Postmodernism [Caputo, 2006]

[Source: John D. Caputo, chapter 5 of Philosophy and Theology (Abingdon Press, 2006)]

Summary

Postmodernism isn’t relativism or skepticism. Rather it’s a sense that:

• Our perspectives, vocabularies, and paradigms necessarily shape our thought. We get somewhere in thinking not by ridding ourselves of those things, but by developing and reconfiguring them.
• Because of the world’s vast complexity, we are incredulous at totalising metanarratives (theories that claim to be the final word). We need to attend closely to the details, for it’s the details—like anomalies in science—that challenge our paradigms, languages and perspectives, and push us to develop new ones.
• Pure reason isn't the only way to understand the world. Intuition, grace, faith and art shed light on it too.

The Postmodern Turn.

1. The hermeneutical turn. We’re not objective, neutral observers, but are steeped in presuppositions. We get somewhere not by ridding ourselves of presuppositions, but by using our intuitions to help us reform our present ones.
• Heidegger, influenced by Kierkegaard, argued that when we look at something we must always see it in the light of the presuppositions we inherit, because it is we who are looking at it. We can’t look from a ‘neutral’ standpoint, because we can’t look through anyone’s eyes but our own.
• These presuppositions don’t blind us, but give us access to the world. They give shape to the stimuli and data of the world we encounter, and so give us an angle into it. From a ‘neutral’ perspective the world, a perspective without presuppositions, the world is an incomprehensible swirling mess. We get somewhere not by ridding ourselves of presuppositions, but by developing and transforming them.
2. The linguistic turn. We need language to think, but all language is steeped in prejudices. We get somewhere not by trying to reject language, but by finding ways of saying things better.
• Descartes attempted in his Meditations to presume nothing, but missed that the words he was using were ones he’d inherited from others, and therefore inherently came with presumptions. As Wittgenstein said, there’s no private language: all language is public, and is loaded with public presuppositions, prejudices, and tendencies—ingrained grooves that carry you in certain directions.
• Wittgenstein argued that the best way to deal with language’s prejudices is not to rid ourselves of language, since without language we can’t think. Instead, we get somewhere by coming up with new, more complex, more nuanced vocabularies—like Heidegger, who coined a new vocabulary to express his new ideas, and deliberately avoided words like ‘consciousness’ that had too much freight.
3. The revolutionary turn. Under settled paradigms we can be objective and dispassionate, but when paradigms are in flux we get somewhere by employing our intuition and feelings.
• Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) claimed that scientists do not merely passively record information but also actively project a framework or paradigm onto the data. ‘Paradigms’ are overarching frameworks that constitute our best way of making sense of all the data we have, and dictate what sorts of data should be collected and how.
• Khun also claimed that scientists not are pure, unimpassioned observers but flesh-and-blood people with hunches, intuitions, and feelings. His talk of intuition and hunches did not mean he was against reason but that he understood ‘reason’ to mean ‘having good reasons’, not having pure and incontrovertible Reason or a piece of eternity in your pocket. This suggested that one could understand the world not only by pure reason, but also by faith, grace, and art. Neither did the presence of intuitions mean that scientists couldn’t be objective, but rather that objectivity is the sort of thing you get only when science is being practiced under a settled paradigm.
• New paradigms unsettle old ones when scientists discover an anomaly so intractable that they have to totally rethink their framework. This revolution mostly proceeds seemingly against the ‘evidence’, and by the spark of hunch and intuition. One joins the revolution when one ‘gets’ the new paradigm or ‘sees it’—i.e. intuits that it’s right. Often the last to get the new paradigm are the old and tenured. They have been with the old paradigm for such a long time that they can’t separate the data from the old interpretation of it, and as far as they’re concerned all the ‘evidence’ points to the old paradigm. The new paradigm only takes over when they are shouted down, retire, or join the revolution—a revolution as full of feelings and instinct as an artistic or political revolution.

Incredulity at Meta-Narratives

• The Postmodern Condition (1977) Lyotard defined the postmodern as ‘incredulity to meta-narratives’ (grands récits, ‘big stories’)—totalising, overarching stories which say that life is ‘nothing but’ displaced love for your mum (Freud), or that history is ‘nothing but’ the unfolding of the absolute spirit (Hegel). Enough of these ‘nothing buts’, said Lyotard: our interpretations of the world will always be too simplistic to fully account for our world’s vast complexity.

• Lyotard didn’t say ‘refutation of meta-narratives’, because that would have implied that he had an even bigger story. He simply said these big stories had become incredible, and we’d grown incredulous.

Theological Implications

• Postmodernism need not lead to relativism or skepticism. Nevertheless, from a religious perspective, postmodernism does imply that God’s point of view is reserved for God, while the human standpoint is immersed in a multiplicity of angles.