What have I done? By denying Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus as proponents of postmodernism, have I gone off the deep end? Perhaps, though I do not think so. I mentioned before truncated explanations for this. If these folks are not genuinely postmodern but are criticizers of modernism, then who is genuinely postmodern? For modernism to be felled, someone must offer an alternative and then operate according to the assumptions within that alternative. Folks such as Kierkegaard and company have been associated with postmodernism previously, but I suggest that Kierkegaard and company did not offer an alternative to modernism, and they continued to operate according to certain modern assumptions. Furthermore, postmodernism itself had still not fully emerged and taken shape - though it continues to do so even now. If it had not yet taken shape and they never offered a genuine alternative, then how could any of them be associated with postmodernism? They were associated in generality because they critiqued and indicated the need for something other than modernism. But saying somebody is sick and writing a prescription are two different things.
I suppose we could say that postmodernism is merely a critique of modernism and therefore include the aforementioned folks. However, I think when we all use the term postmodernism we are referring to something other than modernism, thereby excluding the aforementioned folks.
Who then is postmodern? Is anyone? I think there are some folks who genuinely are.
Again, this inquiry is motivated by clarity seeking to answer the question, “what is postmodernism anyway?” It seems in fashion to refer to anything disliked or especially liked, off kilter or especially keen, hip or fancy, culturally alternative or muddled as postmodern. Just about any new shiny or unconventional thing is considered postmodern. But that seems rather silly. Thus, there’s a need to do some dusting. I shall trace briefly a few seemingly genuine postmoderns - I will be brief and be forced to use generalities, unfortunately making me a bit of a hypocrite. But, perhaps, sketching a few genuine postmoderns will distinguish postmodernism from Kierkegaard and company and common generalities.
Again, modernism is characterized by preference to reason, universality, individualism, autonomy, and foundationalism, among other things. These tenets involve all areas of thought in the optimistic modern era.
Nearly three hundred years after Descartes made his fateful declaration, there emerged a few folks who genuinely departed from the Cartesian tradition. To merely namedrop and not fall into thorough explanation ( I recently wrote a “school paper” involving some of these chaps, so I have little desire to recapitulate), Quine, Lakatos, and MacIntyre, among many others, give thorough and clear departure from the modern project - Wittgenstein may be grouped with these folks though he was nearly sixty years ahead of his time perhaps even a hundred years ahead of his time. They go beyond mere critique and reconsider previously held assumptions. Nancey Murphy indicates in several of her books the tectonic shift from modernism to postmodernism, involving changes in language and epistemology and “metaphysics.” More than critique is at play here. Epistemology (entrapment within the vague throne of "mind"), for example, is not “first philosophy” for postmoderns as it was for moderns (halleluiah!).
Postmodernism is not merely a critique but an alternative, a new canvas. Murphy regards epistemological, linguistic, and “metaphysical” holism as a postmodern alternative. For example, the epistemological holism requires not that we determine what is certain but what is “unsurpassable” so far and that we consequently appropriate whatever it is that is currently “unsurpassable” as part of our system.
To show the stark difference between modernism and postmodernism, a series of hypocritically general contrasts may give clarity. The moderns give preference to reason, and the postmoderns give credence to tradition/community. The moderns sought universality, and the postmoderns acknowledge locality. The moderns fell to individualism, and the postmoderns are communal - e.g. relationships are crucial for identity and social conventions are the determinate for language. If moderns’ theory of knowledge was something like a layer cake, postmoderns’ theory of knowledge is something like a fruitcake. I tend to like layer cakes but...
It seems that the modern foibles have lasted long enough and have been supplanted. I wonder if humans merely found themselves weary of Cartesian nonsense and decided to play a different game, one involving common sense, one in which we are able to affirm things such as interaction in the “external” world.
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