I suggest that a truly post-modernist mind - that is, a mind which wholly embraces the 'vision' of post-modernism - must be a rather dark and despairing place; an impossible place perhaps insofar as it strives to accept conditions which run contrary to the aspiration of achieving
knowledge and truth. There is in each of us a conviction that outside of ourselves there is an
objective world which in itself is knowable and true. This is clear to us, it is common sense. Post-modernism, however, tells us that we have to be adult and give up such notions - the universe is a far more lonely and less well defined a place than we should like to believe. To have beliefs, in fact, is to show one's lack of sophistication. Values and meanings - these are the playthings of adolescents. To become adult one needs to let go and surf existence as one experiences it without depending upon narratives and myths to keep one afloat. Beliefs, values, meanings - all these things are to be discarded because all these things have no ultimate legitimacy and relate to the past and the future. What counts is the present - the instant - and all its ephemeral artifacts such mass-media, pop-culture and continental holidays. There is no depth. Scratch the surface and one finds nothing - no substance. This is the nature of reality. Things are of the surface and one wallows while one can in the slick veneer of life.
There is, however, much more to the post-modernist mind than taking pleasure in the 'sophisticated' superficial. The post-modern intellectual stance is complex and ambiguous, and much of what is espoused is not to be rejected. Generally we might characterise the intellectual post-modernist mind as follows: it is essentially open-ended, viz., it does not have as its objective some preconceived end. The attitude which it takes up when confronted by existence stems from the great maelstrom of cultural and intellectual flux - for example, existentialism, pragmatism, Marxism, hermeneutics (the art of interpretation), psychoanalysis, feminism and certain species of the philosophy of science. Together all these movements and 'isms' constitute a diverse fermentation, a melting pot of ideas and 'beliefs' out of which can be extracted a few basic 'principles' of the post-modernist stance.
Both reality and knowledge is viewed as plastic - they are what we make them.
To an extent we manufacture them and if we do so sensitively then we to a degree
sculpt them.
Concrete experience is given more prominence than fixed abstract ideas - so
the sensation of wind in one's face is given priority over the notion that there
must be an objective reality which lies behind the sensation.
'Belief' should not be dictated by preconceptions. A priori (meaning 'before
experience') systems of thought must not be allowed to direct life. Priority
must always be given to what and how we experience, to what we think life ought
to be.
Most importantly, it is clearly understood that knowledge is subjectively determined,
and determined by many things. It therefore follows that things-in-themselves
ie, objective essences, are not knowable and therefore, to all intents and purposes,
do not exist.
The negation of fixed ideas and a priori thought systems entails that all so
called values and truths must be tested, continually. There must be a continuous
process of the revaluation of all values - a continuous creating and recreating
of all ideas.
The critical search for truth, therefore, becomes problematic and obscure perhaps
impossible, because it is limited by pluralism and ambiguity and so eventually
issues in knowledge which is unclear, relative and distinctly fallible. 'Certainty'
and 'absolutes' are not polite concepts - at least they would not be terms used
in polite and proper post-modernist company. It might, perhaps, be truly offensive
to suggest that the post-modernist knows nothing though this is not so very
far from the truth!
If this is the inside of a post-modernist mind, what kind of world might it
perceive? Certainly one which cannot be taken for granted for the world is constructed
out of the flux of subjectivity. (But can the post-modernist be certain that
this is the case for there is no certainty, he tells us.) Reality is not fixed,
not solid, like a mountain - it is more like a wind, some turbulent fluid which
flows about us. There is no clear division between subjects and objects for
the two are inextricably linked, fused in a necessary marriage. In this sense
objects do exist apart from subjects for the 'open universe' is continually
structured and moulded by our beliefs and actions. Reality, therefore, is not
so much a matrix of facts but rather an extension of possibilities. The universe
is whatever we make it. But the process is two-way. Reality transforms us just
as we transform it. We are challenged by what lies outside of us - what we might
call 'the other' or 'non self and to this extent the 'non-self has made us -
but once made we impinge upon 'the other' by attempting to understand it, by
delineating it and seeing how we relate to it. In doing so,
course, we are seeking to comprehend that in which we are firmly enmeshed for in all our investigations and deliberations we can never fully objectivise existence - viz, we can never despite our desire to be truly objective, achieve a non-personal point of view - a 'view from nowhere'. The subject, therefore, is wholly entangled in the mesh of matter - though perhaps entanglement is an inaccurate metaphor, the relation between subject and object is more closely that of fusion.
I mentioned earlier that much of what the post-modernist espouses is entirely rational and acceptable, and this notion of the subject/object fusion is intelligent and can be traced back at least as far as Kant's division of Reality into the phenomenal and nominal, in which there is a single reality which can be divided into that which is presented to the senses and, more obscurely, that which is presented to the reason. When reality is observed, therefore, necessarily so the subject throws upon it a net of concepts and categories which make (it/ the object) reality intelligible, if intimidating. Perhaps a clearer metaphor is this: As subjects we experience reality as if by a process of osmosis. Because of the way we are 'put together' we can only perceive what the physical apparatus of our constitution allows us to perceive. What we see and understand is therefore a function of the limits of our bodies and our minds, The mind is not, in this respect, a passive receiver of information. It sifts through the data, accepts what is intelligible and necessarily discards - indeed is blind to - that which is not. Perception and cognition are therefore creative activities. The post-modernist conclusion - not necessarily the most plausible - is that reality is constructed by the mind and not merely perceived as it is in itself. It follows that there are as many constructions of reality as there are minds engaged in existence and no particular construction is to be considered sovereign over any other. This conclusion goes far beyond Kant who would not have tolerated the relativism which is entailed by it.
For the post-modernist, therefore, (and I mean the more intelligent of the species) human knowledge is bound in the 'chains' of certain innate subjective structures, but because of the efficacy of the imagination and the will, individuals may still enjoy a measure of cognitive freedom. We are not, it is maintained, mere automata. But importantly here, implicit is a relativised critical empiricism (ie, knowledge through sense experience) and a relativised critical rationalism (ie, knowledge through abstract thought/intuition) which together recognise the need of concrete investigation and rigorous argument, yet at the same time recognises that neither 'route to knowledge' is absolute. And here a very important observation is made which is intimately linked with the proposition that subjects and objects are inextricably fused: no empirical 'fact' is theory free. This is worth repeating: no so called fact is theory free - no fact is presented to us naked, in the flesh as it were. In addition there can be no principle or argument r which is a priori certain. If this is the case - and to some extent we must agree that it is, then all understanding is mere interpretation, and if there is no a priori certainty then all understanding is relative; no single 'interpretation' can be viewed as final. In this respect the Kuhnian model of scientific 'paradigms' was enormously influential in the '70s and in the popular mind came to be understood as an intellectual justification for the mistaken notion that 'anything goes'.
What lies at the root of this post-modernist mentality is the perspectivism which stems originally from the epistemologies (theories of knowledge) of Hume, Kant and Hegel. But most significantly it stems from the perspectivism of Friedrich Metzsche who might well be viewed as the high martyred priest of post-modernist vision. The central idea here (and it is an important and respectable one) is that reality cannot be said to possess any features which are in principle prior to interpretation. It is not that such features do not or cannot exist, but only that they cannot be said to exist because they are unknowable. What makes them unknowable is the fact of subjectivity which logically removes us from all that is 'non-self. We are therefore forced into interpreting what is presented to us knowing that what we receive has been through the sieve of our concepts and categories. All knowledge, it is entailed, comes to us through signs and symbols, constituted historically and culturally, and influenced by unconscious interests and prejudices. Truth, therefore, is deeply ambiguous. Consider the figure below: is it a duck or a rabbit? It is a real feature of he world - but what is it?
How we see it will be determined by our cultural, historical and intellectual expectations and interests. The post-modernist universe is a duck/rabbit confusion and as individuals we have a responsibility to make of it what we may. We are left, therefore, to make what we can of the subject/object divide and come to terms with the personal isolation which results. A form of solipsism lies in the background of what is essentially an illegible world. If one understands the post-modernist mind then one understands this: that reality has become unfathomable - a multidimensional flux of possibilities which spurs on our creative and courageous spirits. However, it leaves us anxious in the midst of unending relativism and existential finitude. At this stage faced with the angst generated from out of the post-modernist comprehension - we might balk at what the world has become. For what in the mind of the post-modernist has it become? It has become a vast disorienting place without foundation - a place of open-endedness - and the search for meaning and truth has become a quest for mere interpretation without ever the hope of arriving at the answer. There is, not unnaturally therefore, a radical sense of being parochial, uncertain and displaced, and consequently a spiritual void lies at the very heart of the human condition, a condition made tolerable by superficial pleasures and ephemeral sensations. There is no true meaning - there is only interpretation based on one's particular perspective which in turn is based on one's particular language and system of signs. And any such system 'cages' us, to use a term of Wittgenstein.
Here Descartes might smile ironically for his procedure of systematic doubt, which for him ended at the certainty of the cogito...(I think therefore I am), has been taken to its furthest reach where every possible meaning can be put in doubt. Can we tolerate a world where we are condemned to wander in a terrain of the possibility of perpetual error, all the time self-aware, all the time disorientated? Can we tolerate a life in which there are no fixed points, points by which we can judge the truth and worthwhile of things? If there are no fixed points then value consists only in what a thing (an interpretation) can offer n terms of utility, emancipation, edification and creativity - all of these things can be judged only in terms of personal and cultural taste. There can never be any permanence to them: Bach and Spice enjoy equal legitimacy!
The Upshot
The kind of vulgar relativism which post-modernism has spawned is the last refuge of the
intellectually infirm. To counter Protagoras"'man is the measure of all things" I refer the reader to Plato's 'Theaetetus' where objectivism is championed. However, in its highest intellectual mode, post-modernism is not to be wholly dismissed for it has created the intellectual and spiritual conditions for the revaluation of all values and therefore the recreation of man. Its secularising influences and pluralistic tendencies may well have contributed to the deconstructing of traditional and organised religion, but at the same time they have helped liberate the individual, through perspectivism, to achieve a far greater measure of spiritual autonomy to the extent that the individual feels compelled to establish for himself a precise and personal relationship to the ultimate conditions of existence. Semantic nihilism has therefore resulted in an increased awareness of self-responsibility and the capacity for personal transformation. Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God", meaning the old conception of deity, and this proclamation left open the possibility for a reconception which would emerge from out of the more authentic experience of the numinous. The new God would be something intuited in the far larger comprehension of the transcendent individual - what Metzsche termed the 'ubermensch or 'over man'. In many ways this represents the religious tendency coming of age. No longer is religious behaviour reduced to a psychologically or culturally determined belief in mythological beings, but it is now perceived to be an absolutely fundamental human activity in which the individual, and therefore society, symbolically engages in the ultimate nature of being. This is not to negate God, but to rediscover Him.
The roles of science, of philosophy and psychology, have all been affected by the perspectives which post-modernism has forced upon them, and in every respect the effects can be edifying and liberating if they are intelligently directed and not killed in the unintelligence of relativism. The contemporary intellectual situation is therefore this: there is an opportunity to reevaluate the whole adventure of human existence which arises out of the tension between the impulse to deconstruct and unmask all knowledge, beliefs and world views, and the impulse to integrate and reconcile all seeming polarities such subject/object, mind/matter, human/nature, consciousness/unconsciousness etc. However, the tension which exists naturally between these antithetical impulses has not yet produced anything which might serve as a springboard to a future of intellectual and spiritual confidence. There is still a pall of irresolution, perplexity and anxiety.
So, for those with any sense of purpose and desire for foundation the task would appear to be this: to discover, or create, a cultural vision which is universal in its scope and sustained by an intrinsic depth which achieves an authentic coherence. It will be fertile in its efficacy and yet unbound by any a priori limitation on possible interpretation. Now, it is difficult to see just how such a world perspective could emerge from out of the present fragmentation. But one thing is clear - relativism must be extinguished in every mind which gives it the barest consideration, for the way of relativism lies the spiritual and cognitive degeneration of the species.