Where did postmodernism come from? Well, it comes from idealism, German Idealism in particular; which started with Immanuel Kant's criticism of (mainly) Aristotelian thought. German Idealism transformed the medieval proofs for the existence of God (in particular, the Ontological, the Cosmological and the Teleological proofs) into the modern proofs for the existence of the self. In the older form of Plato's idealism, it had been assumed that we could only discover, not create knowledge (in his timeless world of Forms, or ideas). This is closely related to the modern illusion of the spontaneity of the imagination. In fact, the mental (or, in general, ideal) world has rules of development that are analogous (neither timeless, nor spontaneous) to those that exist in the material world of things; but, the point is that none of these can be final or self-contained; we do really know, but only in part; only partial knowledge is possible.
Does postmodernism give us any kind of real knowledge?
2007-06-05
12:43:29
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3 answers
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asked by
Nicholas Bishop
2
in
Philosophy