A History of Contemporary Philosophy

Mariano Fazio and Francisco Fernández Labastida, A History of Contemporary Philosophy: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Rome: University of the Holy Cross, 2011).

Notes from this book that relate to postmodernism are as follows…

The rebellion against cold rationality began with the Romantics (21-34).
There’s no pure philosophy or reason because there’s no pure language—all language is imaginary and sentimental, according to Johann Georg Hamann (29-35).
Opposites need each other: meaning comes from a web of interrelations, according to Hegel (63).
The truth of a thing is not found in itself but in its tensions with other things, according to Hegel (67).
Marx believed truth was dependent on material conditions, so in a sense he was a relativist. But ultimately he believed there was a definite structure to the world that can be understood, making him a modernist (93).
There’s existential abandonment caused by the death of God, so new values must be “created.” God is the ground of meaning, even if he was “fake.” There’s no longer a “horizon” now. Nietzsche’s death of god is to wake up inconsistent atheists (i.e. modernists). New absolute autonomy: “No ends, no answer to the question why” (121, 123, 124).
The “last man,” in opposition to the Ubermensch, lives in skepticism and despair because of the reigning absurdity in the wake of the death of God. He does not have the strength to construct a new order from sheer will to power, according to Nietzsche (127).
“Will to power” is not fact but a subjective way of seeing the world. It’s not proved or refuted that values are relative to life and just assertions to power, as Nietzsche would have it (128).
Positivism predicted a future ruled by scientists in which man masters nature. But even in Comte’s day, sociology was not a positive science (i.e., the science of manipulating humans hadn’t been figured out). Comte wanted a “social physics.” Positivism is a direct heir to the Enlightenment (128).
Positivism needs a new pantheon of secular saints—scientists, artists, and in our day, activists (cf. Google’s homepage) (139).
Charles Pierce hinted at signs having shifting meaning based on group choice (149).
William James said truth was not agreement with reality, but usefulness for the developing and growth of life. The world is nevertheless tending to be more good and better (152, 153).
John Dewey said truth is not reality but an idea that solves a problem, and morals are just instruments to “regulate transformation of the environment” (154, 155).
William Dilthey, a historicist, said all reason is conditioned by history, not above or over it (158).
Dilthey gave us weltanschauung (worldview) as the web of interrelations that shapes our understanding but themselves are circumstantial (162).
Gottlob Frege says avoid psychologism: if nothing is fixed, all is confusion, and there’s no truth. You can’t explain truth through simply tracing its historic trajectory, as Foucault would later do. Frege was arguing in a modernist manner (171).
Ludwig Wittgenstein showed that meaning doesn’t flow from some higher transcendental or metaphysical language, but from the rules of whatever “language game” the words are ensconced in. There are “family resemblances” among language games, but ultimately philosophy of language can only show contextual meaning, not ultimate meaning (185, 186).
Karl Popper said all social sciences must be empirical or they’re not science; i.e., falsifiability. He was representing a modernist philosophy of science. But also, the human mind is not a blank slate: it’s always full of expectations and theories. Popper replaced truth with plausibility, getting closer to postmodernism within modernism (191).
Scientific findings are inseparable from the personal and social conditions they originate in, says Michael Polyanyi, presaging Leotard (195).
Thomas Kuhn said scientific paradigms are incommensurable: they’re just accepted or not and must be “converted to” like a religion. There is not a teleological development of culture but instead revolutions that throw up new systems. The transition from one reigning paradigm/theory to another is not a calm objective reconsideration of the facts (197).
Edmund Husserl believed in objective, knowable truth because of the laws of logic and math (246). In that sense he was more in the modernist stream.
Max Scheler says metaphysics are always developed in a religious framework and cannot move past this. This supports the rational unknowability of truth, even though he would not have explicitly said this (263).
According to Jean-Paul Sartre, God restricts essences and therefore freedom. But for humans to be free existence has to come before essence, and so God cannot exist (286). This is a prerequisite for postmodernism, but Sartre was not as agnostic about truth as postmodernism is.
We desire to constitute ourselves as God, as in-ourselves and for-ourselves, but that moment is death, so we are ultimately a useless passion, according to Sartre (288).
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno say modern industrial society crushes and homogenizes man’s spirit. Instrumental reason does this. It destroys creativity and critical capacity. This is from a critical theory point of view. Instrumental reason has a “logic of domination” (291).
Hiroshima and Auschwitz demonstrate the dead-end of enlightenment reason, according to critical theory (292). This is on the precipice of postmodernism’s denunciation of Enlightenment rationality for the same fault.
Herbert Marcuse of the critical theorists says the destruction of the alienating modernist system can only come from the dispossessed because they are already refusing participation in the system (293). This is on the precipice of postmodernism’s valorization of the powerless.
Even Jurgen Habermas, thought to be more of an Enlightenment type, says there’s no “disinterested knowledge”: it’s always pragmatic, with biases in mind (294, referencing his Knowledge and Interest, 1968).
Hans-Georg Gadamer gave a critique of strict empiricism because of the experience of art and history. They prove more can be known that what is certain scientifically. This is rooted in William Dilthey’s saying that we “explain nature but understand the creations of the human spirit” (298).
Gadamer also says language and dialogue are the fabric of man’s existence and shape “fundamental structures” of his world (299).
He also says “evaluations of reality” are inseparably linked to prejudice. It’s not a vicious circle, though, because critical reception is possible but the idea of man being a tabula rasa is wrong. Tradition and culture can actually guide mankind at times. He says the historicist goal of “objective interpretation of other historic eras” or cultures is not possible (but dialogue is still possible) (300, 301).
Postmodernism as a term arose in the 1970s, and it wanted to erase the distinction between the expert and the amateur. It had the goal of the death of rationalism, humanism, Victorian morality, etc. It said modernism is “worn-out, oppressive, and false.” It emphasized not unity, but difference. It was against modernist conceptualizing and proposed instead “indeterminancy, irreducibility,” etc. Only “irreducible difference” remains (303, 304).
There is no neutrality in modernism. We need a politics of “difference and nonconformity, feminist movements, environmentalism, gay rights activists” (304).
Meta-narratives “reach from beyond the discipline from which they were proposed.” But there’s really no consensus because there’s no space for universal communication (304).
Michel Foucault says the social sciences (conditioned by their historic moment and society) make “ethical or political judgments” and then present them “as scientific truths about the nature of man” (307).
He also says “historical a priori govern knowledge.” Also, with Nietzsche, he says will to power is inseparable from knowledge (308).
Foucault: there is “no real or ultimate interpretation of the world.” There’s no trajectory of history, just a “random and contingent” succession of worldviews (308). Knowledge is not about right or wrong, but power (310).
Jacque Derrida says texts don’t have “a” meaning, but a multiplicity through deconstruction (313). We must explode assumed hierarchies, such as speech over writing. Writing itself is almost just the evidence of absence of being. Any interpretation is built on signs provided by the interpreter, which refer then to other signs (314). A multiplicity of meanings for being exists, so ultimate knowledge is impossible (315).
Richard Rorty says good and evil are never definite (317). The “finitude of contingency” of language means philosophy is anchorless (318). “Truth” is always linked to our interests. Worldviews explain the same facts but somehow are incommensurable… must mean no truth (319). So our job is inspiring creativity: to “edify,” and so dialogue comes above all, which should be the essence of democracy (320).
Gianni Vattimo says modernism exhibits a “strong” mode of thinking: it’s “monolithic, unitary, domineering, authoritative.” Contrast this with postmodernism’s “weak” “constellation of multiple or fragmental philosophies in order to make democracy possible.” Nietzsche’s death of God removes transcendent horizon and makes metaphysics impossible (321). We cannot “encapsulate the meaning of being and human existence within a set of rational rules.” The need for certainty is itself a sign of “adolescent humanity” that results in “violence and fanaticism.” Philosophy’s task is pragmatic because there’s no way to know God, man, and the world in themselves. So stop trying (322). Strong reasoning imposes itself on others, and is therefore always a form of violence. The “truth” is that absolute truth has never existed, so reason must learn to exist in the tension of many truths. Strong thinking says all must adapt to itself (323). “Continuous change cannot impose anything immutable, except the fact of neverending change.” This is reminiscent of Heraclitus (324). Because there is no hierarchy, each human culture and tradition has value (325). Nihilism cannot pronounce judgment on itself. Unlike Nietzsche, no new absolute should be built on top of the rubble in the wake of the death of God (326). Vattimo is correct because there are as many hierarchies of good and evil as there are people, nowadays. We can start to see how a return to tradition and culture is a symptom of postmodernism in Vattimo.