Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Is Post-modernism dying?

Hey, everyone. I appreciated the words on the Psalter. I have been doing my own explorations and was thrilled to see a canonical approach in the articles. I would love to have participated in that discussion.

Well, I tend to look at various blogs, many of them from atheists. I saw an article (check it out here) that I thought might be interesting because of the theme of post-modernism. He asks the question as to whether P-m may have run its course. Obviously he is speaking only in certain circles, such as some areas of academia. Just like with all philosophy, the trends in academia are not felt in society until much later. But it seems like an interesting possibility. At the very least it shows that not all non-believers are post-modernists.

I sincerely hope that you all enjoy the closeness of the Lord's presence and grace in the new year.

4 comments:

eric O said...

Mark, I first read Zondervan's "Five Views on Apologetics" in 2002, when I knew next to nothing about postmodernism. The editors asked the five participants to address postmodernism as part of their presentation. William Lane Craig did not and was quite vocal as to why he did not. He thinks that it is not an intellectually viable position, due to the fact that it is self-referentially incoherent, i.e., self-refuting. And, to follow up on your post, he says that the field of analytic philosophy has largely rejected postmodernism. So, in this case, if Craig is right, postmodernism is not dying, it never even got off the ground in the first place in this particular field.

Donna said...

Interesting. Please allow me to say something idiotic, as if that is for the first time. Is internal coherence an independent criterion for viable philosophical positions, or is it itself a part of many systems which those systems use to justify themselves. I am not post-modern, even though I sympathize with many concerns, but it seems to me that a position must be first evaluated according to its own standards before being evaluated according to the standards of another system. Absolute epistemic agnosticism must be considered a viable position, even if we can't know absolutely, or not.

Malcolm XYZ said...

umm, don't we need to start asking what we mean by Postmodernism? I would venture that it's too large a hodgepodge of ideas to be considered one thing. There is a general concern for "language" among so-called pomoderns, there are connections to late Marxism and the thought of Nietzche. That covers a pretty wide swath. It is not one thing unless we identify what and how it could be one thing. And if we do, I wonder if we could do it in a way that would not misrepresent it. The tome of this conversation was heading in that direction it seems. So let's get into that too while we are at it.

Malcolm XYZ said...

sorry i left the "s" out of Nietzsche's name. :)