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MrFun
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of Iowa
Nov 2000
time: 23:23
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 29-05-2005 10:02
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#1
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Are modernism and relativism both threats to liberty and equality?
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Got spare money?
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First, I would like to say that I acknowledge that there is a whole spectrum of post-modernists and relativists who disagree among themselves in terms of philosophical arguments and ideology. Post-modernism nor relativism are monolithic and literally the same in conceptualization from one individual to another.
Having said that, when I refer to post-modernists and relativists in this thread, I mean to refer to those who take their idea(s) to such an extreme, that I think they might pose a threat to the fundamental ideas of liberty and equality.
Post-modernists and relatavists question nearly everything that is presumed to be true. They claim that science itself is a form of dogma in the way that religion was once a powerful form of dogma before the era of the Enlightenment (although we see how religion is still a powerful force even today). But this not about contrasting the dogma of religion in the pre-Enlightenment period of Western history with that of contemporary religious dogma. The point here, is that post-modernists and relatavists degrade science to a level of dogma or absolutism in the same way a number of secular intellectuals often do so with religion.
Post-modernists and relativists also often claim that even the assertion of the idea that each human person is unique as an individual is merely an idea that has nothing to do with objective reality. The value we place on the uniqueness of each individual in other words, is essentially worthless, because it has no truth in of itself.
So what does this have to do with my question as to whether or not post-modernism and relativism are a threat to liberty and equality? Well, because post-modernists and relativists question all ideas that we presume to be true, this leads them to question the fundamental ideas of liberty and equality.
Their goal of deconstructing the ideas of liberty and equality is dangerous. For future generations, in a world where post-modernists and relativists may have prevailed in having their ideas as being social norms, what types of governments can exist that would be seen as legitimate? It certainly wouldn't be free governments of republics and/or democracies.
What does anyone else think about the implications of post-modernism and relativism? Who agrees with my thoughts? Who disagrees with my thoughts?
Last edited by MrFun on 29-05-2005 at 10:40
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:23
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a) Mr. Fun, you should've said "post-modernism" in the title.
b) to your question, yes.
c) to all those who somehow connect relativism to any degree to questioning political order, free-speech etc., this is perhaps the stupidest, most flawed connection, ever. The whole point, the whole superiority of dissent against authority, and free speech, is that through a level battlefield of opinions and points of view, one's society establishes the proper means and behaviors of it's survival in the short run, and more general ethical laws in the long run.
To say things like "OMG 'insert brutal dictatorship here' were against relativism" is moronic, for: a) It's a childish appeal to emotion. b) One can place a thousand of non-ethical machiavellian bastards that had basically relativistic belief of some sort.
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Dracon II
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Communist Party of Apolyton
Jan 1970
time: 15:23
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Postmodernists (well the sensible ones anyway) don't attack science wholesale. The trend in postmodernity has been a shift in thinking from "critical/universal reason" to "instrumental/practical reason". Thus, postmodernists do acknowledge science's ability to solve problems, but they question the discourse of science, and the enlightenment "project" from which it sprung, and the universalist assumptions that the discourse espouses. Thus, they do acknowledge that reason can be applied to problems, but they question the universality of reason, or reason as a "logos". They also wish to demonstrate that science is embedded in culture and was a product of culture.
I do have reservations with postmodernist theory. The following are scribblings from my notebooks (I was doing a sociology course on postmodernism).
The postmodernists essentially prohibit hermeneutics on any meaningful level and thus imply that social science is futile. If one take's postmodern claims seriously, and applies it to social research, one might as well just sit and watch TV, for in observing social phenomena with an epistemological prohibition on searching for depth, the allegory of the passive observer of projected images becomes a valid one. Postmodernists are the priests of Plato's cave.
Perhaps the postmodernist forgoes questions of origins because it calls ends and conclusions into the mind's view. Perhaps they disavow meaning because they are happily perched in the present, when in fact the only certainty in life is not the present, but the end. There is a teleology, and it calls on us to give meaning. Death is the truth that demands meaning for life.
Perhaps the postmodernist is happy to dissolve the subject because he is always gratified by objects. He needs no meaning because pleasure warrants no meaning. He is the spoilt child that accepts a gift without so much as a "thankyou". He is the great ego, the west. There is no postmodern answer to suffering and thus there is no postmodern in Africa, the slums, or on the deathbed.
Whilst proclaiming the 'death of man' (Foucault), and rejecting anthropocentrism, postmodernists assert that knowledge and reality exist only in discourse, texts and language, which are man made structures. Thus, whilst rejecting the centrality of man, they hold that our knowledge and perception of reality can only ever be anthropocentric and anthropogenetic.
I do think postmodernism does illustrate the complexity of social life, and can demonstrate the limits of social science. But postmodernism carried to its logical conclusions could be quite disastrous.
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Dr Strangelove
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I've said it once, and I'll say it again: everyone is a relativist. No one would apply a fixed "absolute" set of rules to all conceivable situations.
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