The crisis of the postmodern world view

RewewAmerica.us ^ | December 9, 2004 | Fred Hutchison

[kjvail]

That would be correct, in fact Chesterton is credited with writing perhaps the best work on the Angelic Doctor

St. Thomas Aquinas (1933)

[little jeremiah]

Ping to self for later pingout.

[cornelis]

It also provides no framework for living a constructive life.

This symptom has been very ably described by Chantal Delsol Icarus Fallen, published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute isi.org. She points out how the prevaling ethos leaves the common person awash, being told to create their own ethic, prohibited from universalizing it.

[krunkygirl]

bump and save

[kjvail]

Ya I'm familiar with that lecture and am a member of ISI. I fundamentally agree with her analysis

"For the last two centuries, in order to escape from the labyrinth of mediocrity, we have believed ourselves capable of radically transforming man and society. The philosophy of Progress has promised us since Condorcet to eliminate war, disease, and need, and various ideologies have announced a “radiant future”. We have just come to the realization – via the revelation of human disasters in the East, and here through the reappearance of poverty, illiteracy, war, and epidemics – that these hopes were in vain. We have fallen back down to earth where we must re-appropriate our human condition. But along the way we have lost the key of understanding, and we no longer recognize this mediocre world, nor do we know its meaning."

I sincerely hope her conclusion is correct as well

The man described by Kierkegaard, who builds a sumptuous castle and then lives in the gatekeeper’s quarters, or even in the doghouse, will some day gather about himself all that remains of his clairvoyance, and will draw up the plans for a house of truly human proportions. The children of Icarus will no longer demand bread, as they did two centuries ago, nor dreams, as they did a century later, but rather truth, which represents the only foundation upon which an ethics no one can do without can be built. For no one can seek the good without defining it. All hope is built upon knowledge. And no society can respect a man of whose particularities it is ignorant. Our main exigence is today to meditate about anthropology.

[cornelis]

Toward the end of her dissection she concludes that we ought to be watchful. Vigilance from moment to moment to always choose the good.

[spunkets]

" necessary fictions (i.e. we both assume the words we use mean the same thing to both of us)."

That should not be assumed. It's only good for a working start. Words are a representation of reality. There is nothing fictitious about them when they represent and convey the essence of the reality to be represented.

I think your post was intended for kjvail, not the Freeper "Poster". "kjvail" should go in the "TO:" box. That's done automatically when you click "reply" on any post.

[kjvail]

If it's intended for me then I'll dissect it hehe.

Post 5 sounds like nominalism to me

"In addition, the fact that you can make an argument and communicate to another individual indicates that to a certain extent society is built on necessary fictions"

Perhaps I'm misreading it but this sounds like you believe nothing has any reality beyond our perception of them. (if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound - no)I would have to disagree.

I subscribe to the school of realism - I have not yet entirely settled myself between Platonic ultra-realism and Aristolean moderate realism

I'm not really able to make much sense out of the rest of your post, perhaps you could clarify.

[postliberal]

I agree, but I think he is, if anything, too limited in his view of postmodernism. A lot of postmodern theory actually attacks the enlightenment view of science as a path to emperical truth. Everything is discourse, including science.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Yeah, I wonder if reason will eventually eat its own tail. The pendulum swings and the 20 century end ups with nihilism. Perhaps the history of reason leads ultimately to the irrational. Heidegger sees this as a problem with Plato, in that Plato never adequately defined being, and this has affected language up to the present.

Most of my readings have come from the Leo Strauss and the Straussians, eg., Alan Bloom, Pangle, Rosen.

[Blind Eye Jones]

"When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim."

The truth about good and evil can't be reduce to something verifiable by science -- just as God can't proven or disproven by science. That leaves man "only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim." It seems that democracy can be torn apart quite easily if there are no common grounds of belief. Everybody will pursue their selfish interests and engage in endless power struggles which will ultimately destroy society.
Plato didn't think too highly of democracy because it was very closely linked to tyranny. But will majority held religious beliefs unify democracy or will that be just another example of one religion dominating or tyrannizing another? There is tension between equality and freedom in democracies, and in Canada we see that played with the Muslims. The Muslims are free to practice their religion but their religion doesn't give equality and dignity to women. If the Canadian government does anything then they will be considered anti Muslim bigots for stifling religious freedom. If they don't do anything then they really can't say that the citizens are entitled to equality and dignity. Unity of religious beliefs would be great if there truly was only one religion. The small Greek states perhaps achieved this ideal for their democracy. But on the world stage it is hard to have consensus, and in one democratic country alone, indiviudal rights will always be threatened in real ways.

[kjvail]

" Plato didn't think too highly of democracy because it was very closely linked to tyranny"

And I agree whole heartedly with his analysis, that's why I'm a monarchist.

There is tension between equality and freedom in democracies

Equality and liberty are opposites, it is an a priori truth that men are not equal therefore the only way to achieve equality is thru coercion and social engineering. It is radical egalitarianism that afflicts our society.

"it suffices to say the artificial establishment of equality is as little compatible with liberty as the enforcement of unjust laws of discrimination.(It is obviously just to discriminate -within limits- between the innocent and the criminal, the adult and the infant, the combatant and the civilian, and so I on.) Whereas greed, pride and arrogance are at the base of unjust discrimination, the driving motor of the egalitarian and identitarian trends is envy, jealousy and fear. Nature( i.e., the absence of human intervention) is anything but egalitarian; if we want to establish a complete plain we have to blast the mountains away and fill the valleys; equality, thus presupposes the continuous intervention of force which, as a principle, is opposed to freedom.

Liberty and equality are in essence contradictory.

Kuehnelt-Leddihn

"The effective distinction between democracy and liberty, which has occupied much of the author’s thoughts, cannot be too strongly drawn. Slavery has been so often associated with democracy, that a very able writer pronounced it long ago essential to a democratic state; and the philosophers of the Southern Confederation have urged the theory with extreme favour. For slavery operates like a restricted franchise, attaches power to property- and hinders socialism, the infirmity that attends mature democracies

Lord Acton, The Histoy, of Freedom and Other Essays

You sound as though you just might be ready to dive in here, read this:

Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1952)

[hedgie]

Perhaps the greatest refutation of postmodernist thought is CS Lewis' Abolition of Man

Just got finished reading it. 'Ole Jack just demolishes the post-modernists - almost before they even got started.