Postmodern or Grasping at Straws

I've been neck deep in philosophy of late, getting to know some of the most twisted minds of the last two hundred years. Stephen Hicks, Professor of Philosophy at Rockford College, Illinois (named, I think, after the cheekiest of all TV private investigators, Jim Rockford), wrote a book called Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. As the title suggests, the author traces postmodernism (that is, intellectual douchebaggery) from its departure from modernist thought to the present. It's highly informative, with an unexpected twist or two, but ultimately I found it to be much ado about nothing.

First a twist - here's a quiz. True or False: the nuttiest of today's lefty academics are ideologically derived from Immanuel Kant. Most (including myself as recently as a week ago) would respond with a resounding NO. Kant, after all, is heralded as one of the key Enlightenment thinkers, right? Right...and wrong. Although Kant did a lot for reason in terms of advocating its usefulness in establishing logical relationships between entities, he dealt it a devastating blow in saying that reason could never get us in touch with reality.

The Kantian view is that reality, at least what we think of as reality, is something fabricated entirely by our minds. He was enough of a realist to believe that there is some kind of absolute truth, but he believed that our minds are simply incapable of getting anywhere near it. Instead, we create reality according the constructs and limitations of our grey matter. Space and time do not really exist; we create them. Reading this did not shock me - I've known for a long time that Kant saw limits to reason, and that he, along with David Hume, officially abandoned it by the end of their lives. However, I was shocked to learn that guys like Hegel, Shopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger all used Kantian anti-reason as a jumping off point for their ravings. Furthermore, that those ravings eventually became the basis for American (and much of European) leftist thinking.

Perhaps I should make a point here. Hicks' objective, I assume (he never quite says), is to help us understand what informs the mindset of so many of the wackos in our midst, especially those who are pervasive in academia. Ostensibly, once we get this, we can construct arguments (or at least responses) that will be more satisfying than being frozen like a deer in headlights at the sheer lunacy of what comes out of their mouths. On this, I think he's reaching, but only because this never happens to me, and because he's giving most liberals far too much credit. First a little more background - I'll lay out postmodernism's main tenets and then tie them to contemporary liberal perspectives. (To be clear, my use of the term 'liberal' is meant to refer to a modern liberal, like say Barbara Boxer, not a classical liberal, like say Milton Friedman.)

1. In terms of metaphysics (that is, what is reality?), the postmodernist is strictly anti-realist, which is to say that there is no such thing. Everything is a construct of the human mind. Somehow, these crazies have concluded that we live in The Matrix, but without the Matrix.

The modern liberal embraces this wholeheartedly. They refuse to deal in fact and reality. To them, humanity can be perfected and all men are good, if only the systems that organize them were right.

2. In terms of epistemology (that is, how do we know what we know?), the postmodernist believes in social subjectivism, which is to say it's all good. Whatever and however you want to come by knowledge is just fine, since you're creating reality in your head anyway.

Here are the seeds of multiculturalism. If any way of approaching the world is as good as any other, then no culture is better than any other. Hence, the PCification of society.

3. In terms of human nature, the postmodernist believes we are the results of social construction, which is to say that our social and cultural environment creates whatever nature we may have.

Again, this is the liberal's battlecry against exploitative capitalism, gender socialization, racism, blah, blah, blah.

4. In terms of ethics (that is, who or what is the arbiter of right and wrong?), the postmodernist is a collectivist, which is to say that the individual is always secondary to the group, which can be defined by race, nationality, sex, or religion.

Liberals think in terms of groups and abhor those who put the needs and desires of individuals ahead of them.

5. In terms of politics and economics, the postmodernist is a socialist, which is to say dumbass.

We can get at this one indirectly by noticing that our society has become more and more socialist over the centuries since 1776, and it has been the liberals, almost exclusively, who have made it so. We can also get at it directly by noting that most lefty causes are joined by communist and socialist groups right alongside the likes George Soros and Michael Moore. (Anyone checked out Camp Casey lately?)

So there you have it, the breakdown of the postmodernist mentality and its modern liberal cousin. One might wonder how it is that I disagree with Hicks when I seem to have validated his primary thesis. Fair enough. Here's the deal - Hicks' main argument is that people today who exhibit these thought processes are direct cognitive descendents of the aforementioned philosophers. Though he focuses on four contemporary and well-known postmodernists (Derrida, Rorty, Foucault, and Lyotard), the implication is that most leftists have this philosophical pedigree coursing through their veins. This is where we part ways.

There is a thread that runs all the way from Immanueal Kant to Ted Kennedy, and it isn't the same philosophical contemplation and subsequent conclusion. It is very simple - none of these people had or have the stomach for reality. It truly is that simple. We don't need to put on our propeller hats and get down and dirty with Kierkegaard to recognize that, across the board, from postmodernist philosopher to modern-day politician, the mindset is the same - if reality doesn't look like I want it to, I will deny its existence.

Indeed, in the second preface to Kant's, Critique of Pure Reason, he asserts, "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." Boom! There you have it - liberalism in a nutshell. (Yes, I realize that libs aren't heavy into Jesus. I'm talking about the notion of abandoning reality for something you like more.) There are interesting things that flow from this. For starters, if there is no reality and all knowledge is subjective, then there is no such thing as truth. That's right. So while we pound our fists on the table about facts and honesty, the anti-realist liberal is calculating truth (or what we think of as truth) as a matter of convenience.

You see, as long as realists are in power, they will bash anti-realists over the head with it, and though there really is no reality, getting bashed over the head with faux-reality still doesn't feel good. Sooo...the answer is to snatch power from the hands of realists, and rhetoric is the most powerful tool for doing so. You getting the picture here? I see folks, usually conservatives, getting so wound up over the dishonesty of liberals, but what they fail to realize is that the libs are playing a completely different game. It's not about being right (there's no such thing, remember); it's about power. Plain and simple.

The problem is that too many people, though they most assuredly do not know it, buy into Kant's (or Hegel's, to be precise) ideas about reality - namely, that it doesn't really exist. I have often wondered what Kant would have said if Bill and Ted had brought him back instead of Sigmund Freud. Given that science has advanced to the point that we can be pretty darned sure about reality until we get down to the quantum level, I wonder if Kant would have been able to find middle ground in his thinking. To him, it was either that the real world gives its impression to the human mind or the mind gives its impression to the real world. When faced with those choices, it's easy to see how he concluded as he did. In any case, I am a realist, so I acknowledge that we have what we have - some folks deal in reality, and some don't. Unlike Stephen Hicks, I don't believe that most of those who don't have any philosophical basis for their approach. I think, in the immortal spirit of Nicholson's character in, A Few Good Men, they just can't handle the truth. They're not postmodern, they're just grasping at straws.

BTW - I'm not back, I'm still on hiatus. Really - don't get your hopes up. This one just couldn't wait.