January 2, 2003
ON THE OTHER HAND:
-ESSAY: Condemnation Without Absolutes (Stanley Fish, October 15, 2001, NY Times)Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one. The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies. Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn't be effective anyway because our adversaries lay claim to the same language. (No one declares himself to be an apostle of injustice.) [...]"[F]alse universals" should be rejected: they stand in the way of useful thinking. How many times have we heard these new mantras: "We have seen the face of evil"; "these are irrational madmen"; "we are at war against international terrorism." Each is at once inaccurate and unhelpful. We have not seen the face of evil; we have seen the face of an enemy who comes at us with a full roster of grievances, goals and strategies. If we reduce that enemy to "evil," we conjure up a shape- shifting demon, a wild-card moral anarchist beyond our comprehension and therefore beyond the reach of any counterstrategies. [...]
Is this the end of relativism? If by relativism one means a cast of mind that renders you unable to prefer your own convictions to those of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that's what makes them our convictions. Relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger.
But if by relativism one means the practice of putting yourself in your adversary's shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else might want to wear them, then relativism will not and should not end, because it is simply another name for serious thought.
Here's Mr. Fish's notorious Times editorial that, I think rather halfheartedly, argues that there can be an eduring perspective from which the 9-11 appears justified. It is perhaps an equally relativistic argument to make, but one thing he ignores is that the interpretation of events in a conflict is eventually dictated by the winning side. In 1939 one might have said that there was a German perspective from which we could understand the start of WWII, but today there just is no accepted Nazi viewpoint. Hitler, Nazism, and German aggression are uniformly understood to have been evil.
Applying this standard, even if unfair, to the events of 9-11, we can say the following: Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and Islamic radicalism are going to lose just as totally as did Hitler and Nazism. In a very few years there will be no accepted viewpoint, even in the Islamic world, that justifies actions like 9-11. Such attacks and such an ideology will be viewed as simply evil.
Perhaps this is all that we need refer to as an "independent standard" and a "true" interpretation--though I'd obviously argue that truth is nowhere near so hard to discern--that they are the judgments which are certain to endure over time.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 2, 2003 10:49 PMI disagree with Fish on these grounds. I have no desire to try to put myself in Fish's shoes and try to understand postmodernism and why Fish wants to believe in it. Life is too short to waste time developing thought from premises I believe are false; instead I want to devote my effort to developing my own philosophy. Yet I am engaged in serious thought.
I've previously argued here that modern liberalism is motivated by the fantasy that we can have our cake and eat it too -- that there is no cost to choice, that choosing one thing (e.g. sex) need not carry any negative consequences (e.g. children, disease, heartbreak) and need not involve the sacrifice of other choices (e.g. sex with other women). Postmodernism, it seems to me, is a fantasy ideology from this very school, which holds that our power for thought is unlimited and that we are obliged to devote thought to understanding confused and mistaken people because that may help us somehow, and costs nothing. But once you admit that such thought is costly, postmodernism it seems to me goes right by the boards. In a world in which thought and empathy are time-consuming and costly, we must choose carefully whose shoes we will put our minds into.
There's also an interesting conceit to it--that you or I--fat, happy, affluent, middle-class, Americans--can put ourselves in other's shoes merely by the powers of the mind.
Posted by: oj at January 3, 2003 10:16 AMI also posted this here
.
There are so many ways to pick on post-modernism. I will choose two.
One. Pointing out that people who commit acts of evil believe themselves to be right is "in the given" and establishes nothing new or insightful. Yes, they believe themselves to be right, but they are not. Thousands of years of civilization proves this. Beliefs are sometimes objectively wrong, and provably so. Focusing on "feelings", and validation of them, is really what is going on here.
Two. Even if one wanted to adopt the "morally neutral" stance, to "validate the feelings" of some aggrieved party, how is that any different than actively endorsing the agenda of that party? "If these people feel this way, they MUST have some reasons, and we should appreciate them on that basis"? That is ridiculous - feelings do not make a convincing argument. Convincing arguments require factual, provable assertions and logical conclusions. None of that is in evidence. Lacking the ability to point a moral laser at an issue and evaluate it, in the interests of validating feelings, is not the mark of an intellectual, it is the mark of an amoral snob who fancies himself a deep thinker.
Some things are not so complicated.
Orrin - yes - postmodernism is the thesis that we have a moral obligation to do the impossible.
Posted by: pj at January 3, 2003 1:04 PMPJ -
So is religion.
David:
Precisely. All of these things--postmodernism, communism, Darwinism, Freudianism--partake of the quality of religious belief.
David - yes - but religion holds also that "with God, all things are possible." Postmodernism doesn't have that refuge. It doesn't even acknowledge the issue.
Posted by: pj at January 3, 2003 6:45 PM