THE LOGICAL CONTRADICTION IN THE POSTMODERN RELIGION The modern histories of rel

THE LOGICAL CONTRADICTION IN THE POSTMODERN RELIGION

The modern histories of religion and socialism exhibit striking parallels in development.

1) Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau)

2) Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism).

3) Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism).

4) Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation).

5) Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).

6) The prevailing skeptical and irrationalist epistemologies in academic philosophy thus provided the Left with a new strategy for responding to its crisis. Any attack on socialism in any form could be brushed aside, and the desire to believe in it reaffirmed.

7) [P]ostmodernism is a symptom of the far Left’s crisis of faith. Postmodernism is a result of using skeptical epistemology to justify the personal leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism.

If one is interested in truth, then one’s rational response to a failing theory is as follows:

1) One breaks the theory down to its constituent premises.

2) One questions its premises vigorously and checks the logic that integrates them.

3) One seeks out alternatives to the most questionable premises.

4) One accepts moral responsibility for any bad consequences of putting the false theory into practice.

This is not what we find in postmodern reflections on contemporary politics. Truth and rationality are subjected to attack, and the prevailing attitude about moral responsibility is again best stated by Rorty: “I think that a good Left is a party that always thinks about the future and doesn’t care much about our past sins.”

One could, after doing some philosophy, come to be a true believer in subjectivism and relativism. Accordingly, one could come to believe that reason is derivative, that will and desire rule, that society is a battle of competing wills, that words are merely tools in the power struggle for dominance, and that all is fair in love and war. That is the position the Sophists argued 2400 years ago.

The only difference, then, between the Sophists and the postmodernists is whose side they are on. [The Sophists, marshalled] subjectivist and relativistic arguments in support of the political claim that justice is the interest of the stronger. The postmodernists—coming after two millennia of Christianity and two centuries of socialist theory—simply reverse that claim: Subjectivism and relativism are true, except that the postmodernists are on the side of the weaker and historically-oppressed groups. Justice – is the interest of the weaker.

– Hicks, Stephen R. C. (2010-10-19). Explaining Postmodernism