Philosophy is the practice of thinking clearly about life so as to live it well. When doing philosophy, you will find yourself asking variants of four questions: (1) What is there? (2) How do we know? (3) What should we do about it? And (4) Why?
Classical Philosophy in the West: “What Is There?”
When we focus on the first question, we are interested in what sorts of things exist. Is everything made of matter, or are there also spiritual things? Is there a 9th planet, and does Pluto count? How many sexes are there, and what determines your sex? Can all qualities (like colors) be reduced to quantities (like wavelengths)?
Asking and answering versions of the “What is there?” question is called “ontology” or “metaphysics.” In the classical Western tradition, this was called “First Philosophy.” In order to think well, you had to start by figuring out what sort of world you lived in, what sorts of things were in that world, and what sort of thing you were.
Once you had a clear answer to the “What is there?” question, classical philosophers thought it was important to move on and ask the other three questions I listed above. Classical philosophers in the West didn’t just do ontology/metaphysics. However, they did prefer to start with ontology/metaphysics.
Modern Philosophy in the West: “How Do We Know?”
In the modern era — starting with what we now call “the Renaissance” — philosophical opinion shifted in the West. Dissatisfied with the results of classical philosophy, philosophers tried to start over with the second question I listed above: “How do we know?” Ontology/metaphysics was no longer First Philosophy. First Philosophy in the Modern era was epistemology.
Epistemology is the study of how we know things — do we have to use our senses, or can we figure out some things just by thinking? Epistemology involves asking what distinguishes knowing something from merely believing it — is it a matter of how strong your belief is or the quality of your evidence? Epistemology studies what it means for a belief to be true or false, and how that truth and falsity might spread from belief to belief.
Modern philosophers didn’t stick to epistemology exclusively, of course. They did as much or more work on the other three questions I listed above. What distinguished their attempts at thinking clearly, however, was where they thought we should start. Get the question of how we know settled, and you’re in a much better position for dealing with the others.
The Classical-to-Modern Transition
What caused the modern shift from “What is there?” to “How do we know?” I think it was due — at least in part — to the fact that one question naturally follows the other. If someone tells you, “There is a god, and that god lives in the sea,” you will likely respond, “Oh really? How do you know?” And if the other person can’t provide us with a satisfactory answer, we take that as a reason to ignore their ontological/metaphysical claim.
A second reason for the shift may be the fact that when you find the result of a process dissatisfying, it is natural to ask what went wrong with the process. And if the process in question is, “Doing philosophy,” it makes sense to ask how we might do philosophy better. So, from thinking about the world, we shift to thinking about thinking. And if you’re thinking about thinking, and if thinking well involves things like “coming to true beliefs” and “distinguishing knowledge from error,” then you’re doing epistemology.
Starting the Modern-to-Postmodern Transition
Modern philosophers in the West tried to fix the status quo in philosophy by reexamining how philosophy was done, by “going meta.” If thinking wasn’t working well, we needed to examine thinking itself and work out the kinks.
Postmodern philosophers, however, were no more satisfied with the results of modern philosophy than the moderns had been with classical philosophy. Modern philosophy — and the science, technology, and politics it inspired — had done many good things for the world. And yet so much bad stuff was still present. In fact, so much bad stuff seemed to be the direct result — or perhaps even the basis — of that apparently-good stuff.
Consider, for example, that modern science and technology — backed by the epistemological focus of modern philosophy — meant both that the general quality of life in the West could be significantly increased, and that Western countries could engage in global colonialism. It meant both that many people could live healthier, happier lives, and that we could destroy each other (with atomic weapons) and the environment more effectively.
Consider, furthermore, the fact that so many of the politicians, “thought leaders,” entrepreneurs, inventors, etc. that were creating and/or enabling this new status quo would only ever acknowledge the positive sides of things. What is “good for us, here, and now” tends to be treated as “good, pure and simple” while everything negative gets ignored.
In a world full of such promise and such willful blindness, no wonder some philosophers once again found themselves wanting to reevaluate how philosophy is done.
Completing the Modern-To-Postmodern Transition
As a response to modernism — and modern philosophy’s epistemological focus — much of postmodern philosophy focuses on a description and critique of “knowledge production.” How do beliefs come to be treated as knowledge? What sorts of authority gets granted to people who claim to have knowledge? How are those claims of knowledge — and authority — used to liberate and/or oppress?
One prominent aspect of this examination of the (un)ethical uses of so-called-“knowledge” is the description and critique of “social construction.” How do we end up believing that some people are bad and dangerous, while thinking that other people are good and safe? That is, how do people come to be “set up” or “construed as” or “constructed as” good and evil?
Similarly, where do our assumptions come from that some ways of doing business, conducting foreign policy, using resources, etc. are healthy and others are not? How do some societies end up thinking government-provided healthcare is good, while others end up thinking it is actually evil? Where do the “experts” whose opinions get spread around get their epistemic (“knowledge-related”) authority, for good or ill? How do they manage to become “seen as” or “taken as” or “constructed as” authorities?
Postmodern Philosophy in the West: “What Should We Do About It?”
Postmodern philosophers, therefore, have developed a reputation of being knowledge skeptics, of being critics of truth. They have come to be “constru[ct]ed as” relativists. Wherever you find a postmodern thinker, you will find someone apparently claiming there is no “Truth with a Capital T,” or someone using the word “knowledges” (plural) as if they believed that some people could have one set of facts, while others had an equally-(il)legitimate set of alternative facts.
But once you have a reputation for being a relativist who believes that truth is a matter of perspective, that there is no reality independent of our social constructs, that claims to knowledge are always power plays, you will inevitably end up with the reputation of being anti-knowledge, anti-truth, anti-goodness, and so on.
However, I think that “construction” of postmodernists is exactly wrong. If ontology/metaphysics was First Philosophy for classical thinkers in the West, and epistemology was First Philosophy for their modern successors, ethics is First Philosophy for postmodern philosophers. Rather than, “What is there?” or “How do we know?” postmodern philosophers start with the question, “What should we do about it?”
What Postmodernists Are Really Like
Nothing could be more clear to anyone than justice and injustice are to postmodernists. No one could be more passionate about right and wrong, good and bad. And no one could be more firmly on the side of justice, right, and goodness than a postmodernist.
A firm grounding in morality is where postmodernism begins. Then everything else is examined in light of that morality. Does a philosophical school, political tradition, religious sect, or economic system oppress others? Does it harm or exploit anyone or anything? Then that school, tradition, sect, or system’s claims to authority, their claims to “knowledge,” their claims about “reality” must be wrong — and a postmodernist will expend every last drop of their mental, emotional, and creative energy in deconstructing those claims. They will painstakingly expose how those claims are developed, spread, supported, and defended.
Rather than starting with a vision of reality (ontology/metaphysics), then judging theories of knowledge (epistemology) and ethics against that more fundamental vision, postmodernists start with an ethic, then judge theories of reality and knowledge against that ethic. They agree with Plato, Aristotle, and the medieval Scholastics: the One is the True is the Good. Thus if something is not good, it can neither be real nor true. It must be fake and false.
Reality and truth do exist for postmodernists, in other words. It’s just that reality and truth are moral, first and foremost. “What should we do about it?” is the question with which they think we ought to begin. Ethics is First Philosophy in postmodernism.
Conclusion
Well, now I have gone and done it. I have offered a spirited defense of postmodernism. And I’m not even a postmodernist!
Not being a postmodernist, I can only end with the following questions: Is my understanding of postmodernism correct? Was my defense successful? I sure hope so!
Let me know in the comments.
