaultian and the Derridian schools that arose in the sixties and seventies. It's distinctive feature was to cast doubt on all meta-narratives (and both Foucault and Derrida subscribed to a produced metanarratives). This corresponded to the historic moment, the collapse of the state socialist metanarrative and the seeming vacuum that this left.
The postmodernism that theorized this vacuum emerged in the same environment in which two other intellectual schools crystalized: one, the social constructionist movement, and the other, the identity politics movement. These things are not completely logically coherent, but they formed three faces of a sort of phenotypical postmodernism.

I would say that the postmodern moment is already gone, myself, undone by the reassertion of meta-narratives, and the inability to hold together in any sort of coherent structure those three faces. Myself, I would say the undoing was in the mistaken assumptions about what cultures are, and the importance of meta-narratives to culture, and the place of intellectuals within those cultures. Plus, of course, there was the odd moralism that arose out of the political identity movement that demanded that all cultures be treated equally -- as though cultures exist, primarily, in a juridical relationship one with the other, rather than -- as an older, harsher, and I think truer relativism would have it, in terms of fierce rivalries that are essential for the very construction of culture to begin with.

Now you seem to think that the postmodern moment still holds. Why?

[Jason]

SO let me get this: Hume and Marx are compatible now? What a laugh. Heh.

I never disputed the materialism and empirical elements of Marx--made abundantly clear in the intro. to The German Ideology as well as in Capital; he plainly states that Thought is identical with matter, which is very close to what Hobbes and Locke were claminng, as Marx says. I do disagree with what he does with his materialism, in both political and economic terms. And most PoMo'ists forget that Marx routinely claims the dialectic is material and the opposite of Hegel: a model, more or less, not a transcendent force.

The big point of Hume is fallibility. That's what he is known for: the difficulty of proving any sort of necessary inductive laws, or "rules" of causation. That is far more important than his comments on ethics, and relates to probability and to philosophy of science.

Kant does hold that knowledge of phenomena is possible; the typical "we can never know the ding an sich" type of undregraduate kvetch is not exactly what he was saying. There is a long section in the Critique where he upholds empirical knowledge, which is based on objects for perception, and distinguishes it from speculative knowledge, based on noumena which cannot be ascertained or established in the way that knowledge of phenomena can. So he does uphold scientific thinking, tho realizing that categories of perception, such as space and time are "givens" and cannot themselves be proven; that does not at all entail a pure skepticism.

Thus I suspect Kant, once freed of theology, would probably be siding with E O Wilson in saying that scientific statements/knowledge of an objective world are possible and indeed beneficial.

[Jason]

That sounds a bit pedantic, so I would add something: the Postmodernist attempt (mostly by Foucault) to deal with pathopsychology is, I think, not entirely mistaken, even I disagree with the methods and with most of Foucaults ideas and conclusions. Looking at PoMO in historical context as Mr. Roger does (better than I could) one might say it's sort of philosophy apres-Hiroshima, apres-Auschwitz, apres-Sputnik and apres-TV/hollywood.

The postmodernist attacks on Enlightenment rationality are not unfounded, but I would assert specific and empirical research into the psychology of fascism, or war, or group psychosis or theological oppression (including Islam) is still called for, not endless treatises or conceptualizing or belle-lettres. People like Reich (or Freud of Civ. and its Discontents), RD Laing, Szasz, and even some behaviorists were interested in pathopsychology and also could be read as poststructuralists, though of a more empirical sort. Though Postmodernists tend to dismiss the entire tradition of empirical psychology, a text such as Freud's Civ. and its Discontents has postmodernist elements as well.

[John S. Ransom]

Roger writes:
I would say that the postmodern moment is already gone, myself, undone by the reassertion of meta-narratives, and the inability to hold together in any sort of coherent structure those three faces. Myself, I would say the undoing was in the mistaken assumptions about what cultures are, and the importance of meta-narratives to culture, and the place of intellectuals within those cultures. Plus, of course, there was the odd moralism that arose out of the political identity movement that demanded that all cultures be treated equally -- as though cultures exist, primarily, in a juridical relationship one with the other, rather than -- as an older, harsher, and I think truer relativism would have it, in terms of fierce rivalries that are essential for the very construction of culture to begin with.

Now you seem to think that the postmodern moment still holds. Why? (end excerpt from roger)

I think postmodernism is still to be dealt with partly because I don't see myself as competent to declare an end to whole intellectual movements. When you say that postmodernism has come to an end, and that metanarratives have reasserted themselves, do you mean that now we live in a clash of civilizations-type period? And so now we have the reintroduction of metanarratives because there is Islam over here and liberal capitalism over there? If that gets close to your idea then that's certainly interesting, and who can deny that the mood and conditions today are quite different from when Derrida presented his "Structure, sign and play" essay at Johns Hopkins in 1966! But what can I tell you, I think that the kind of thing Derrida represents and theorizes about is much more of a long-lasting phenomenon than a temporary resurgence of metanarratives. How do I know it's a temporary resurgence? Well, I don't. But I feel like it is. There's this great book by Peter Caws on structuralism: the art of the intelligible. There he says, to paraphrase, "I know that people don't like the term structuralism so much anymore. But there's something intellectually untenable about changing philosophic terms on the same schedule of seasonal fashion shows." That's the way I feel about postmodernism. And also: this word is a 'sign' that stands in for long-standing popular rejections of philosophy as a whole. Most often, when people complain about postmodernism, they're just using that as a tactically useful way to attack all philosophy. You go to war with the signs you have, not the signs you wish you had.

[Hannah]

"How do I know it's a temporary resurgence? Well, I don't. But I feel like it is."

Let's hope to God it is! (Or to something else.) Unless I'm wrong, Roger seems to be positing a false equation of postmodernism=pure relativitism to begin with, which was never in fact the case and only serves to usher in more quickly the so-called (again, too-quickly so-called) 'return of the religious.'

[Vladimir]

Why not, instead of the Postmodernist pep rally (and again avoiding the issue about Hume as epistemologist, not ethicist), actually demonstrate how some postmodernist concepts function or operate. Here's a Derridean chestnut: how writing, which has "presence," is priviledged over speech, which is "absence". Isn't that itself a truth claim, which would demand some type of confirmation--or is it just taken to be true in all cases? It's empiricism as well. Derrida seems to suggest that knowledge which depends on writing is of lesser quality then knowledge that depends on speech--another truth claim that would require a great deal of research (in other wrods, Postmodernist claims are often as dependent on "language as reference" as is any empiricism). This would seem to be a type of multicultural fallacy: rating aborigines above Plato simply because the "oral" tradition is thought to be more immediate or less oppressive than writing. In technical terms, "bogus."

[John S. Ransom]

Here is Fichte's initial reception of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, which he also says is "unintelligible apart from a study of the _Critique of Pure Reason_."

"I intend to dedicate at least a few years of my life to this philosophy. And all that I write for the next few years will be concerned with this philosophy. It is more difficult than you can imagine and certainly needs to be made more easily accessible . . . . It would give me a double pleasure to be able to contribute something to making this philosophy more comprehensible. Its first principles are admittedly skull-cracking speculations with no direct influence on human life. But the consequences of these first principles are of the greatest importance for an age whose morality is corrupt to its roots."

The above is from a letter to his fiance, Johanna Rahn, September 5, 1790, quoted in Daniel Breazeale's Introduction to _Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings_, 5-6.

[John S. Ransom]

In his _Moral Philosophy,_ Adorno writes as follows:

In the various divisions of philosophy moral philosophy is customarily defined as practical philosophy, and Kant's chief work, one that is devoted to moral philosophy, bears the title of a _Critique of Practical Reason_. I must mention here *en passant* that the concept of 'the practical' should not be confused with the degenerate concept that has become current nowadays and can be seen in the way people refer to a practical person as someone who knows how to tackle problems and cope with the problems of life in a clever way. Practicality here goes back to its philosophical origins in [greek term I don't know how to insert] and [greek term I don't know how to insert] and to the Greek meanings of doing, acting. In the same way, the themes of Kant's practical philosophy -- in the second part of the _Critique of Pure Reason_, the section dealing with the 'Transcendental Doctrine of Method' [see _CPR_, A805/B833] -- are formulated in the celebrated question that is undoubtedly familiar to you all: 'What shall we do?' According to Kant, who is, God knows, not the worst guide to the conceptualizations of such problems, this question, 'What shall we do?' is the crucial question of moral philosophy. And I would like to add that it is the crucial question of philosophy in general. For in Kant practical reason takes an unambiguous priority over theoretical reason, and in this respect Fichte was less of an innovator when compared to Kant than [Fichte] imagined.
[end Adorno quotation]

from transcripts of the lecture course published as _Problems of Moral Philosophy_, Stanford, 2001, pp. 2-3