The Postmodernist Philosophy: What does it teach? What are the implications? How does it relate to the Fall of Humanism?
There was a major shift in the Classical Greek methodology in terms of Epistemology with Hegel. Classical Greek Logic incorporated into the The 5 Canons of Logical Discourse had always worked this way:
There was a "Thesis" and there was an "Antithesis". Either something was one or the other. There was "A" (The Thesis) and there was "non-A" (The Antithesis). One could draw a circle, and everything "inside" that circle could be termed "A" (The Thesis). Everything "outside" that circle was "non-A" (The Antithesis). Either it was in one category or the other: Logically True or False; either "a" or "non-a". This is the Classic epistemological base of all Greek Logic and philosophy. Hegel simply changed all of that, attempting to upset the entire foundation for Christian Thought upon which the whole of Western Civilization was based.
Hegel put forward the "Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis" Principle, but added this: he said that OUT FROM these two "opposing" Positions (bu combining "A" and "non-A") there emerged a THIRD Position called "The Synthesis" or the "compromise" of the two. This was meant to set Classical Greek Logic on its' ear. Whether something was "A" or "non-A" (absolutely true or false) was no longer the "last word"; the "Synthesis" (essentially accepting them both as "true" to create the "Synthesis") was the "last word" and therefore now had the ultimate validity! This is what Hegel put forward.
From Hegelian Dialectics and Immanuel Kant to Soren Kierkegaard, through Jean-Paul Sartre to Existentialism led to the acceptance of Non-Reason as one logical philosophical conclusion. Another conclusion was Marxian-Socialism as a possible answer. During the 20's The Frankfurt School of Social Criticism (known as German "Higher Criticism") grew. Persons could choose several Humanistic ways using their ideas. The Humanistic "absolute" could still not be found, however, so they all just basically decided to GIVE UP!
Simply put, since the "Humanistic absolute" could not be found using mans' reason ("intellectually"; in terms of Classical Rationalism even by using the Hegelian Dialectic), therefore some turned to Marxian-Socialism or to Non-Reason for an answer. Both of these supported "no ultimate absolute": the Rational "Humanistic absolute" had been abandoned.
Thought Without an Absolute?
As ludicrous as this is, people are being taught to accept this line of reasoning as "truth". Let us examine the shift further.
NON-REASON
Non-Reason can be said to result in placing Fantasy above True Reality to the place where Fantasy itself becomes the Reality. Since what what was chosen as Reality (Humanistic reason) could not reach true Ultimate Values, they turned to Non-Reason. Fantasy supplies the needed "Absolute".
In their fantasy, they find "reality". We call this REALIFANTASY.
ALL OF THIS HAS LED TO POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernist Philosophy can be summed-up in the phrase:
"THERE IS NO CENTER"
Here now is what is generally accepted as true: Natural man, beginning autonomously from himself, has come to despair and pessimism. Every single thought of an individual is different from one person to the next. Every single historical account brings with it the bias of the writer or historian. "Objective truth" is now gone because each individual records his experiences from his own point of view, or from others' points of view which are likewise "biased". "What is true for me is not necessarily true for you" has gone to "What is true for me is based only upon my understanding, which is at best incomplete, or may be erroneous, and is always totally different at some point, from yours." Whatever the persons' "agenda" is, is reflected in how he sets up the evidence. Even the sciences are affected. The researcher has a "theory" in mind, and sets forth the evidence that favors his position, and sometimes ignores the rest. All that we are left with are "statistical averages" or "man as a machine" because "the universe is one big machine". This is because Humanistic man has accepted that we live in a "Relativistic Universe" where "there are no Absolutes". Humanistic reason tries to "stack the deck", so-to-speak, because subjective man is always involved in the gathering of the evidence. This cannot be helped.
Humanism attempted (with all eager and hopeful expectancy) to build upon reason and mans' abilities to find the Absolute, following Socrates . The fact that Socratic teaching was previously fully refuted by the Apostle Paul in the First Century is generally not taught any more. Man has still refuses to give up his attempts to find the Humanistic absolute, and so has chosen to disregard Pauls' clear refutation. If there exists an answer "outside" the Greco-Roman ideal, then just ignore it and maybe it will go away!
POSTMODERNISM JOLTS HUMANISTIC MAN TO REALITY IN A FALLEN WORLD
Postmodernism (called "pomo" for short) not only says that these absolutes have actually NOT been found, but that they CANNOT ever BE found! The final conclusion of Humanistic philosophy, by the use of mans' reason alone, is that Humanistic man now truly (to him) does live in a meaningless universe. A "Relativistic universe of Chance" is where Humanism has led, and where the Postmodernist lives. There is therefore no authority that is valid for all people, there are no morals that apply to everyone. And they will not be found. All decisions are purely subjective, and there is nothing that can be trusted as being objective truth whatsoever that comes from mans' reason alone. Humanistic reason always begins well, and with high hopes, but cannot find the absolute, and ends only in that which is arbitrary, subjective. There are many that have yet to realize that the Humanistic quest for the Socratic Ideal using mans' autonomous reason to establish workable individual or societal "objective truths" has been totally refuted by Postmodernism in our own day.
The so-called "Golden Age of Greece and Rome" has been thouroughly debunked! Many times, this comes as no small surprise to those that still teach these "Ideals"! Their teaching has nothing to offer in the way of a "solution" any more whatsoever, because Postmodernism has completely and effectively demolished all of their presuppositions.
Many people are also unaware that Postmodernism is now finding its' way into the highest circles and its' influence is growing, but have also not realized that their Humanistic base of "mans'autonomous reason" has now been logically removed and they have no ground left to stand on as far as "Humanistic reason" is concerned.
From the universitys' Dictum: "There are no Absolutes", this is where it has logically led.
Postmodernism is being being taught, and its' influence has great bearing on peoples' thinking whether persons realize it or not. Some are unaware also that this philosophy is now considered valid not only in many scholarly circles, but also to a lesser degree perhaps, in the Assemblies, but it is not known as "Postmodernism" although that is what it is. "Higher Criticism" of the Scriptures, for instance, started as one of the manifestations. Even public school students are being taught to examine fragmented "modern art" and read works laced with philosophically fragmented messages! Educators assure the public that students ae being taught to "think critically" where there are no Absolutes in evidence!?!
THE TENSION
This brings about an obvious tension among intellectuals, scholars and academics who are using entirely different Absolutes for their presuppositions.
Natural man has a problem with the Resurrection of Yeshua and the Supernatural; the Miracles.
The argument goes like this: Scripture was written by man. Man is a fallible creature, therefore we have to seek out and purge Scripture of all that is of man, because Scripture is fallible to the extent that man is involved. Many pursue Linguistics to accomplish this "purging". Man is subjective at all points: he may have exaggerated. He may have erred. Historians and chroniclers all have their biases. This led to Schweitzers' work, "Quest of the Historical Jesus" where the miraculous was removed, leaving only a shell. After debunking the Socratic Ideal however, the Postmodernist has turned on all Ideals, and this includes now even the Bible.
Is the Postmodernist wrong? Yes and No. Yes! In that for the Believer, Scripture IS Absolute. [1] No! In that natural man has only logically followed the Socratic Ideal to its' foregone conclusion which only leads to this point. In the analysis of fallen mans' "autonomous reason" not is he being completely objective, he CERTAINLY IS correct! Also, many Postmodernists have re-examined the "ideals" of classical philosophical Marxianism-Socialism and rejected them using Postmodernism. It has shown the vanity of the bankrupt Humanist position. There is no absolute for man when man begins only from himself. Mans' subjectivity leads to mans' interpretation which is itself incomplete because it is not based on exhaustive knowledge of the universe. [2] Man cannot have exhaustive knowledge of the universe because he is finite. Therefore whatever man says may only be true in a point of time for that one man, yet not precisely true either, because men do not, and cannot, possess one permanent collective universal absolute using their reason alone. Thus, the "Socratic Ideal" is now gone, and it has occured within our own generation.
Postmodernism is uneasily defined, as it bases its' "reality" on Non-Reason itself (because Reason has been rejected), and uses the "dream-state" or mans' unconsciousness as "reality" perhaps (subconsciously) known to all persons. Some credit Neitzsche with its' beginnings. The work of Sigmund Freud and psychology in general can be seen here. Philosophically, it has led to the Existentialism of Sartre, or Camus; others William S. Burroughs and the "Beat Generation" (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti) with its' emphasis on drugs and the unconscious. The cinema also has depicted this unconscious "dream-reality" in Fellinis' "Juliet of the Spirits" and Bergmans' "Silence". Here is one definition:
"Postmodernism: A portmanteau term encompassing a variety of developments in intellectual culture, the arts and the fashion industry in the 1970s and 1980s. Among the characteristic gestures of postmodernist thinking is a refusal of the 'totalizing' or 'essentialist' tendencies of earlier theoretical systems, especially classic Marxism, with their claims to referential truth, scientificity, and belief in progress. Postmodernism, on the contrary, is committed to modes of thinking and representation which emphasize fragmentations, discontinuities and incommensurable aspects of a given object, from intellectual systems to architecture.
"Postmodernist analysis is often marked by forms of writing that are more literary, certainly more self-reflexive, than is common in critical writing - the critic as self-conscious creator of new meanings upon the ground of the object of study, showing that object no special respect. It prefers montage to perspective, intertextuality to referentiality, `bits-as-bits' to unified totalities. It delights in excess, play, carnival, asymmetry, even mess, and in the emancipation of meanings from their bondage to mere lumpenreality. Theorists of postmodernism include Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Fredric Jameson, Paul Virilio, Dick Hebdige, Jean-Francois Lyotard, among others; a list whose maleness has not gone unnoticed (see Propyn 1987), but which may immediately be countered by reading the exemplary essay by Meaghan Morris (1988) which moves easily among postmodernism's sense of multiple mobilities, bodily, temporal and textual, without ever claiming postmodernist status for itself." [3]
Here are some POSTMODERN THINKERS.
REALIFANTASY
Man only has Non-Reason left after the rejection of the Humanistic Socratic Ideal of Reason to find the absolute. This is where we find modern man today. What is left? Only an unconscious "Angst" (Heidegger) "Dream" (Freud) or even "Drug" state (Huxley, Leary) as "reality" which of course, is actually not really a reality at all but Non-reality. It needs a name. We shall call it, Realifantasy. Who is best qualified to "interpret" this "Realifantasy"? The dream-analyst? The "psychic"? The psychiatrist "expert" who follows Freudian dream-analysis and his theories of the unconscious? The "enlightened" drug user? The New Age "guru"? The neo-Gnostic? The Kabbalist? All are arguing they may have the pre-eminence. Will they Repent? Scripture addresses all of these issues and is the Absolute because G-d is the Author of True Reality. They, on the other hand, have no Absolute explanation for either the Creation of the Universe, the ultimate origin of evil, or man made in the image of G-d that Scripture addresses fully. [4]
Realifantasy in actuality differs not much from the drunken state of Paganistic Bacchanals. The mind is what is captured by a substitute reality that still goes on all around them. They all agree that that is reality, but it is only "in theor own heads". This is what Alduos Huxley and later Timothy Leary (IFIF - "International Foundation for Internal Freedom": advocating LSD trips as the "solution") advised. There is a "willing deception", the "If It Feels Good Do It" line of reasoning. It is just another form of Escapism in order to atempt to deny New Testament Truth.
MORAL RELATIVISM
Moral Relativism delares "No Judging" and "Tolerance" as its basic watchwords. They firmly believe that anyone who judges their behavior is not being intellectially honest. Some Christians may also be taught that the New Testament also supports this. It does not and never did. They would judge the whole historical early Church wrong, and yet say they do not judge? The hypocrisy is so obvious, and yet in their Realifantasy they continue on as if their is not contradiction.
Yet the Postmodern philosophy defeats Humanism at every point, because Humanism attempts to make the universe "man-centered" to arrive at absolutes using humanistic reason. Postmodernism completely invalidates the presupposition that man seeking autonomy can even claim reason. They assert that mans' reason has no validity. All that is "out there", or "physical reality", is biased, invalid or potentially invalid. Only what happens on an individual basis on an unconscious level might be considered. This is where some Eastern religions already are.
This is also a fulfillment, if you will, of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar as a Prophecy (Daniel Chapter 2). He "dreamed" of a man with a "head of gold" and progressed downward to feet of clay. Later, he required worship of his own image for which he was Judged. This is also Humanism personified. Man seeking to be Absolute and the object of worship; to be the autonomous absolute. Humanism always begins well, (the head of gold), but inevitably ends poorly with feet of iron mixed with miry clay (Daniel 2:43). No Resolution. In Daniel Chapter 4:10-37, we may also see the rise and fall of the Humanistic Ideal.
What is the solution for the Believer? It is Revealed in Daniel 2:44,45; 4:34-37. It is and always has been acknowledgement of G-d as our Absolute, and our Gift of Divine Faith (Ephesians 2:8,9):
"For whatsoever is born of G-d overcometh the world, and this is the Victory that overcometh the world, even our Faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that Believeth that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Son of G-d?" I John 5:4,5.
END OF PARY THREE. PART FOUR NEXT: HUMANISM, MYSTICISM AND HERESY .
PEOPLE OF G-D MINISTRIES.
FOOTNOTES
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