Explaining Postmodernism

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Hegel's contribution to postmodernism

1. Reality is an entirely subjective creation;
2. Contradictions are built into reason and reality;
3. Since reality evolves contradictorily, truth is relative to time and place; and
4. The collective, not the individual, is the operative unit.

Summary of irrationalist themes

The legacy of the irrationalists for the twentieth century included four key themes:

1. An agreement with Kant that reason is impotent to know reality;
2. an agreement with Hegel that reality is deeply conflictual and/or absurd;
3. a conclusion that reason is therefore trumped by claims based on feeling, instinct, or leaps of faith; and
4. that the non-rational and the irrational yield deep truths about reality.

Heidegger and postmodernism

1. Conflict and contradiction are the deepest truths of reality;
2. reason is subjective and impotent to reach truths about reality;
3. Reason's elements - words and concepts - are obstacles that must be un-crusted, subjected to Destruktion, or otherwise unmasked;
4. Logical contradiction is neither a sign of failure nor of anything particularly significant at all;
5. Feelings, especially morbid feelings of anxiety and dread, are a deeper guide than reason;
6. The entire Western tradition of philosophy - whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Lockean, or Cartesian - based as it is on the law of non-contradiction and subject/object distinction, is the enemy to be overcome.