POST-MODERNISM

TRUTH AS PREFERENCE

Pre-modernism (upto 1600)

God/gods furnished the basis of:
absolutes Morality human dignity and truth (upto 1600s)

Best illustrated by Anslem: I believe in order to understand

Premodernism Major themes

There is an overall explanation of things, in terms of inclusiveness with respect to all of reality and of the whole of history. Reality has a rational character. History is going somewhere, fulfilling some discernible pattern. It is therefore possible to make sense of reality.

Premodernism Major themes

Observable nature does not exhaust all of reality. There are real and important entities lying beyond nature. The meaning, happiness and fulfillment of humans require understanding these realities and responding to them correctly. An element of faith is required.

Premodernism Major themes

The time, as we know it, is not the whole of reality. An additional dimension of life, and in many ways its most important aspect, lies beyond time. The unchanging and the permanent are most important. Without these, the flux of experiences would have no real meaning.

Enlightenment - Modernism (16001960s)

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Scientific Discovery and inter-relations between the sciences
Temporal life as very significant in itself

Isaac Newton
Admit no more causes of natural things than such are both true and sufficient to explain their appearance. Law of universality of cause and effect. Deterministic universe Absolute space and time God as creator

Rene Descartes
Foundationalism Definitional undeniability and deductive logic. Cogito ergo sum Pure and attentive mind as opposed to fleeting testimony of the senses or the deceptive judgment of imagination with its false constructions.

Immanuel Kant
Mind at the center of knowing process. Knowledge involves both the logical structure supplied by the understanding as form and sensation to provide content. Objectivity of knowledge. One individual knower can have the knowledge that is same as another individual as the structure of reason is same for everyone Objectivity of morality.

Modernism main points

Knowledge is considered to be a good that is to be
sought without restriction. Knowledge will provide solution to humanitys problems. This confidence in knowledge therefore contributes to a belief in progress. Objectivity is both desirable and possible. It is believed that any personal or subjective factor can be eliminated from the knowing process, thus rendering the conclusions certain

Modernism main points

Foundationalism is the model for knowledge. All beliefs are justified by their derivation from certain bedrock starting points or foundational beliefs. The individual knower is the model of the knowing process. Each person must assess the truth for himself, even though the truth is the same truth for everyone.

Modernism main points

The structure of reality is rational. It follows an orderly pattern. The same logical structure of the external world is also found in human mind, thus enabling the human to know and organize the world. This order is usually believed to be immanent within the world, rather than deriving from some transcendent source.

Modernism - Principles
Reason Principles of Nature Autonomy no appeal to authority Harmony Progress

Modernism
Principles of Modernity basis for:
Absolutes Morality human dignity Truth

Best illustrated by Descartes: I think therefore I am

Some key features of postmodern thinking:

A commitment to plurality of perspectives, meanings, methods, values-everything! 2. A search for and appreciation of double meanings and alternative interpretations, many of them ironic and unintended. 3. A critique or distrust of Big Stories meant to explain everything. This includes grand theories of science, and myths in our religions, nations, cultures, and professions that serve to explain why things are the way they are. 4. An acknowledgment that-because there is a plurality of perspectives and ways of knowing-there are also multiple truths.

Four easy steps to becoming a postmodernist:

1. Consider concepts, ideas and objects as texts. Textual meanings are open to interpretation. 2. Look for binary oppositions in those texts. Some usual oppositions are good/bad, progress/tradition, science/myth, love/hate, man/woman, and truth/fiction. 3. "Deconstruct" the text by showing how the oppositions are not necessarily true. 4. Identify texts which are absent, groups who are not represented and omissions, which may or may not be deliberate, but are important.

Developments in the Western World

Pre-modernism: God/gods furnish basis of absolutes, morality, human dignity and truth Modernism: Absolutes, morality, human dignity and truth rest on foundations other than God

Postmodernism: No universal foundation for truth, morality, human dignity and truth exists. All meta narratives are suspect whether religious or not

Developments in the Western World

Pre-modernism: upto 1600s Anslem: I believe in order to understand Modernism: 1600 to 1960 Descartes : I think therefore I am

Postmodernism: 1960 to.. I belong therefore, I am

Gods of the Eras

Pre-modernism: Modernism:

Priest
Postmodernism:

Scientist

Artist

How did it happen?

1.Change in epistemology
According to Foucault, Western society believed: 1. That an objective body of knowledge exists and is waiting to be discovered 2. That they actually possess such knowledge and that it is neutral or value-free 3. That the pursuit of knowledge benefits all humankind and not just a specific class

Changes in structures of life

Deterritoralization Cyberspace and Virtual Reality Consumerism

Post-Modernism
Fathers of Radical Doubt: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)Psycho-analysis Karl Marx (1818-1883) Socio-Economics Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) - Morality Charles Darwin (1809-1882) - Science

The Traditional Humanist Model

That there is a real world out there that we can understand with our rational minds. That language is capable of (more or less) accurately depicting that real world That language is a product of the individual writer's mind or free will, meaning that we determine what we say, and what we mean when we say it; that language thus expresses the essence of our individual beings (and that there is such a thing as an essential unique individual "self").

The Concept beneath Humanist Model

a totalizing concept puts all phenomena under one explanatory concept (e.g. it's the will of God) an essentialist concept suggests that there is a reality which exists independent of, beneath or beyond, language and ideology -- that there is such a thing as 'the feminine', for instance, or 'truth' or 'beauty' a foundationalist concept suggests that signifying systems are stable and unproblematic representations of a world of fact which is isomorphic with human thought.

The Humanist Concept of Man

Individuals are sacred, separate and intact. Their minds are the only true realm of meaning and value. Their rights are individual and inalienable. Their value and nature is rooted in a universal and transhistorical essence -- a metaphysical being.

Structuralism A blow to humanist concept

Linguistics as a model for the structure of thought
De Saussuresign= signified + signifier

Binary oppositions
Male/female Adult/child Good/ evil Dark/light Nature/culture Life/ death Rich/poor Reason/emotion Truth/illusion

Structuralism A blow to humanist concept

Read everything as a TEXTan objective structure activating certain codes and conventions.. Difference is crucial in language Language as the play of differences. The individuality of the text disappears in favor of looking at patterns, systems, and structures. The text is a function of a system, not of an individual.

Derrida

Difference

Derrida
Logocentricism. Speech/writing binary. Speech gets associated with presence and both get favoured over writing and absence. e.g. Let there be light. This favoring of presence over absence that every system ( It could be a philosophical system, but the idea works for signifying systems as well) posits a CENTER, a place from which the whole system comes, and which guarantees its meaning--this center guarantees being as presence.

Center
Self as a system. . At the core or center of ones mental and physical life is a notion of SELF, of an "I", of an identity that is stable and unified and coherent, the part of one that knows who one means when one says "I". This core self or "I" is thus the CENTER of the "system", the "langue" of ones being, and every other part of one (each individual act) is part of the "parole". The "I" is the origin of all one says and do, and it guarantees the idea of ones presence, ones being.

Text as Reality
Author as a site Barthes Text as a play All meaning is textual and intertextual: there is no "outside of the text," as Derrida remarked. Everything we can know is constructed through signs, governed by the rules of discourse for that area of knowledge, and related to other texts through filiation, allusion and repetition. Every text exists only in relation to other texts; meaning circulates in economies of discourse. This understanding does not mean that all reality is textual, only that what we can know of it, and how we can know, is textual, constructed through discourse, with all its rules; through symbols, linguistic and otherwise; through grammar(s).

Deconstruction
Texts are marked by a surplus of meaning; the result of this is that differing readings are inevitable, indeed a condition of meaning at all. This surplus is located in the polysemous nature of both language and of rhetoric. It must be kept in mind that language is what is, that our sense of reality is linguistically constructed. Consequently the 'meaning of it all' is continually differing, overflowing, in flux. Deconstruction

Gurus of Post Modernism

Jacques Derrida
Abandon Onto-Theology & Meta-physics of presence

Michel Foucault
Every interpretation is to exercise power

Jean Francois Lyotard

Meta-narratives loosing power

Richard Rorty
Give up search for truth and be content with interpretation

Jean Baudrilard
Illusion and reality

Characteristics of Post Modernism1

There is no meta-narrative (grand story) that can account for all reality There are only narratives (small stories) It is the view that there are no world-views There is no universal foundation on which knowledge or reality is based

Characteristics of Post Modernism2

Objectivity is an illusion Truth mind-dependent, mind-created Truth is made not found Everything depends on perspective History is always the version of the powerful and masks a power agenda which must be exposed and hidden voices heard, particularly the voices of the marginalized which includes women, the weak, the insane, the homosexual

Characteristics of Post Modernism3

De construction - there is no meaning in the text Language does not reflect reality

Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic

.We live in a postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain

Modernism Postmodernism
1/4

Belief in Universals Faith in human capacities Conquest of Nature Mechanistic Universe

Believes all is difference Cynicism and suspicion Cooperation with nature Relational Universe

Modernism Postmodernism
2/4

Personal view of truth Appearance IS reality Just the FACTS, please The universal

Community based view of truth Appearance is not necessarily reality Only interpretations The local

Modernism Postmodernism
3/4

Uniformity and Singularity Beliefs as timeless and transcendent The factory as symbol (industry) Purity in style(forms..)

Radical Relativism and Pluralism Beliefs as socially located & constructed The computer as symbol(information) Impurity(playfulness.)

Modernism Postmodernism
4/4

Timeless ideals Singular reality Rational management

Transience; nothing lasts Co-existing or multiple realities Creative disorder; chaos theory

3 questions
Who says? (Authority) Who cares? (Apathy)

Who knows? (Truth)

Stanley Grenz:

Critical Engagement with postmodernism cannot end with a simplistic rejection of the entire ethos We must engage postmodernism in order to discern how best to articulate the Christian Faith to the next generation

The Post-Modern Gospel

A Post-Individualistic Gospel A Post-Rationalistic Gospel A Post-Dualistic Gospel A Post-Noeticentric Gospel

Our task as Christs disciples is to embody and articulate the never-changing good newsin a manner that the emerging generation can understand. Only then can we be vehicles of the Holy Spirit in bringing them to experience the lifechanging encounter with the Triune God from whom our entire lives derive their meaning
Stanley Grenz