How French intellectuals ruined the west (Postmodernism)
Mar 29, 2017 2:26:42 GMT -5
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Post by Optimus on Mar 29, 2017 2:26:42 GMT -5
"HOW FRENCH “INTELLECTUALS” RUINED THE WEST: POSTMODERNISM AND ITS IMPACT, EXPLAINED"
areomagazine.com/2017/03/27/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-postmodernism-and-its-impact-explained/
This article was getting passed around my FB feed today and it reflects a lot of what I've often though about postmodernism and the groan-worthy tripe of Foucault.
I think postmodernism, for the most part, is/was overly relativistic garbage, a poor-man's excuse for a philosophical movement embraced by people who eschew deep, rational thinking and the fruits of the Enlightenment. Foucalt's influence, in particular, has over the past few decades (for some odd reason) poisoned a lot of modern-day academic thinking. His vague, ill-defined, non-empirically supported nonsense of so-called "power structures" has birthed a nameless, faceless "institutional power structure" boogeyman that can suddenly/coincidentally be found wherever it needs to be found to fit an aggrieved narrative and be blamed for all of society's ills whenever it's convenient. It has currently manifested into an environment where rational, open discourse about a number of important sociocultural phenomena gets shut down before it even begins because people are discouraged from honest dialogue about the consequences of one's personal agency and the destructive power of a person's chosen milieu and belief systems.
Instead, we can just blame all of our problems on institutional this and systemic that without ever offering or even working on real solutions. It seems to have terminally infected academic thinking in the humanities, especially, and has been creeping into the social sciences as well. Thankfully, some people are starting to fight back, like Jonathan Haidt. People need to toss Foucault and postmodernism on the trash heap of history and start reading John Stuart Mill and David Hume again.
areomagazine.com/2017/03/27/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-postmodernism-and-its-impact-explained/
This article was getting passed around my FB feed today and it reflects a lot of what I've often though about postmodernism and the groan-worthy tripe of Foucault.
Postmodernism presents a threat not only to liberal democracy but to modernity itself. That may sound like a bold or even hyperbolic claim, but the reality is that the cluster of ideas and values at the root of postmodernism have broken the bounds of academia and gained great cultural power in western society. The irrational and identitarian “symptoms” of postmodernism are easily recognizable and much criticized, but the ethos underlying them is not well understood. This is partly because postmodernists rarely explain themselves clearly and partly because of the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of a way of thought which denies a stable reality or reliable knowledge to exist. However, there are consistent ideas at the root of postmodernism and understanding them is essential if we intend to counter them. They underlie the problems we see today in Social Justice Activism, undermine the credibility of the Left and threaten to return us to an irrational and tribal “pre-modern” culture.
I think postmodernism, for the most part, is/was overly relativistic garbage, a poor-man's excuse for a philosophical movement embraced by people who eschew deep, rational thinking and the fruits of the Enlightenment. Foucalt's influence, in particular, has over the past few decades (for some odd reason) poisoned a lot of modern-day academic thinking. His vague, ill-defined, non-empirically supported nonsense of so-called "power structures" has birthed a nameless, faceless "institutional power structure" boogeyman that can suddenly/coincidentally be found wherever it needs to be found to fit an aggrieved narrative and be blamed for all of society's ills whenever it's convenient. It has currently manifested into an environment where rational, open discourse about a number of important sociocultural phenomena gets shut down before it even begins because people are discouraged from honest dialogue about the consequences of one's personal agency and the destructive power of a person's chosen milieu and belief systems.
Instead, we can just blame all of our problems on institutional this and systemic that without ever offering or even working on real solutions. It seems to have terminally infected academic thinking in the humanities, especially, and has been creeping into the social sciences as well. Thankfully, some people are starting to fight back, like Jonathan Haidt. People need to toss Foucault and postmodernism on the trash heap of history and start reading John Stuart Mill and David Hume again.
