Fichte!

Thesis: "A lot of the criticism of postmodernism is premised on a profound ignorance of the philosophic tradition out of which it flows."

We all know that everyone loves to criticize postmodernism, or, more precisely, postmodernists. In the draft of the book I'm working on, if I may borrow from that, I say, tongue in cheek, that we should probably allow people to continue making fun of postmodernism, because to convince them to desist  "would deprive so many commentators of too much pleasure to be justified on utilitarian grounds." All one has to do is go to aldaily.com, the online, waterfall-like graveyard of superficial criticisms of theory and postmodernists, to see how much pure, unadulterated, crack-like joy writers get out of criticizing postmodernists. They key is not to pay too much attention to their arguments but instead intuit the lively pleasure the author gets from talking about how silly postmodernism is. They're like Thrasymachus. We all remember the great opening scene in Republic Book I:

"Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus had made
an attempt to get the argument into his own hands, and had been put
down by the rest of the company, who wanted to hear the end. But when
Polemarchus and I had done speaking and there was a pause, he could
no longer hold his peace; and, gathering himself up, he came at us
like a wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were quite panic-stricken
at the sight of him."

Thrasymachus wants to get off on arguing; get high on it. He wants to excite his animal spirits and get the adrenaline flowing, like a "wild beast". So too the anti-postmodernists.

Start with Hume, though he stands on the shoulders of a long history of skeptical thinkers. Really, one is almost convinced that if Hume's name weren't Hume, but instead was 'Derrida' or 'Lyotard' or some other frilly, vowel-filled French name, the anti-posts would be able to sniff him out as their enemy. But instead he's Hume, he's from Scotland, and he's kind of musty-witty instead of frilly-silly, and so he's spared. While at the same time not taken seriously. Though there are, let me be careful, some articles on the 'postmodern Hume, and if anyone knows of anything on the postmod Hume, please let me know. I'll try to find the articles I refer to about Hume and start making the case about Hume as a relativist next post, if that's agreeable.

Comments

[Roger Daltry]

Erm, who are you? Just out of interest.

[Holofernes]

"We all know that everyone loves to criticize postmodernism"

for any human, he or she knows there exists a concept (postmodernism) "y", which any x loves to criticize "C":

Vx Ey (Hx -> xKy & xCy)

Thus postmodernists must love to criticize themselves

[Matt]

Great post. Also: welcome.

[Adam Kotsko]

Those Valve people are going to jump all over this.

[Jodi]

Great, John, thanks!

But, for the sake of argument, shouldn't we just say no to crack? Isn't it possible to become an opium addict, forever sniffing at the valve? So, might there be even a utilitarian argument against short term pleasure?

[Matt]

Everyone: please welcome John S. Ransom to Long Sunday.

(We're working on getting his name to appear correctly beneath the post, but in the meantime you may take our humble word for it.)

[Hector Jacumba]

Hume could be viewed as a type of postmod, sure; the skepticism toward the possibility of definite knowledge about causes or natural laws; the antipathy towards religion and ethics; the emphasis on the fallibility of science and induction. But he doesn't question that language and logic do work and that arguments and axiomatic knowledge are possible.

And when does the non-referential, postmod dialogue and discourse begin? Every sentence on this blog assumes that what it refers to is objective and outside the text. When do citizens all become Rimbauds and words sign flag red green in some plaza of jungled color, a valley car-whore on a chrome freeway .....

[Adam Kotsko]

Dear Hector Jacumba,

If I refer to my own subjective state, would I be operating under the assumption that my subjectivity is objective? Or what about your statements about the assumptions that I supposedly entertain while writing? Sounds pretty subjective to me! Also, what if I refer to the first sentence I wrote in this comment -- that's inside the text. Hence, apparently, not everything we write assumes some kind of "objective" content that supposedly exists "outside the text."

Overall, you are a failure as a commenter.

[Jason]

Adam Kotsko also has a fantastic blog, by the way, very postmodern in the responsible sense, and about to host a reading group on Giorgio Agamben's _Open_. This has been a public service announcement, brought to you by the committee on grow the hell up.

[Amie]

I'm looking forward to the post on Hume. This one certainly has the makings for a fun fichte with 'anti-postmodernists.'
Might I ask for some 'working definition' of postmodernism/postmodernists? One can hardly expect such from the anti contingent, for whom it seems little more than an all-purpose label glued on with drivel about meaninglessness, nihilism, etc., to anything deemed contraband. Not to spoil their fun, but there are quite a few silly-frilly frenchie philos - lyotard notwithstanding - who are somewhat 'reticent' on the subject.

[Jodi]

Amie,
What would you say to a response to your question re postmodernism that said referred to it as a catch all (usually derogatory) term that works to isolate and temporalize a specific set of philosophical ideas as 'modern' and then to reject ideas that conflict with this set. So, attacks on 'postmodern' thought may proceed as if counterenlightenment and romantic thought were not part of 'modernity.'

And, to get more specific, the criticism that I have in mind is one sees modern thought as anchored in the rational, autonomous individual, universal principles of reason ultimately knowable and/or derivable from this rational autonomous individual. So, theories that reject or contest this are 'postmodern' even as contestation of this idea was part and partial of its emergence.

[Fuckwit]

Reread Searle vs. Derrida and get the real thing. Searle doesn't just drop some fundie-like criticisms about meaninglessness or nihilism: he demonstrates how the postmod claims about instability of language or that it can't refer are quite absurd. Besides a half-hour with Of Grammatology will convince you it's either a hideous shrieking hodge-podge of anthropology, semiotics and marxism (none of which has much claim to "truth" anyways), or rather some ugly, weird dadaist parody.

(and when you press your "Post" button you in a sense "do a Searle" as well)

[Matt]

Jodi, I think John hit on something crucial himself when he once said, and I quote: "I agree with Lyotard that postmod is a condition and is not reducible to a ‘position’ that can be agreed with or disagreed with."

The joke that followed that comment was also good:

"Surely we all remember James’ joke about the history of theory reception, in his little book ‘Pragmatism’. To paraphrase:

First, critics claim the new theory is completely wacko, utterly destructive of thought, truth, and morality.

Second, they admit there’s a lot of truth in the theory, but that everyone knew all that already.

Third, they claim to have thought up the new theory."

[Fuckwit]

Perhaps Kuhn's ideas on theory would be relevant here, though I doubt very palatable. A theory is generally a sort of collection of modifiable propositions about a given collection of facts: say the theory of evolution being based on fossils and evidence of natural selection. What "facts" does postmodernism take as the grounds or basis for its theoretical and/or ideological structure? If it's not factually-based (say psychological or economic evidence) nor analytical/axiomatic then its claim to being a type of knowledge is debatable.

(Its funny to see so-called postmods defend seminary students. I suspect even Foucault would have laughed at that. And let's have a reading group on Hume before the checking out the latest insane frenchman)

[Matt]

As a side note, and bit of blog history, the widespread use of the felicitous phrase, "Farts and Fetters Daily," originates here:

http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2004/12/somehow_the_thr.html

via here:

http://this-space.blogspot.com/2004/10/death-of-art-on-corporatism-and.html

[Amie]

Jodi, thanks, your clarification is well said, and 'works' for me.
I'm particularly struck by the question of temporality that you mention, the post-modern as the modern not quite arriving, or of the autonomous subject (up)on which modernity would found itself remaining suspended -- in the post!?
So I'm looking forward to hearing from John on Hume, with perhaps a little Kant thrown into the bargain, as the latter is to my mind rather essential on the question of the autonomous subject, modernity, etc.,.
( What comes to pass when the modern autonomous subject measures itself against -- imitates -- the ancient immortals?)
So Matt, that question you pose about postmodernity as condition rather than position is a very tricky one, as philosophy is always about the unconditional, no?!
I have to stop these hasty remarks here, while waiting for my date to show up and take me to some concert! If he doesn't, I'll curl up in bed following fuckwitz's comments and read Limited Inc., always good for laughs. BTW, JD's Papier Machine is now available 'in english' and also very funny.

[Jason]

The above post illustrates some of the problems of post-modernism itself: "modernity", "postmodernity" "the autonomous subject". These concepts are bandied about as if they were biological taxonomies, when I doubt any sort of convincing definition could be given for any. And most postmodernist writers coninually make use of such terminolgy, and then assume the terms have some sort of existence.

The "autonomous subject" put forth by Ms. Dean as a type of modernist idea seems questionable. Descartes' cogito seems as much an "autonomous subject" as any modern concepts. Isn't the traditional concept of the "soul" going back to Scripture and Plato autonomous as well? It is with say Malthus, Marx, Darwin and then Freud that the freedom of the subject is questioned. A biologically determined subject is not exactly autonomous, so if Darwin is part of "modernity," then the identification is not correct, or only partially correct; and if stimulus-response theory following from Wm. James is part of modernity (I think it is) determinism--environmental as well as genetic--was relevant in 1900 if not earlier. Freud's ego psychology does not leave much room for the autonomous subject either. It was rather the existentialist types who were always discussing freedom and choice and so forth; the scientific establishment was behind behaviorism and determinism, genetics, etc. And that neglect of determinism and related themes--biology, really--is one of the major drawbacks to postmod and literary types of chitchat.

[Chris]

Jason, I think you are a-historically transvaluing Descartes so that his Meditations mean presently: 'here is a guide to the autonomous individual'. This is, I think, a problem:

1) such a reading is predicated on a paradox inherent in Descartes. His work also says: 'read my work. Here is how all of you become autonomous individuals, by reading my thoughts, my meditations, in the order I write, until my thoughts become you'. In other words, to read Descartes' cogito in a modern lens, is to witness instead the birth of a liberal virus--though certainly historically this is a displaced origin/nachtriglich. We all become infected with Descartes' narrative, we are all robots following his narrative towards a repetition of autonomy as he has designed it, with its attendant metaphors: world as book, man as city, etc... Descartes' autonomy is thus an affliction through modern eyes.

2) This is just one example of the ways that Descartes' work is incredibly alien to us, and that a simple reading of the past-- that Descartes is writing about autonomy the same way someone in the 20th century would--is to abuse the past.

I do not mean to suggest that the past is unreadable; I merely suggest that it is a mistake to read Descartes as 'meaning' exactly what we do when we discuss autonomy.

This clarity of the past, if anything, is a rather pseudo-nietzschean maneuver on the part of positivists. Despite Nietzsche's hatred of positivism and liberalism, there is nonetheless a strange will to power on the part of liberal positivists: the will to power of those who want to merely transvalue liberalism as a static force, always already existing througout the past, whether manifest (Descartes?) or latent (Augustine?). Liberalism and positivism seek to hide the revolutionary opening into human society and thought that these ideologies are. Their clear world of simple relations of power is proved by the way they appropriate the past, like Quentin Skinner or JGA Pocock: with vigour, though little accuracy; accuracy would be something Nietzsche would have relegated to the domain of antiquarians.

In this sense, the so-called postmod crowd is against this ahistorical appropriation of nietzsche, and instead looks for the strange residual silences from past texts, looking to not decide the past, but continually engage it. You and I are a couple of Nietzscheans arguing about the idea of legacy itself, through his legacy.

Like Descartes, Nietzsche also has come to infect our thought virally. This recognition of the complexity of the past would be, I think, slightly more accurate than yours. Or perhaps we can continue this strange struggle of wills between positivists and postmods that this site seems to have become.

[jholbo]

I have long mulled an essay on Nelson Goodman, Hume's problem of induction, and German Idealism - to be entitled, "Fact, Fichte and Forecast". But perhaps the present occasion is not auspicious.

What do you mean when you say Hume is not taken seriously?

[jfrodo]

I think the arguments for the cogito are misleading if not mistaken so I wouldn't press the issue. Sure there's some "historical" or intellectual context: were you to oppose the dogma of the Catholic church you were arrested and then tortured if not served as a human shish kabob. Pater DesCartes meant I think Crapula Ergo Sum, but changed it in respect of leading Torquemadas du jour. Nietzsche just needed lots more pussy, especially some not infected with syphillis (or maybe a sort of pre-beat voyage to Tangiers, heh heh). So, had latex been invented (phallogocentrism, yikes!) FN might have lived a few more sane years and maybe taken some needed lessons in set theory from Frege.

A better tactic would be to attempt to decide what sort of philosophical issues, if any, are worth pursuing. Hume is not exactly cutting-edge: someone like Popper advances the Humean induction issue to a more advanced level (though still with problems), but to what end is still debatable. Besides if you want to take on induction and fallibility you are immediately confronting inferential statistics, Bayesians, probability theory, if not quantum mechanics: and I doubt any such texts are resting next to Matt Chrustie's Derrida or Rimbaud books or Dylan CDs...

Postmod people speak as if their own "credo" had some definite and describable characteristics (and of course their presumption of "ethical" superiority is repeated ad nauseam, though none of them ever bother to indicate what that ethics really consists of): I suspect no one, except in a few lit. departments would agree to that.

Better to take that organic chem class and try to get into med. school, or at least work on yr RN, comrade.

LM, go in peace dude. we ain't comrades, but you're no dumbass. I'm not going to have a back and forth for ol' time's sake, not on the day that Alphonse's blog is no more. I wonder if we both ended up here for some methadone?

There, shit could at times be transmutated. Anywhere else such a back and forth seems on the screen to be an uninteresting lump of positively irrefutable crap.

later.

[alphonsevanworden]

"There, shit could at times be transmutated."

A more beautiful compliment I cannot imagine. Thank you so.XXX

[Patrick J. Mullins]

There's definitely something telling in those last 2 comments, this one completing the piquant trinity. For whatever other reasons Ms. AvW decided to commit blogicide, it may well be that she thought a particular body of work had been finished; and in putting a period on it, it ceases to have that quality of evaporation that is already the deadly heritage of the virtual. She may have made it into a real physical object despite the medium and the occasional horrible post (of course many were exquisite). Beautiful that it could be concluded by Sardou in Jayne Mansfield Park.

Three cheers!

[Adam Kotsko]

Alphonse,

You will be missed.

(Now the ----ing Troll of Sorrow is "acting out" on my site, because his favorite blog has been taken away.)

[Capp Preacher]

In fact after paring away all the postmod. and belle-lettrist crap, there is AvW, a witty writer on finance and economic matters, who should have had enough spine to stick to her progressive and occasionally green guns, taking on Big Oil and corporations and speculation, instead of kvetching about every little hip PC or multicultural scandal under the sun, or spending days prattling on about Buffy as fascist, etc.; AvW the economics Gal was relevant as they used to say.