Am I a Postmodernist
John Perry

12 September 2009

The term ``postmodern’’ came into use as a description of certain trends in architecture, art, and literature in the 1970’s, although the trends it describes reach back earlier in the twentieth century, to Joyce and Finnegan’s Wake in the case of literature, and to the 1950’s at least in the case of architecture. But what counts as postmodern philosophy?

One theme of postmodernism, according to Jean-François Lytard at any rate, is the opposition to theory and “meta-narrative”. If I had just this much to go on, I might think that a good candidate for postmodern philosophy would be the views I was taught in graduate school at Cornell, a mixture of the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the Oxford Philosophy of J.O. Urmson, John Austin, and the like.

Urmson is an interesting figure. He came back to Oxford after spending five or six years in a German prison camp; he was one of the British soldiers who didn’t make it onto one of the boats at Dunkirk. Upon resuming to his career in philosophy at a very early stage, he once told me, he looked on things differently than he might have in more normal times, when he would have been five years younger. He was more adventurous, more confident of his ability to do philosophy on his own than merely build on the last generation, and deeply suspicious of all “-isms” and overarching themes; he and the group of “ordinary language philosophers” at Oxford wanted to start philosophy over with few preconceptions about it.

Now this sounds very postmodernist. And when you add to that the focus on language, and add in a Wittgenstein’s anti-theoretical position, the concept of language games from Wittgenstein and speech acts and performative language from Austin --- two ways of extending the philosophy of language beyond the merely descriptive uses of language --- it sounds very much like what postmodernism is supposed to be about.

这也许可以解释为什么我经常喜欢后现代哲学的句子和一些段落，尤其是利奥塔，有时是罗蒂，不太喜欢德里达。很多句子，一些段落----但我很少能读完一整篇文章。后者的原因，除了我成年后出现的注意力缺陷障碍之外，是你在阅读后现代文章时看到的两种情况之一。通常他们会讨论后现代主义的这个或那个主题是如何与各种已故人士的言论相联系的，如黑格尔，海德格尔，尼采，弗洛伊德，杜威等等。我并没有读过很多相关的文献，我觉得这些讨论很难理解，也很无聊，这与没有元叙事的哲学是不一样的。无论如何，我的印象是后现代哲学家喜欢阅读哲学——要么是他们非常自律地阅读了这么多哲学。

Some of the philosophers actually turn to examples at times and do some philosophy. Derrida, for example. He really has some interesting examples. But what he has to say about them usually seems to me to head off in the wrong direction. Postcards, for example. When I came across Derrida’s discussion of postcards (I don’t remember where) I already had a theory of postcard’s, based on asking the question, “what do you know when you read “I am having a good time here” on a postcard but you don’t know who sent it, from where, and when?” I found what I and my friends had to say on such topics much more interesting and somewhat more sophisticated than what Derrida had to say (as far as I could make it out), so I never got through a whole essay, much less a whole book, by him either.

I actually don’t like reading philosophy all that much; I like doing philosophy and reading it is the price you have to pay. Not that it’s a terrible experience, but I can’t a less appealing way to spend the day than reading through the tomes that postmodernists all seem to know by heart. Well actually I can think of a lot less appealing ways to spend a day, but you get my drift.

So, although I don’t like meta-narratives, and agree with many of Lyotard’s opinions --- or at least many of his sentences --- about states, capitalism, Freud, Marx, and the like, I guess I am not a postmodernist.

Comments(12)

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Guest

Saturday, August 18, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

please finish the discussion of "meta-narrative."

please finish the discussion of "meta-narrative."

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Guest

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

THE AGE OF TRUTH I believe that man is emerging

THE AGE OF TRUTH
I believe that man is emerging from the era of philosophical darkness, into the age of Postdarkness. The Darkness Era is the age when the word "true" was undefined and misunderstood by mankind. An age when man practiced and lived in untruth, only because we had been taught to do so. The extent of that era is measured by the time of man's existence; before mankind, nature was absolutely true. We went the wrong way. There have been some along the way who have come close to reversing or missteps, who have seen the light of truth, who have fought and died for truth, but no one has yet to define it. Not even the great Socrates could grasp the truth. No one has yet to turn mankind toward the path of truth, the parallel path of nature's truth. .
不要把“后黑暗时代”与“启蒙时代”或“科学革命”混为一谈，后者在很大程度上依赖于对自然的有缺陷的测量，以及由此产生的自然法则或限制。后黑暗时代更应该被描述为轴心时代的进步。后黑暗时代将是一个绝对真理被知晓的时代。在这个时代，真理被教导和实践，在这个时代，真理不是一个人的，而是所有人的。一个绝对统一的时代，一个平等的时代。
后黑暗时代将被称为真理时代。
The Age of Truth will not only set man free, but all of nature, all things equally.
欢迎来到真理时代!
MJA

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Guest

Friday, August 31, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

In response to the post about the age of post-dark

In response to the post about the age of post-darkness That statement may be a little presumptuous or even neo-prophetic.
难道我们就不会偏离真相更多吗?或者也许我们的发现不是真理，而是真理这个词的淘汰?
Perhaps "truth" is actually a mask on the face of reality, or merely a sort of carrot-on-a-stick distraction from perception. Or all is true because it has been percieved? Philosophers have never been able to define the word truth because it is the infinite and the ultimate unanswerable question to begin with; It is the philosopher's ultimate motivation. With truth solved there is no why. (perhaps truth is the ability to strictly percieve do u mean?)
What i would hope to see from this 'new age' is the recognition of what is valid and not what is true. 'Post-modern' for example... Isn't that a sort of redundancy?
This "age of truth" thus far seems to be a case of unnecessary confusion. intermediary? perhaps. I would hope.

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Guest

Saturday, September 1, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

"Truth" is the one language meant to be "share

"Truth" is the one language meant to be "shared" through all people. The key word being "shared". It was created to be "felt" in order to be "understood". It is our guide in life towards a "deeper understanding" of life's design.
“真理”在我们的日常生活中与每个人分享。我们最大的“障碍”不是理解“真相”，而是在我们试图“理解”它的“选择”范围内。用我们的头脑是通常的“选择”。我们要求我们的头脑去理解它不能理解的东西。为了理解“真理”的本质，我们必须学会如何增强我们“感受”的能力，以便我们可以“理解”与我们共享的东西。我们的心灵不是为了“感觉”或“理解”而被创造出来的，它不具备这种能力。这就是为什么我们的大脑经常会告诉我们“真相”的反面。在我们的生活中有多少次这样的事情发生，我们“试图理解”一个“生命时刻”，或者要求我们的大脑分享我们希望理解的事件的“真相”，然而它的回答总是一系列的猜测。然而，在我们的生活中，有多少次会出现这样的时刻:我们体验到一种与我们共享的“感觉”，并转化为一种“理解”，即我们“刚刚知道”某事是“真的”或“即将发生”或“刚刚发生”。我们能够“理解”我们的思想、我们的精神和我们的身体是为了什么而被创造出来的，以及如何让它们各自生长，从而使它们在一起工作，这为我们在我们创造的目标中“生长”提供了适当的基础。 Most people just lack the "understanding" to do so, mainly because no one has thus far "shared" the one thing that we all wish to know, how to understand, the "Truth" ..... have an awesome day .... Rich

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Guest

Sunday, September 2, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

你写得多，读得多!

你写得多，读得多!

Tom's picture

Tom

Monday, September 17, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

Hey All, Question for the postmodernists: what

Hey All,
Question for the postmodernists: what if I went down to the local domestic violence clinic and told the line of victims that what just happened to them was a "meta narrative" ? How 'bout switching off an airplanes engines 20,000 ft above the Atlantic Ocean because all knowledge is "artificial", "constructed," and has no independent reality. Or how bout this: a planeload full of pomo theorists 20,000 ft above the Atlantic given a vote on whether or not to switch off the engine ?
I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, just struggling with this new po-mo thing. I was an economics major...
Tom.

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Guest

Monday, October 29, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

这个博客很荒谬。"Most often th

这个博客很荒谬。
"Most often they turn into discussions of how this or that theme of postmodernism is related to what various dead people said, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud, Dewey, etc. etc."
你真是太无知了。这个列表中至少有一半的人以一种非常直接和可读性强的方式写作。他们死了又怎样?所以如果你需要了解一些背景呢?你必须了解工作背景，才能胜任任何专业工作。你对这项工作的反应表明你对现实世界的态度相当不成熟。
"I found what I and my friends had to say on such topics much more interesting and somewhat more sophisticated than what Derrida had to say (as far as I could make it out), so I never got through a whole essay, much less a whole book, by him either."
如果你从来没有读过德里达的整篇文章，你怎么可能知道他是“纯朴的”?仅仅因为你承认你不屑于做这些工作，并不能证明你持有这些无知的观点是正确的。你有没有想过，也许你的朋友们真的读过德里达，并为你提供了他(或任何其他“后现代主义”)的想法的摘要版本，从而省去了你必须做任何工作的滑稽，让你生活在自以为是的无知中，写这样愚蠢的博客。
if you actually were willing to put some reasonable amount of effort in you might find this work rewarding and be able to break down some of these silly adolescent prejudices that you hold. admittedly sitting around talking cod-philosophy with people who are going to give you your ideas is an appealing way to spend your time, seems a touch unrewarding however.

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Guest

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 -- 5:00 PM

我想我也不是一个后现代主义者……although

我想我也不是一个后现代主义者……尽管我仍然不完全清楚one的定义是什么!

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Guest

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 -- 5:00 PM

Always interesting to me how there are new terms p

我一直很感兴趣的是每一代人都有新的术语出现……普通的老人怎么了?

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Guest

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 -- 5:00 PM

有趣的“解释”…not sure if postmode

有趣的“解释”…不确定后现代主义是不是我现在会用的术语……但我听过“kids”用这个词，所以它一定是正确的!!

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Guest

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 -- 5:00 PM

Interesting article. A good and clever read... li

Interesting article. A good and clever read... like your style! Thanks...
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