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And in one paragraph Dawkins shows that he has no understanding of postmodernism what so ever. So far as I'm concerned, no-one -- including everyone who's ever

And in one paragraph Dawkins shows that he has no understanding of postmodernism what so ever. So far as I'm concerned, no-one -- including everyone who's ever called themselves a postmodernist -- has any understanding of it. There's no "there" there, only a few trite remarks about absolutes and a race to see who can out-jargon, out-pigeonhole and out-frame whom. (all of which makes me incredibly glad that I earned my degree from a program which leaned heavily toward the analytic tradition; analytic philosophy has certainly had its big screwups, but A) it tends to be much more honest about itself and B) it still manages to occasionally produce useful results in spite of that)

Qz 16y ago
There's no "there" there... What's funny is that is (in a way) exactly what post-modernism is talking about. There's no "there" there anywhere. "There" is a shifting frame of reference, gone before you finished contemplating it.
Tycho 16y ago
It sort of makes sense to me within the domain of literary fiction. Mordernism was all about showing the cracks of the modern world - disintegration of institutions like religion, the damage done by WW1, differing-perspectives/unreliable-narrators, proliferation of media, abandoning rural life, etc. Modernist literature strained to show/express these cracks. Post-Modernist literature simply accepts them and works from there. But yeah 'what is Post-Modernism?' is one of those 'ahhh, ummm...' questions.
Locke1689 16y ago
I'd like to back your applause of analytic philosophy but would like to defend continental philosophy against postmodernism for a moment, as well. I think the prototypical example of dense prose in continental philosophy would be Heidegger, but at the same time I don't think that people would say that Sein und Zeit is gibberish. Now, many analytic philosophers (including myself) would probably agree that Sein und Zeit probably falls to the same psychoanalytic-assumption-as-truth that is categorical of existentialism but I definitely didn't have a problem seeing an argument from Heidegger. Simply, I just wanted to note that simply because a work appears dense or confusing doesn't mean that it is gibberish. Now, in the case of postmodernism, most of it happens to be both dense and gibberish.

Qz 16y ago

There's no "there" there... What's funny is that is (in a way) exactly what post-modernism is talking about. There's no "there" there anywhere. "There" is a shifting frame of reference, gone before you finished contemplating it.

Tycho 16y ago

It sort of makes sense to me within the domain of literary fiction. Mordernism was all about showing the cracks of the modern world - disintegration of institutions like religion, the damage done by WW1, differing-perspectives/unreliable-narrators, proliferation of media, abandoning rural life, etc. Modernist literature strained to show/express these cracks. Post-Modernist literature simply accepts them and works from there. But yeah 'what is Post-Modernism?' is one of those 'ahhh, ummm...' questions.

Locke1689 16y ago

I'd like to back your applause of analytic philosophy but would like to defend continental philosophy against postmodernism for a moment, as well. I think the prototypical example of dense prose in continental philosophy would be Heidegger, but at the same time I don't think that people would say that Sein und Zeit is gibberish. Now, many analytic philosophers (including myself) would probably agree that Sein und Zeit probably falls to the same psychoanalytic-assumption-as-truth that is categorical of existentialism but I definitely didn't have a problem seeing an argument from Heidegger. Simply, I just wanted to note that simply because a work appears dense or confusing doesn't mean that it is gibberish. Now, in the case of postmodernism, most of it happens to be both dense and gibberish.