Postmodernism Continued (Back to main Page)

Many Christians I notice, critique postmodernism in the wrong way because they don't understand what guys like Nietzsche and Foucault are up to. They think that applying their critique to themselves will show their inconsistency. I can remember posing that very idea to postmodern thought. It never seemed to convince anyone, in fact we always seemed to be talking past one another. The conversation would go something like this:

Postmodern - There is no absolute truth
Me - Is that absolutely true?
Postmodern - You are just using logic. You use logic because that's your personality.
Me - Well have you considered that YOU might be using irrational randomness because that's your personality. Just give me a reasons why you think your picture of the world is more right than mine.
Postmodern - This is just a language game.

See the POINT about postmodernism, is that if you can use logic to create a kind of skeptical argument to show that the foundations of modernism or rationality or objectivity are not certain, then logic has done what it needs to do (for them) as a kind of tool. It is almost as if it is okay to use logic to tear things down but not to build them back up again. History can be used to show that the ideas of truth and morality are socially constructed, or side-effects of natural selection (including rationality, another reason to doubt the "absolute" nature of truth discovered via rationality).

So this is why the charge of inconsistency does not fly with postmoderns. They are trying to tell you that every view is inconsistent and that YOU only think what you do for some (probably historical) reason (like Nietzsche's prehistory of morals or Foucault's hostorical account of the relationship between truth and power). If this account of history and human nature is what happened, then it is okay to re-evaluate things, re-form our environment for our benefit.

Of course, the charge of inconsistency will not fly. But there is still the "IF" in postmodernity. IF morals are truly groundless, IF truth is socially constructed by the institutions of power, THEN do what we say.

I still want justification for the "if". The more sophisticated postmodern philosophers attempt to do this, but I, somehow, am not satisfied. Perhaps I don't understand why what they say is believable. Some people certainly are convinced. But I wonder what it is that convinces them...? What causes one to believe that truth, for example, is socially constructed? Does anyone really believe that everything that I think is true was told to me for some reason relating to power and the universal human desire to subjugate others? If this desire is not conscious (because it certainly is not in me), then how in the world did it become loged in our collective unconsciouses? Blanket universal and unsubstantiated psychological theories do not convince me. They are all too often based on presuppositions that I am unwilling to accept (not because I don't want to, but because I have no reason to accept them).

I plan on continuing my reading. Pehaps Erickson can shed a little more light on my nagging questions.