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Friday, 19 June 2009 |
Many of you come to me asking, “Why did you stop doing philosophy?” “Why is there no future in philosophy?” and most of all, “For heaven's sake, why postmodernism?” This is after I published my book, The Absurdity of Philosophy, which is itself the whole of my reason for leaving philosophy. The three questions are tied together. Postmodernism shows no future in philosophical endeavors, the problems postmodernism brings to the table are inescapable, and thus, there is no reason to go prattling on about philosophy.
Philosophy is concerned with “should” questions. Should we talk about the human condition in this way or that? Should we think about science's role and how it is conducted in this way or that? Should we talk about God at all, and if so, what is appropriate? Often these questions are phrased as, for example, “How does the mind work?” But don't let that “does” fool you. It's a 'should' question. If it were a 'does' question, there'd be an appropriately specific, definite answer. “How does the mind work?” is not like “How does a car work?” and this is evidenced by the fact that the answer is debatable. How a car works is not very debatable.
Supposing an answer is reached among a group of people of how the mind works, that agreement is one of, “We have agreed to speak about how the mind works in this way.” In other words, it's an agreement over how the mind's workings should be talked about. In asking about a car's workings, the words don't actually matter very much. The concern is over the car. “But aren't the philosophers concerned about the mind, not the words?” This “mind” is an idea that we want to have shared; a shared idea.
I'll use another example to elucidate. Suppose I am describing a pain that I have. If I was doing this in a way analogous to the philosophers describing the mind, I would be trying to give you the essence of my pain, if you will. I would be trying to make it so that you could find the closest sensation of your own to that pain. Like a love ballad, desperately spouting metaphors to gain your empathy. If I was describing my pain the way a mechanic tells me how a car works, I'd probably be telling a doctor so they could do something about it.
Philosophy is all about these should's to get us to share. I won't share. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. It's like telling a child of a poverty-stricken family to share toys he doesn't have. I look over to see the other kids playing, sharing absolutely nothing but entirely convinced that the absences they hold in their hands are, in fact, toys. Some of them are even fighting over these toys. A girl is being picked on because her pretend-doll is ragged. So I walk over and smash the toys. Then I hold my hands up in the air, pretending to hold the biggest toy of all, and I smash that too.
What we learn from postmodernity is that we always purport at the expense of something else, and violently so. (That is what the 'should' comes from; it is the placeholder for a slap in the face. Remove the 'should,' and you have a command.) I don't mean only simple things like purporting love and equality at the expense of hatred and discrimination. I mean also that we betray our message with our words, and through that betrayal, deconstruction happens. The betrayal is the deconstruction. The violence is exposed, and justice is served.
You are a violent creature, you and your language. Don't get me wrong, I'm violent too. I've used nothing but violence so far in what I've written here. But I know it. Many of you come to me, having read Chomsky's criticism of postmodernism. (For those of you that haven't, click here.) He lauds the postmodernists for pseudo-intellectual drivel. It's true. There's nothing enlightening about what we write. Hell, there's usually nothing sensible about what we write. But tell me, how is nonsense violent? (Well, it IS violent in that it's destructive, but only if you recognize it for the parody of academia's violence that it is. And by academia's violence, of course I mean philosophy.) Lies are violent. Nonsense is not. Just because they're both thrown in that ever-violent duality machine and spit out, bearing the label “FALSE,” doesn't mean they are the same thing. (For the record, Truth is not violent. Then again, since all truths are just clever lies, and Truth is the totality of our submissions to past truths, that's not saying much, if it says anything at all.)
Chomsky and others who share his criticism that postmodernists do nothing but spread pseudo-intellectual nonsense do not stop and ask why we bother with what is obviously pseudo-intellectual nonsense. Perhaps they think we're stupid, or that we've created an intellectual fashion and we're riding it out for the money. It can't be that we're smart, honest people too, and that there's something else going on here. It can't be something else, because the only something-else that would slip by someone as smart as Chomsky & Co. is a joke on Chomsky & Co. A joke played on them, by themselves, at their expense. A betrayal. A deconstruction. And all those violent should's would come crashing back upon them. Can't be that.
Perhaps I've rambled on too long, so let's sum up. Why postmodernism? Fish.
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