Postmoderism

We live in strange times. Increasingly, American academics [as well as many average citizens] regard claims to objective and universal truth as intolerant and uninformed. What accounts for this bizarre and growing consensus? It's called postmodernism. Postmodern ideology rejects the authority of reason and views all claims to objective truth to be dangerous. For these enormously influential thinkers, truth is political and created by "belief communities," not discovered rationally and objectively. That the academic community is experiencing a major ideological revolution is beyond doubt. Like all intellectual movements, postmodernism deeply effects the broader culture.

We are witnessing a broad-based backlash against reason in our culture. This backlash is widely promoted in contemporary higher education. The argument is that every time somebody claims to be in possession of the truth (especially religious truth), it ends up repressing people. So its best to make no claims to truth at all.

Rejecting objective truth is the cornerstone of postmodernism. In essence, postmodern ideology declares an end to all ideology and all claims to truth. How has this seemingly anti-intellectual outlook gained such wide acceptance in history's most advanced civilization? That question requires us to understand how postmodernists conceive the past three hundred years of western history.

Postmodernism abandons modernism, the common and widespread humanist philosophy of the European Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinking is based on the authority of French philosopher Rene Descartes' autonomous man--the one who starts from his own thought ("I think, therefore I am") and builds his world view systematically from reason alone. Naively, postmodernists charge, modernists assumed that the mind was a "mirror of nature," meaning that our perceptions of reality actually correspond to the way the world is [fundamental axiom of empiricism]. From this presumption, modernists built a culture that exalted technological achievement and mastery over the natural order. Expansion-minded capitalism and liberal democracy, outgrowths of modernist autonomous individualism, subjugated the earth to the eurocentric, male dominated paradigm.

But modernism planted the seeds of its own undoing. As arrogant, autonomous modernists conquered the globe and subjugated nature in the name of progress, oppressed and marginalized people have responded. "Progress toward what?" they cry. Postmodernists say that the idols of autonomous reason and technological proliferation have brought the modern age to the brink of disaster. The "myth of progress" ends up in a nightmare of violence, both for marginalized people and for the earth.

Enter postmodernism. Postmodernism rejects modernism's autonomous individualism and all that follows from it. Rather than seeing humanity as an ocean of individuals, postmodernists think of humans as "social constructs"--nodes in a particular cultural reality. We do not exist or think independently of the community with which we identify. So we can't have independent or autonomous access to reality. All of our thinking is contextual. Rather than conceiving the mind as a mirror of nature, postmodernists argue that we view reality through the lens of culture. Consequently, [in contrast to theists who allow for revelation (epistemological certainty), or modernists who limit truth to that which can only be scientifically verified], postmodernists reject the possibility of all objective truth. Reality itself turns out to be a "social construct" or paradigm. In the place of objective truth and what postmodernists call "metanarratives" (comprehensive world views), we find "local narratives," or stories about reality that "work" for particular communities--but have no validity beyond that community. Indeed, postmodernists reject the whole language of truth and reality in favor of literary terms like narrative and story. It's all about interpretation, not about what's real or true.

Postmodernists hold that the pretense of objective truth always does violence by excluding other voices (regarding other worldviews to be invalid), and marginalizing the vulnerable by scripting them out of the story. Truth claims, we are told, are essentially tools to legitimate power. That's why in postmodern culture, the person to be feared is the one who believes that we can discover ultimate truth. The dogmatist, the totalizer, the absolutist are viewed as both naive and dangerous.

A growing number, especially among the emerging generation, believe that reason and truth are inherently political and subversive. That's why they are often so cynical. According to the voices in contemporary culture that shape "Generation X" thinking, claims to truth are clever disguises for the pernicious "will to power." Consequently, rather than dominating others with our "version of reality," we should accept all beliefs as equally valid. Openness without the restraint of reason, and tolerance without moral appraisal are the new postmodern mandates.

For most people, the postmodern outlook I've described is more "absorbed" than thought out. An impressive majority of Americans believe that truth is relative. But few know why they think that way. Still fewer have any clue about how their beliefs practically relate to their own lives. In general, people are more ideologically confused than deeply committed to their convictions. So while we hear the rhetoric of openness to everything and tolerance for everyone, it's rare to find someone who really understands what this means. It's just the socially appropriate attitude to have. Postmodern ideologues have been successful in transforming ideology into popular zeitgeist. Ironically, this radical subjectivity leads to the dangerously arrogant inference that no one can ever be wrong about what they believe. If we are free from the constraints of rationality, nothing separates truth from self-delusion.

Jim Leffel

* Jim Leffel teaches philosophy at Ohio Dominican College in Columbus, Ohio. He is a co-author of the book, The Death of Truth, What’s Wrong with Multiculturalism, The Rejection of Reason, and the New Postmodern Diversity, ed. Dennis McCallum (Bethany House Publishers, 1996).

Dear Christians:

I would like to see some thought on how this has influenced and created pomo Christians. After a couple years in discussion and debate on newsgroups, I am seeing pomo believers that see pomo as best exemplifying "Grace" for its building bridges of tolerance and tearing down towers of division.

From what I see, a new type of "Christian" person is emerging that I would call a "Christian Agnostic" leading thereafter to a "Christian Existentialist." The former reasons that the finite mind is limited and cannot know or contain true truth or objective truth, so it can never know confidently that it does indeed know what it thinks it knows. I have asked if this does not place Christ in a category that certainly lacks compassion, for as our Creator, certainly He would be familiar with our subjective limitations and then it would be unreasonable for Him to in essence threaten by saying to us "depart from Me, for I never knew you" or to demand we be His followers by reading His teachings and obeying them....for then we would have to know they are good, true, and proper in today's context. Thus...Christ would actually be "warped" with strange enjoyment of our demise IF absolute truth could not be known, and yet make such demands of us.

If one cannot know for sure.....that is certainly an obligation to skepticism and creates this Christian "Agnostic".....and then, of course, since we cannot know for sure, surely we must hold the writers of the Scriptures suspect for they are but products of their lesser informed/educated enculturation....and not even they could know for sure. This would place us in the position to hold all Scriptures suspect and judge validity relative to our enculturation. Making us "gods" of our own lives....yet in charge. It brings that adage to life which says, "God helps those that help themselves" and calls upon individual responsibility and self control....certainly then a Christian "Existentialist". Now the question begs.....if a form of agnosticism.....and then a form of existentialism.....why not eventually a Christian "Nihlist"?

I have seen Thomas Jefferson's Bible applauded in that he had the courage [?] to see that the writers of the Bible and translators thereafter could not rationally determine or know....and thus discounted and removed all references to miracles, turning the Bible into a pluralistic usable form of good civic ethical moral codes for governing.

I am seeing Christ's teachings given weight.....and Paul's as reasonable to dismiss...and even the "Jesus Seminar" gaining wider consideration in the greater international community.

Larry lseiler@execpc.com

Post-modernism

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