I picked up a book titled The Encyclopedia of Modern Thought. "Why are there words on these pages?" I asked. Nobody got it.
This Modern Life: A Parable in Three Sentences
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ÎÏεβοÏ
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Seditious
GodSlayer
Postmodernity is nothing more than the application of irony to modernity. It has no seperate substance to call its own.
JColtrane
Member
It's the ghost of a numen though, for modernity itself has no substance, just the tattered reworking of old failures.
Postmodernism means many things to many people but one thing I've read once and actually understood at least partially seemed to make a lot of sense. Postmodernism rejects meta-narratives: that is, "glasses" through which you analyze and understand reality. so PoMo is a reaction to modernism and not its continuation. For example, Marxism suggests that we can understand history through class struggle and Nazism through race struggle and Feminism through women's liberty but all of these only see one part of the picture. We can't analyze complex things with a fixed idea in our mind, reality is always more complex than that.
There's a popular misconception that PoMo suggests no objective truth but what it really means is that truth lies beyond human understanding, which is bound to social and cultural values and all that stuff.
BTW, I've heard something really interesting once - that Kant was supposedly the fist postmodernist, or at least its pioneer. His conception of an 'Other' means that the problem is not that we can't be SURE, like the skeptics said, but that we can't UNDERSTAND anyway. I don't know if that's so accurate but it's certainly interesting
There's a popular misconception that PoMo suggests no objective truth but what it really means is that truth lies beyond human understanding, which is bound to social and cultural values and all that stuff.
BTW, I've heard something really interesting once - that Kant was supposedly the fist postmodernist, or at least its pioneer. His conception of an 'Other' means that the problem is not that we can't be SURE, like the skeptics said, but that we can't UNDERSTAND anyway. I don't know if that's so accurate but it's certainly interesting
The core values of modernity - pluralism, tolerance, skepticism of and contempt for tradition, etc. - are the core values of 'post'modernity. Postmodern thought merely dispenses with the articulating narratives that made modernism make sense (sort of): the process is not dissimilar from the way contemporary secular liberalism tries to have a basically Christian moral outlook without that Jesus guy in it.
Thus, the Modernity + Irony formulation...
Thus, the Modernity + Irony formulation...
Nile577
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- Jun 26, 2003
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We must be wary of conflating modernity with Modernism (which you do not quite do, but by my reading come close).
Certainly much "Modernism" knows nothing of the tenets you ascribe to modernity. Eliot & Yeats glorify 'tradition' through symbolism. Yeats staged the nationalist "Irish Literary Revival" in an attempt to rekindle "authentic" Irish identity. Along with Pound they were anti-semitic, cultural elitists. Pound pledged support to Mussolini and was heavily involved in Axis propaganda, running a radio show in fascist Italy. Marinetti and the Futurists were rampant fascists. Wyndham Lewis is at least passably anti-semitic. Likewise Baudelaire. Nietzsche is an important Modernist figure.
Yes, if by "articulating narratives" you refer to ideas about "interpretation" of the Modernist artworks themselves.
"Modernist" artwork itself often engages with the dissolution of articulating and cultural narratives. We see Eliot and Yeats lament this dissolution, but Joyce* and Woolf revel in it. Madox Ford investigates it, Kafka mythologies its underlying gestures, and Proust retreats, locks himself in his room and rides it in his memory like a wave.
That they "sort of" make "sense" is a nice phrase, as Modernst writing - particularly Pound's Cantos and Joyce's Finnegans Wake - is notoriously difficult, and is often thought to require academic "translators" to make it available to the general public.
If Modernist art is to have an articulating-narrative, it is often the evocative response to the dissolution of narratives. The "point" of this repsonse was mapped to a wide spectrum of ideologies, but was dissolved, along with ideology itself, in what might pass for "postmodern" thought.
* - Joyce's response to "tradition" is very complex.
Certainly much "Modernism" knows nothing of the tenets you ascribe to modernity. Eliot & Yeats glorify 'tradition' through symbolism. Yeats staged the nationalist "Irish Literary Revival" in an attempt to rekindle "authentic" Irish identity. Along with Pound they were anti-semitic, cultural elitists. Pound pledged support to Mussolini and was heavily involved in Axis propaganda, running a radio show in fascist Italy. Marinetti and the Futurists were rampant fascists. Wyndham Lewis is at least passably anti-semitic. Likewise Baudelaire. Nietzsche is an important Modernist figure.
Yes, if by "articulating narratives" you refer to ideas about "interpretation" of the Modernist artworks themselves.
"Modernist" artwork itself often engages with the dissolution of articulating and cultural narratives. We see Eliot and Yeats lament this dissolution, but Joyce* and Woolf revel in it. Madox Ford investigates it, Kafka mythologies its underlying gestures, and Proust retreats, locks himself in his room and rides it in his memory like a wave.
That they "sort of" make "sense" is a nice phrase, as Modernst writing - particularly Pound's Cantos and Joyce's Finnegans Wake - is notoriously difficult, and is often thought to require academic "translators" to make it available to the general public.
If Modernist art is to have an articulating-narrative, it is often the evocative response to the dissolution of narratives. The "point" of this repsonse was mapped to a wide spectrum of ideologies, but was dissolved, along with ideology itself, in what might pass for "postmodern" thought.
* - Joyce's response to "tradition" is very complex.
Nile577
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That's a nice post. Again, I note the difficulty of canonising "modernism." If we see Marxism, Feminism and Nazism as "modernist" movements, then we find evidence of the cultural narratives that modernist art often sought to upset, or lament the absence of.
I need to think more about your claim about Kant. It is interesting. His thought certainly irked logicians, as does PoMo material. Russell was quite hostile towards Kant for his idealism. I'm not sure that I can see a direct link though, for the reason that postmodernism is immensely destabilising to metaphysics, whereas the Critique of Pure Reason was written to ensconce metaphysics as the finished queen of science.
I don't think SOG refers to the writing itself. What he meant is that modernism is stupid but at least its derived logically from something, and PoMo rejects its intellectual foundations while accetping the core values. 'Sort of' because at least modernism is a continuation of something. So it's like accepting the conclusions of the theory of relativity while rejecting the scientific method.
I think the problem is that PoMo simply has no accepted definition. There could be many conflicting ideologies that are both considered postmodern.
I don't really think I understand what you mean by the dissolution of articulating cultural narratives. Do you mean we deconstruct the symbols of tradition to reveal their underlying meaning? Because that would be very interesting. Revival for its own sake means very little. In the so called dissolution of all those narratives you achieve something much more greater than mere nostalgia because you truly understand, and what's more, you can recreate the same ideas in a new idiom. That could be fantastic but I don't think it was achieved, ever, by anyone.
I don't know about Kant. I have not read any of his books
but I do know this one cool allegory. We, humans, are like scientists in a closed room who can't feel the heat outside but have a thermometer. We don't see reality for what it is. That's simply a GIANT leap in though, perhaps the most radical in entire history of western philosophy. Descartes wonders if the table is there or not. But that's really besides the question. The very nature of a table is what should be put into second consideration. If that's not where PoMo begins (at least in the sense of 'we can not, even in theory, have a complete understanding of reality') then you tell me what is
I think the problem is that PoMo simply has no accepted definition. There could be many conflicting ideologies that are both considered postmodern.
I don't really think I understand what you mean by the dissolution of articulating cultural narratives. Do you mean we deconstruct the symbols of tradition to reveal their underlying meaning? Because that would be very interesting. Revival for its own sake means very little. In the so called dissolution of all those narratives you achieve something much more greater than mere nostalgia because you truly understand, and what's more, you can recreate the same ideas in a new idiom. That could be fantastic but I don't think it was achieved, ever, by anyone.
I don't know about Kant. I have not read any of his books
but I do know this one cool allegory. We, humans, are like scientists in a closed room who can't feel the heat outside but have a thermometer. We don't see reality for what it is. That's simply a GIANT leap in though, perhaps the most radical in entire history of western philosophy. Descartes wonders if the table is there or not. But that's really besides the question. The very nature of a table is what should be put into second consideration. If that's not where PoMo begins (at least in the sense of 'we can not, even in theory, have a complete understanding of reality') then you tell me what is
Justin S.
Member
kmik,
Don't trust the philosophical meta-narratives.
The division of "appearance" and "thing-in-itself" is quite old, at least as much as western philosophy. Kant is significant in that he brought the distinction to a new level of explicitness and placed the thing-in-itself outside human knowledge (although even this "radical" move is not without precedent).
Hume speaks of "appearance" in contrast to "real existence", Descartes uses similar words in his Meditations... and we mustn't forget Plato's "cave allegory" in which the shadows are contrasted with the "true" beings, and later the Sun. I would argue that this distinction is fundamental to philosophy itself.
Kant was certainly not "post-modern" (Nile577's comments are right on). See Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to witness his PoMo in action.
Don't trust the philosophical meta-narratives.
The division of "appearance" and "thing-in-itself" is quite old, at least as much as western philosophy. Kant is significant in that he brought the distinction to a new level of explicitness and placed the thing-in-itself outside human knowledge (although even this "radical" move is not without precedent).
Hume speaks of "appearance" in contrast to "real existence", Descartes uses similar words in his Meditations... and we mustn't forget Plato's "cave allegory" in which the shadows are contrasted with the "true" beings, and later the Sun. I would argue that this distinction is fundamental to philosophy itself.
Kant was certainly not "post-modern" (Nile577's comments are right on). See Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to witness his PoMo in action.
Thanks, Justin. I obviously have much to learn. I still think, though, that all others who came before Hume did not think that, say, the concepts of time or matter are also a human construct.
And Plato's cave allegory is very, very different than that, I think... the idea of 'universals' actually contradicts the 'thing-in-itself'. It only tells us that reality is 'purer' than what we see but still talks about it in human terms. So the thing not that we see a 'wrong' reality but rather that reality by definition can not be SEEN. But then again I'm just repeating myself because I'm stupid
I still think, though, that all others who came before Hume did not think that, say, the concepts of time or matter are also a human construct.And Plato's cave allegory is very, very different than that, I think... the idea of 'universals' actually contradicts the 'thing-in-itself'. It only tells us that reality is 'purer' than what we see but still talks about it in human terms. So the thing not that we see a 'wrong' reality but rather that reality by definition can not be SEEN. But then again I'm just repeating myself because I'm stupid
I think that's right. Thing-in-itself implies an inherent definition; Plato is talking about the structure of reality having a basis in design ideals (idealism).
Schopenhauer's a better modern articulator of it, but Plato grokked the original idea, and ever since then idiots have been trying to turn his idea into evangelical christianity.
I disagree, modernity and modernism are one and the same at the social, political and ideological level. Where the distinction becomes less clear is in Modernist art (especially Modernist literature), which has, in general, been defined by technique and aesthetic more than by content.
See my point above. Yeats, like, say, Knut Hamsun, was aligned with Romantic thought at the level of ideal, but is associated with Modernism because his technique draws mostly on the emerging Modernism. Joyce, on the other hand, was a Modernist in ideal as well as form. You see the same thing in music: Orff and Holst vs. Berg and Schoenberg. It's a little more cut-and-dried in the world of visual art, which, because of its dual nature as both art and status object, has always been more novelty driven, with the much more rapid cycling of ideas that implies.
And Futurism was always intensely Romantic in character (it is no accident that more than one prominent futurist ended up espousing something akin to Radical Traditionalism, even after the collapse of the Fascist experiment).
I would agree that Nietzsche was important to Modernism, but he himself was squarely a Romantic. He certainly saw his work not as the destruction of tradition, but as the recovery of an authentic tradition (pre-Socratic thought) from the morass of Judeo-Chrisitian bullshit.
But, as we've already seen, these authors were, in essence, Romantics applying the techniques of Modernist literature to content much closer in spirit to Blake or Lönnrot than to many of their contemporaries....
In any event, as I mentioned, my concern here is less the art of modernity than the political, social and psychological underpinnings of Modernism --> Marxist-Leninism, Freud, Levi-Strauss etc. on the Continent and Bertrand Russell and his heirs in the English speaking world.
Justin S.
Member
Good points. I'll try to be a bit more precise in order to avoid misrepresenting myself and causing further confusion.
(doubtful)
Firstly, I think it's of the utmost importance when reading/thinking philosophy not only to distill a list of propositions explicitly stated by a thinker, but to read what remains unsaid, or, what is said only briefly and then retreated from. In this way, notions of radical breaks are tempered, and we see the "movement" of philosophy in a much richer way, as a matter of complex degrees, not flashy leaps of unprecedented "revolution" (which is not to deny radical difference!).
For example, Descartes, a figurehead of "rationalism" (who thought it possible to demonstrate the existence of God via analysis of concepts alone) in his Meditations... entertained (briefly) the possibility of man being defective cognitively (i.e., no "perfect knowledge") for a few sentences, then retreats (for the meditations to get off the ground, he has no choice!). In the same work he "mentions" that there are "persons" who think that there may be, in fact, no God at all... in one line, then casts it off and proceeds to suppose God's existence throughout the rest of his supposedly "radical" proof. In the Replies... he responds to his detractors concerns over the presupposed knowledge of what constitutes thought and being amidst supposedly radical doubt by falling back on "innate" ideas, essentially necessary modes of human cognition that may not correspond to "reality" (which was a matter of degrees for Descartes and many scholastics). This is sounding familiar.
So, in the first meditation he casts doubt on the "appearances" of the senses corresponding to "reality", and for a brief moment (as I stated above) the correspondence of ideas and cognition itself.
Hume is complicated, and I plan to explore a bit of his Enquiry in a thread of its own at a later time. However, much of Hume can be seen in Kant.
Plato is also difficult, primarily because certain interpretations of his work are so dominant (coupled with the fact that most do not read him in Greek). I have tried to put aside many of my preconceptions and prior readings of Plato until I can truly "revisit" and engage his works. That said, I'm weary of what I perceive to be reductive and simplistic appropriations of his thought. I am not convinced that the cave allegory, for example, is so clear cut, that idea, form, perception, light, truth etc., are so easily understood, and that our current (and especially popular) conceptions have adequately grasped what is at stake.
Finally, I find that it is difficult to say much about anything, let alone things like "modernism" and "post-modernism". I am not interested in (in fact, am repulsed by) the activity of "situating" thinkers and ideas, in and of itself. What I can say is that Kant, as I have read and understood him, does not resemble many of the tenets that seem to be often attributed to "post-modernism". In many ways, he is (what else could he be?) 18th century Prussian (for whatever that generality is worth) and displays much of the thinking of the time (on colonialism, gender, moral law, grand narratives, etc.).
Most people don't understand it, because they don't take the time to read the whole of The Republic and the argument in which the parable is centered to find out what the terms he's using mean.
Uhm, no, I don't think. Plato sees the supreme reality of ideas in terms we can understand and feel with our senses. The triangle may not be 'prefect' so to speak but there is a hidden essence of a perfect triangle. Kant tells us that our senses lie to us. We understand everything in terms of the human mind, but reality is far more abstract than what we'll ever be able to understand.
The cave allegory, if I am not mistaken, merely refers to people who do not understand philosophy in general (not the universals issue in particular). That is, they only see the surface.
By the way: again if I'm not mistaken, Plato refers even to justice as some sort of a universal. Nietzsche didn't like him for a reason... (?)
Nietzsche didn't like Plato's use of universals, period, because Nietzsche was a Schopenhauerian who turned to aestheticism after seeing the implications of relativity. In Nietzsche's view, there are no universals except a lack of universality; in Plato's view, there are universals because there is one "universe" in the philosophical sense.
The cave allegory refers to the nature of knowledge. Perfect forms exist mentally and represent more of reality than being confused by details of physicality. When a philosopher understands this, he stops looking at the apparent reality that is in fact not reality, and begins thinking like a pure idealist, which is a holistic structuralist take on Nietzsche's aestheticism because, as he discusses elsewhere, truth and beauty converge in the finer minds.
Plato is an uncompromising elitist and fascist who was driven by more practical concerns than Nietzsche, whose main concern was deprogramming a thousand years of bad psychology in western philosophy.
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