Wrote it in 98. I've dumbed down a lot since then :).


g

Simple and clear is good - it's what I'm hoping to attain but falling short of most days.

Postmodernism is *not* the same thing as absolute relativism.

More after the meeting I have to run to.

I included Skinner for his selectionist contributions, notwithstanding Chomsky's critiques. The indomitable Dewey stands without reservation.


meaningful meetings,

g

So, very briefly: there's a distinction that makes little difference practically but quite a bit philosophically.

One pole says there is no such thing as a universal, objective reality external to our perception of it - all that exists is subjective constructions of reality

The other says that a universal, objective reality does exist, but that we do not have direct access to it - our understanding is always filtered by our perceptions and assumptions

The second view is consistent with a postmodern perspective that is suspicious of universal 'grand narratives' that claim to fully explain reality, but also consistent with a universal reality (including God) actually existing. Such a perspective is simply modest about the extent to which it is possible for us to access the Real from our limited view.

Modernism is much more confident that direct access to reality is possible, and therefore that it's possible to make testable statements about reality that are universally true.

Feeling comfortable with your explanation....

Bravus, i very much like this synopsis. Modernism also allows for the unexplainable...does it not? Demand that even the unknowable have empirical reductionist creed is arrogance...
fascinating that the "love as the elemental particle" in God's Kingdom is met by the "antinomian offense" by those who cling to a finite and reducible "doctrinal legalism"... seems to me even the greater arrogance, assuming that man can know God with equivalence. Absolutism must refute challenge with its diametric opposition...relativism. It dare not entertain any other possibility, or it would require questioning its base tenets (which the very nature of absolutism precludes). This inevitable polarization results in the struggle for supremacy clouding the real truths.

I know it all, and let me tell you...
vs
i know nothing, let me ask...

Bravus, I like your analysis muchly :)

But I wonder - where does Jesus fit in, philosophically?
Probably few people will want to believe that his understanding was 'filtered' by his perceptions and assumptions.

It seems (to me) from the stories of his life that he had just two 'values' : love and intimacy with God; love and intimacy with humankind. He seems to had not much respect for the conventional morals of the day being a 'winebibber' and 'glutton' and not minding at all having his feet washed in perfume and caressed by a prostitute who dried them with her hair. Not two figs for the opinion of the moral majority - rather he valued the heart of that lady. Maybe we can call him 'postmodern' because he chose his own values, rather than accepting the values of the religious fundamentalists. I think it was his personal 'experience' that lead him to embrace those values. They formed the core of his experience. Values of the heart. They superceded all else. -dAb

Some good thoughts there dAb ...