Gene Edward Veith raises questions about a postmodernist who was, he says, at least honest about the implications of what he believed.
[Link: The agenda of some professors — Cranach: The Blog of Veith]Richard Rorty, who died not long ago, was a major postmodernist philosopher who reasoned that since we can never know an objective truth, we must instead pursue pragmatism.
Those honest implications include (quoting here from Rorty):
You have to be educated in order to be . . . a participant in our conversation . . . So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours . . .
I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [domination free] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents . .
This raises questions of a familiar sort for postmodernism. If there is no objective truth, then
- What constitutes being educated?
- What constitutes being “fundamentalist”?
- What makes Rorty’s doctrine superior to the “fundamentalists'” doctrines? What is the scale of measurement?
- What is the (objective?) danger that these “frightening, vicious” parents pose?
And
- Where is the evidence that these parents harm their children? (Hint: check here for relevant information)
Rorty’s language is totalitarian; it openly reeks of power and control. There is a microcosm here of what nations have learned. There are governments of laws, and governments of people. In governments of law, there is a standard to which all are accountable, including legislators, judges, and heads of government. Historically speaking, law was long seen as originating from a source higher than the state, so it was a real standard, not one that was infinitely plastic or malleable.
In governments of people (traditionally—and fairly accurately—called “governments of men”), on the other hand it is men (rarely women) who decide what is right and wrong. They can decide arbitrarily, they can exempt themselves from any decree they make, and they are under no obligation to apply their decisions with equity or justice.
There is no perfect example either of a government of laws or of men. They are at opposite ends of a continuum, and real nations stand somewhere between the extremes. Modern democracies are very clearly closer to the government-of-laws end, however, and historic and modern totalitarian states are much closer to the government-of-men side of the continuum.
Based on the excerpt Veith quoted, if it really reflected Rorty’s beliefs and actions, he acknowledged no law. There was only power, and in the classroom the power was his. It was a classic (though tiny) government of men. His classroom was a little totalitarian state.
Rorty says it was for his students’ own good. But has there ever been a dictator who did not describe himself as benefactor to the people? Has there ever been a people under dictatorship who agreed? What is it that kept an educated man like Rorty from hearing just how much he sounds like Castro, Mao, Stalin, Hitler … ?
Interesting post. It reminds me of a geography professor I had. At least, I was a grad student but I felt for all the post secondary students that were in class with me.
Rorty is one of the few people named in lists of “postmodernists” that is a relativist, so it is methodologically savvy of critics of postmodernism to focus on his thought. The unfortunate flip side of this coin is that the so-called “postmodernists” who are not relativists end up being implicated, even when they very explicitly argue against relativism (I’m thinking of Heidegger and Derrida here). So, yes, the problems you raise to apply to Rorty, but I would be very hesitant to extend that to all so-called “postmodernists”.
Hi Kevin,
Your comment seems to deny that those critics are actually critical of Rorty’s thoughts fort heir content and not because somebody called them “postmodern”.
Do not critics of postmodernism spell out exactly what it is they are critical of?
No, they are rightly critical of Rorty and, thus, the content of his thought, as he is one of the few “postmodernists” who actually is a relativist. But when they try to extend his thought (and thus their critiques) to thinkers like Heidegger and Derrida, they are mistaken and, in fact, do not truthfully interact with the content of their thought. So Evangelicals are right to focus on Rorty and then to be scant on the other thinkers, which an examination of Evangelical sources (i.e. the sources Evangelicals cite to justify their [mis]interpretation) seems to show.
Thanks Kevin,
I’m not up on exactly what is and what isn’t postmodernism, but I’ve certainly seen your comments on Christian blogs.
What misinterpretation are you talking about in your last parenthetical?
The misrepresentation comes when figures like Heidegger and Derrida are supposedly included as relativists. So, by their very inclusion in lists of “postmodernists” we cannot say postmodernism = relativism, which is the main contention of every Evangelical anti-postmodernist work that includes them in their lists of prominent postmodernists.
So, yes, I am saying that Evangelicals misunderstand Heidegger and Derrida’s thought (I would also include Foucault, but I’m not as familiar with his work). Also, it is my contention that looking at Evangelical use of sources further demonstrates their ignorance of the primary sources. Except as it relates to Nietzsche and Rorty, most Evangelical explications of Derrida and Heidegger (and Foucault) depend extensively on secondary sources, even to simply cite a well-known, readily available, and in many cases a very important primary source. Thus my contention that Evangelicals tactifully focus on Rorty.
I think I get you Kevin, and I can certainly hear your arguments against Groothuis in this explication. But I wonder if you aren’t over-generalizing.
I don’t know if there is any definition of Postmodernism cast in stone, being a rather fluid term, but the way I’ve seen it defined and defended by self-proclaimed post-modernists is a denial that we have any access to objective truth, a claim that truth is constructed, and that it is culture-specific.
When I hear “postmodernism” this is what I think and this seems to be what is criticized, and what you seem to agree ought to be criticized.
If Heidegger and Derrida do not espouse such views then critiques of such views would not seem to be critiques of these men. If they are not postmodernists in this sense then I don’t see this so much as a problem of evangelicals misrepresenting postmodernism then, but rather misrepresenting/misunderstanding/misclassifying these thinkers.
Correct?
Charlie,
Then please show me a single Evangelical who understands postmodernism as anything but relativism. I have yet to find one and would welcome a counter-example.
But your point is important for my critique in one way: I feel that “self-proclaimed post-modernists” likewise misunderstand these primary figures. Yes, Heidegger would deny “absolute truth” (whatever that is; truth is truth and has no need of extra adjectives), he does see culture as central to knowledge and understanding, and truth does have a form of construction or delineation, but not in the sense taken by “self-proclaimed post-modernists” who completely mischaracterize Heidegger’s work. But to see how they differ requires a lot of work, a lot of reading, a lot of struggling to understand Heidegger’s admittedly difficult prose.
This, of course, doesn’t make the Evangelical’s work easier as they can rather easily fall into the same trap. But as the one’s who are always proclaiming superior scholarship and greater analytic skills, their misunderstanding is all the more insulting. They don’t respect these thinkers enough to actually take the time to understand them so they continue to mischaracterize and misunderstand them en mass. Then, when other Evangelicals read their work, they have no reason to think otherwise because the great Dr. Moreland, Dr. Groothuis, Dr. Craig, or Dr. Smith, the superstars of Evangelical philosophy (dare I call them “philosophical idols”?), say that Heidegger is a relativist(=postmodernist).
I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve brought this up to who have simply said, “Who are you? I’m going to trust Dr. [insert your favorite name here].” Of course, the only way to show otherwise is to do long posts attempting to explicate Heidegger in a few paragraphs, which is difficult for any philosopher, doubly for Heidegger. Then I’m told I’m a blabber mouth or some such insult because they are unwilling to do the research needed to actually understand my critique of these apparently apparently philosophically perfect Evangelical thinkers.
So I don’t think I’m over-generalizing, neither am I being overly critical. Evangelicals are perpetuating on a vast scale their misunderstanding of many of these thinkers; put in starker terms, they are peddling in lies. And to admit being wrong on this scale would go a long way in discrediting their work, in showing the horrible scholarship that is behind countless books, papers, talks, and conference presentations on cruise ships (see the Stand to Reason blog for some of this). And all that would be needed is an admittance of ignorance when dealing with thinkers that they have not studied. Or, as I would prefer, an understanding of the difference between modern “cultural postmodernists” and the “philosophical postmodernists,” some of whom are relativistic (i.e. Rorty) and some of whom are not (i.e. Heidegger and Derrida).
Sorry, now I think I’m ranting. But you must understand my frustration with this: it is like your frustration when reading the New Atheist’s egregious misrepresenting of Christianity, which they are similarly peddling on a large scale. I am similarly ignored, my points brushed aside by reference to PhDs (as Groothuis has done on a few occasions) or by blind faith in thinkers that people trust to not lead them astray…when they are doing just that.
One last point: I honestly believe Evangelicals would still have plenty to criticize from their perspective if they got Heidegger et al. correctly, which makes it all the more mysterious why they must rely on half-truths (perhaps to make their job easier, by not needing to do the required research to actually understand them or because it is easier to decimate a straw man). I think the same thing applies to Evangelical explications of Mormonism and Buddhism, but we’ll ignore that for now.
Hi Kevin,
As my knowledge of the definition shows, I see postmodernism as relativism. I also admit to being quite ignorant on the matter.
When people define it as relativism and then critique relativism then what are they doing wrong?
You say that there are postmodernists who are not relativists, and that seems fair to me. Then they are not the ones being critiqued when a critique of relativism is being offered. If non-relativists are critiqued as relativists then you have a point. But merely to say that a critique of relativism is not a critique of these authors you mention doesn’t mean that a critic is misrepresenting postmodernism, merely that he may define it differently than you do. And he probably offers his definition as well.
As someone (a probably facetious probable sock-puppet) almost said on Groothuis’ site, one need not understand Heidegger, for instance, unless one is critiquing Heidegger. If one is critiquing a self-proclaimed post-modernist who thinks he knows Heidegger, but he does so on the basis of that post-modernist’s ideas, then he is well within his rights.
I have not read any books arguing against postmodernism and I will accept for our purposes that these writers specifically name the thinkers you are defending and mistakenly attribute to them positions they do not hold. But that is not what is happening on this blog page, or what happens any time I see postmodernism being critiqued. When postmodernism is critiqued as relativism, and particularly when a postmodernist relativist is critiqued as a relativist then there is no reason to presume that Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, et al, are also being critiqued.
I agree. If Heidegger is to be criticized he should be criticized for what he said/held. But I disagree that just because somebody is criticizing postmodernism he is criticizing Heidegger.
Maybe the definitions of “postmodernism”, “relativism” and “truth but not absolute truth” need to be clarified when these issues are being discussed.
The postmodernists I’ve discussed issues with never brought up any of the scholars you’ve obviously studied and I have no reason to think that their names are coterminous with postmodernism.
Hi Charlie 🙂
Hi Steve,
How’re things?
Things are good, Charlie. Good to see you.
Postmodernism seems to be a popular topic at the moment. STR has a blog post summarizing JP Moreland’s thoughts on the subject.
Thanks Steve (I see Kevin already caught it),
I was on the fence for about six months trying to decide whether or not I should book that cruise. Procrastination got the better of me.
If the lineup next year is even comparable I think I will be going.
Charlie,
Put simply, Evangelical writers on so-called postmodernism do not seem to make the distinction you are proposing. They simply drop a list of names, on which one can usually Heidegger and Derrida named as prominent postmodernists, and then launch into postmodernism = relativism. I have yet to talk to a single student/reader of Groothuis et al. who then doesn’t immediately assume that Derrida et al. (essentially everyone named by Groothuis et al.) are then relativists. If such a distinction was made, my issues would be greatly lessened.
Strangely enough, my first attempt to publish on this issue through Philosophia Christi brought the same counter-argument from the editors: that Heidegger (whom I focused on because he is the one I am most familiar with, not wishing to fall into the same trap of ignorance I am claiming Evangelicals have fallen in) was not directly addressed, so my point was apparently invalid. Yet the popular response to these works, including the understanding of many PhDs on this point, interpret Groothuis et al. as including Heidegger (and Derrida) as a prominent relativist (R. Scott Smith names him, along with the later Wittgenstein, as a linguistic relativist, neither of which is correct).
So, yes, you make a good point, but these authors are not making the distinctions necessary for your point to be seen by their audiences (which makes me believe that they don’t think it a point worth making, or they simply are ignorant of the distinction; I think the latter is more kind to attribute to them), hence my belief that my point is very relevant: Evangelical anti-postmodernists are poisoning Evangelical minds against thinkers that are not proponents of the relativism that is rampant in our society, even if only by guilt by association, and I see this as a significant breach in the moral relation between teacher and student, of the trust the latter shows in the former to speak only when they are knowledgeable about the topic, which isn’t the case here. Groothuis, Moreland, Craig, and Smith (to name the most prominent names) are ignorant of the primary thinkers and their primary literature and this ignorance amounts to spreading lies in the role of the teacher/authority, which for me is a large breach of trust.
Thanks for your perspective and for entertaining mine, Kevin.
I can understand your desire to clear up popular misconceptions and I applaud that desire.
Personally, I’m not that interested in putting labels on people though I think it is important to some extent to categorize. I’m more interested in how they think, what they think and why they think it.
Still off-topic,
J.P. Moreland on postmodernism:
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5682