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Postmodern philosophy is an eclectic and elusive movement characterized by the postmodern criticism and analysis of Western philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily influenced by phenomenology and existentialism, and by the
philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. It was also influenced to some degree by Ludwig Wittgenstein's later criticisms of analytic philosophy. Within postmodern philosophy, there are numerous
interrelated fields, including deconstruction and several fields
beginning with the prefix "post-", such as post-structuralism,
post-Marxism, and post-feminism. In particular postmodern philosophy has spawned a huge literature
of critical theory.
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. To some critics, this skepticism appears similar to relativism or even nihilism. Defenders of
post-modernism would argue that there is a distinct difference, however: while relativism and nihilism are generally viewed as an
abandonment of meaning and authority, postmodern philosophy is generally viewed as an openness to meaning and
authority from unexpected places, and that the ultimate source of authority is the "play" of the discourse itself. In addition,
many view postmodern philosophy not as a purely abstract or logical argument, but as a historical occurrence.
History of Postmodern Philosophy
Early Influences in Postmodern Philosophy
Postmodern philosophy originated primarily in France during the 1960s and 1970s. However, it was greatly influenced by the writings of several earlier 20th century philosophers, including phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, existentialist Martin
Heidegger, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, structuralist Roland Barthes, and logical positivist Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Postmodern philosophy also drew from the world of the arts, particularly Marcel Duchamp and artists who practiced collage.
Early Postmodern Philosophers
The most influential early postmodern philosophers were Michel
Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Foucault approached postmodern philosophy from a historical
perspective, building upon structuralism, but at the same time rejecting
structuralism by re-historicizing and destabilizing the philosophical structures of Western thought. He also considered how
knowledge is defined and changed by the operation of power.
The writings of Lyotard were largely concerned with the role of narrative in human culture, and particularly how that role has
changed as we have left modernity and entered a "postindustrial" or postmodern condition. He argued that modern philosophies legitimized their truth-claims not (as they
themselves claimed) on logical or empirical grounds, but rather on the grounds of accepted stories (or "metanarratives") about knowledge and the world -- what Wittgenstein termed
"language-games." He further argued that in our postmodern condition, these
metanarratives no longer work to legitimize truth-claims. He suggested that in the wake of the collapse of modern metanarratives,
people are developing a new "language game" -- one that does not make claims to absolute truth but rather celebrates a world of
ever-changing relationships (among people and between people and the world).
Derrida, to whom deconstruction is attributed, approached postmodern
philosophy as a form of textual criticism. He criticized Western philosophy as privileging the concept of presence and
logos, as opposed to absence and markings or writings. Derrida thus deconstructed Western philosophy by showing, for
example, how the Western ideal of the present logos is undermined by the expression of that ideal in the form of
markings by an absent author. Thus, to emphasize this paradox, Derrida reformalized human culture as a disjoint network
of proliferating markings and writings, with the author being absent.
Though Derrida and Foucault are cited as postmodern philosophers, each has rejected many of the other's views. Like Lyotard,
both are skeptical of absolute or universal truth-claims. Unlike Lyotard, however, they are (or seem) rather more pessimistic
about the emancipatory claims of any new language-game; thus some would characterize them as post-structuralist rather than
postmodernist.
Later postmodern philosophers
Postmodernism and Post-Structuralism
Postmodern philosophy is very similar to post-structuralism;
whether one considers the two identical or fundamentally different generally depends on how invested one is in the issues. People
who are opposed to either postmodernism or poststructuralism often lump them together; advocates on the other hand make finer distinctions.
Postmodernism versus Postmodernity
Others who have written about postmodernity are the literary critic Fredric Jameson and the geographer David Harvey. They distinguish between postmodernity, which they use to describe an objective historical
condition or situation, and postmodernism, which they use to describe a particular way of talking about postmodernity. They have
further identified postmodernity with what the Marxist Ernest Mandel called "late capitalism," and
have characterized postmodernism as the ideology of late capitalism.
See also
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