To what degree is postmodernism true?

Question

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?

Most people see postmodernism in a purely negative light, because it denies both classical correspondence and modernist coherence (between the material and the ideal worlds); however, there is a positive side to this. It opens up the question as to how, in this case, the material is related to the ideal; there must be some kind of partially dependent and partially independent mediation going on. Some people have seen in this an implicit return to the holistic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, in which the mediator is always more than the sum of the parts; and (paraphrasing Aquinas) this is what we call God.

Answer 1

Since you cite Kant as an origin it seems appropriate to return to him once again.

Kant's main argument against skepticism was that knowledge about HOW you percieve things is an important kind of knowledge. It is information about what you can detect with your senses and what you cannot; when they are misleading you and when they tell you the truth.

In this wise, even if postmodernism contains no other information, perhaps it contains critical information about the limits of what we know. For example, the existentialists argue that sometimes reason just doesn't work. It's good to know when that is so you don't waste your time trying, neh? So too it might be with any kind of knowing.

Limits and boundaries are IMPORTANT!

Answer 2

Postmodernism (in its radical forms) cannot and refuses to adjudicate claims to truth or knowledge-- this is it's central premise and primary ethos. As far as its precursors in Western philosophy it happens as a result of the exhaustion of the rationalism that has characterized Western philosophy since the Enlightenment. Kant might anticipate it in some way, but it is really a reaction to him, and shares much more kinship with Nietzsche, who was also reacting to Kant. In my estimation, postmodernism is best understood as a manifestation of the decadence of late existentialism.

Answer 3

"real" knowledge; I get a little suspicious when a person uses the word 'real'' as it immediately elicits its opposite ''unreal". Postmodernism, whatever that is, does well if one identifies the fact that unreal is as incorporated and factually determinant as is real and rightly so as insanity is more of threat than spiritual peace; the way to it is as valuable as the way out.


'Truth is at first taken to mean that I know how something is. This is truth, however, only in reference to consciousness; it is formal truth, bare correctness. Truth in the deeper sense consists in the identity between objectivity and the notion. It is in this deeper sense of truth that we speak of a true state, or of a true work of art. These objects are true, if they are as they ought to be, i.e. if their reality corresponds to their notion. When thus viewed, to be untrue means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an untrue man, a man who does not behave as his notion or his vocation requires. Nothing however can subsist, if it be wholly devoid of identity between the notion and reality. Even bad and untrue things have being, in so far as their reality still, somehow, conforms to their notion. Whatever is thoroughly bad or contrary to the notion is for that very reason on the way to ruin. It is by the notion alone that the things in the world have their subsistence; or, as it is expressed in the language of religious conception, things are what they are, only in virtue of the divine and thereby Creative thought which dwells within them. '
G.W.F. Hegel
from: Part One of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic

Third Subdivision: The Notion
C. The Idea
Development of The Idea
Life — Cognition — Absolute Idea


http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slidea.htm#SL213n