How very true!
One of the casual tests I always apply to determine whether I'm dealing with an intellectually serious person is whether they are attempting to build a workable... well, a workable anything. Far too often people claiming to be intellectual (Deconstructionists are only the latest) only aim at tearing down the work of others.
It takes more maturity, wisdom and virtue to be able to construct something than it does to tear it down. The most brilliant and whithering criticism in the end produces nothing. A society with this as its' highest goal becomes becomes a wasteland.
That's not to say there is no role or purpose to criticism. But it should be a means to some greater end. Not an end in itself.
That's not to say there is no role or purpose to criticism. But it should be a means to some greater end. Not an end in itself. So nicely put!
I encountered postmodernism in one of graduate social science courses witout knowing what it was (as I learned later, they do that all the time: sneak into some field and hijack it; it's the only way since they failed to present themselves as philosophers). At first, there was a sustained attack on positivism that was a complete nonsense: having heard and misunderstood a few words of 18th-century physics in high school, they falsely impute to science some qualities and proceeed to criticise that nonexisting attribute. After succesfully defending the scientific method and trying to end on a good note, I asked: "Suppose it is true that positivism as the basis for scientific method is completely flawed, what should I use instead when conducting a survey or perfoming any other measurement?" I'll never forget the instructor's spirited exclamation: "I don't know; you tell me!"
As you said earlier, a couple of hours of dismantling everything that works to some degree --- in hard sciences to a great degree! --- was the end in itself. I could not anderstand the feeling at the time, but I left that discussion longing to take a shower.