Talk:Postmodern philosophy
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I agree with LMS, this article is terrible. Most philosophers do not consider postmodernism to have much if any influence on the mainstream of their discipline. A real philospher should rewrite this.
Just a note for anyone interested, in the "History of Philosophy" Index, the link to "21st Century philosophy" links directly to Postmodern Philosophy, which is not how I would characterize it. Of course, it does require a new article, but properly speaking, the two main lines of thought are Continental (which has petered out a bit from what I know - are there still active phenomenologists?) and Analytic (which is most definately still going strong.)
Please wait for a philosopher to write an article on this subject. The following is philosophically incompetent--to put it bluntly. I don't think it can be rescued; a philosopher would have to start from scratch. That's why I've put it on this page. --User:LMS
Postmodern philosophy, like other fields of philosophy, is a set of interesting questions that leads to a set of equally interesting answers. This specific set of questions fundamentally tries to ask how people know and believe the things that they do.
The origin of Postmodern philosophy comes from the rift between Existentialism and modern philosophy. Classical philosophy is very much concerned with logic and rational thought; as in Rene Descartes' argument I think, therefore I am. Existentialism, in contrast, draws its arguments from emotive state, "I am my emotions". The gap between these two ways of building an understanding of the world was what gave rise to the postmodern philosophical inquiry.
Episteme, Paradigm, Paradigm Shift, and Deconstructionism are all specific arguments of post modern philosophy.
Episteme is the set of philosophical assumptions that underly a particular reader's understanding of an argument. A scientist with a rationalist episteme might for instance have difficulty in understanding the emotional argument of a woman in love, or the faith argument of a religious man. In the book 'Writing and Difference', Jacques Derrida examines a nonsensical argument and shows that even though your fundamental belief system or episteme prevents you from consciously considering the argument, that there is never the less evidence that the argument took place in your mind even while you were rejecting it as nonsense.
See the entry on Epistemology for a full discussion on thought boundaries.
Paradigm is a less extreme but still fundamental way of classifying things in the world. Paradigm is a means of categorizing things that you know; recognizing things that you see by placing them in certain categories which thereby imply how you expect them to interact with one another. Paradigm shift comes when you rearrange those categorizations to see the same real world things with a new understanding.
Deconstructionism is the scientific method of post modern philosophy. It is a means to pull apart a system until you understand the way that you have categorized its pieces; then to reexamine the whole and find new ways of pulling the system apart, leading to new models of understanding.
Could you possibly rewrite this article so that it makes a little sense? I'm a philosopher, and honestly, I can't make heads or tails of it. --User:LMS
I will try. Hopefully a bit clearer. -- User:ksmathers
Each of the philosophical ages has been accompanied by art that reflects that age, so that comment might apply to all of the history of philosophy. I could substitute Modernism for Existentialism in the text above, but Modernism unlike postmodernism is only loosely defined by the set of philosophies which were being argued during that period of time. Also I wouldn't say that it is a reaction against modernism so much as it takes an interest in the distinction between Modernism and Classical. In other words it Post Modern art should be thought of as orthogonal to the classical/modern axis. That might be my bias though. -- User:ksmathers
Postmodern philosophy (and Continential philosophy more general) is the half of philosophy I never really got. But I can list some names: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, that guy whose name begins with B -- User:Simon J Kissane
Barthes? AMT
Barthes is better described as a structuralist. Perhaps Baudrillard?
By the way, if you're interested in the structure of postmodern discourse, check out the postmodernism generator --User:Seb
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[edit] Ken Wilber a postmodern philosopher?
Why is Ken Wilber included as a postmodern philosopher? I'm not that familiar with his work, but from his Wikipedia article he seems to be a consumate modernist in the Joseph Campbell/Carl Jung tradition. COGDEN 03:22, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Is it just me, or is postmodern philosophy just the west catching on to very old eastern ideas? I see eastern philosophies listed in the box with links, but the connection isn't mentioned in the article.
Just would be an extreme exageration. Generally such "West Goes East" philosophical trends are under the catagorey of "New Age Philosophy" Stirling Newberry 16:24, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't understand the section on Derrida at all. Possibly it's just me...but can anyone rework that paragraph with less jargon? Raistlinjones 19:33, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
Anything specific - Derrida is fairly thick with jargon. Stirling Newberry 09:51, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Postmodernism series
I've created a template feel free to add other important examples of postmodernism - broadly defined - in this template so that readers can gain a better understanding of the terms involved by comparing and contrasting their use over several articles. Stirling Newberry 17:19, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Just A Note
I know this doesn't help the article, so don't mind it, but can't the people who name movements and fields "Contemporary Art, Postmodernism, Modernism, and the like see that those names might have temporal issues at some point in the near future? :)
P.S. This has clearly already happened. Modernism is no longer the most modern philosophy, so now we have Postmodernism? What's next? Superm401 02:30, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
P.P.S I realize these names don't usually come from the members of the movement themselves.
I think the next step in the progression is here: neocon philosophy. Not2plato 20:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] 'Anti-Foundationalism'
"Postmodern philosophy is generally characterized by a skepticism toward the simple binary oppositions predominant in Western metaphysics and humanism, such as the expectation that the philosopher may cleanly isolate knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from submission, or presence from absence. This is anti-foundationalism...."
That final assertion in this passage is badly mistaken. Foundationalism is not about making distinctions, per se, and anti-foundationalism is not about denying them. Whatever the correct term is here, it is not 'anti-foundationalism', though PMists do often describe their view in this way (and, on a side, vastly overrestimated there originality in denying 'foundationalism')
Agreed. The entire fight against binary oppositions is a pretense. It seems to be mere all or nothing fallacy, too. 71.212.196.138 21:01, 8 April 2006 (UTC)not2plato
[edit] Postmodernism versus postmodernity: NPOV?
I was just wandering through, and I know very little about post-modernism, but the section 'Postmodernism versus postmodernity' seems to be ridiculously lacking in NPOV. Can someone with a scholarly understanding of this please review that section? Blade 03:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
- Update. I made an edit rmoving a lot of (what seemed to me) blatant lack of NPOV. Looks like it got reverted. So I have added the NPOV-section template to this section of the article. I don't see how statements like "Many say that postmodern philosophers exist or existed primarily to justify lies and lying. But they also exist to make themselves famous, and can hardly be expected to give a damn about anything other than that." can be considered to even remotely have a neutral point of view. If this is a common critism, can we see substantive sources on that? Blade 15:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
- I removed the entire section. I'm not sure where to begin with regards to its problems, but they seem insurmountable without a complete rewrite. Here are my official reasons, though:
- - Violation of the Neutral point of view policy. See Blade's comments for this.
- - Statements like "Many say that postmodern philosophers..." and "Many believe that this is due to the fact that..." fail to avoid weasel words.
- - The entire section lacks citations and is not obviously or trivially true to the reader (except, perhaps to whoever wrote the section), and thus violates Wikipedia's No original research policy.
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- Besides that, it's just poorly written. If anyone wishes to write new content for this section that avoids the above problems, knock yourself out. Until then, I recommend keeping the section deleted. Simoes 14:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] post-marxism
the post-marxism article was pointing to neo-communism, i split it out, but it will need much work to get it up to a basic level. if people are interested, please contribute what you know, edit my starter drivel :), and help build that article too. --Buridan 13:02, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
