The point is not that there is no truth, or no truths, or that all truth or truths are 'merely relative', the point is that you can ever more define and contextualise that truth, giving it a 'higher definition', further implications and ramifications, and ultimately in a sense that 'changes the nature of its truth'. It's not saying there is no truth or truths at all. It's not even denying the earlier less nuanced and less well-contextualised truth. That truth remains and still is true very often, though sometimes that truth ends up overturned. The point is that you can always take any truth further down this path into shedding more light onto it and making it a more nuanced truth. Maybe you can find some 'post-modernist' professors who disagree with me, but they're just bad teachers. It is not what the actual theory is even trying to suggest. It's funny that Jordan Peterson often uses the nice concept of 'higher definition' or 'lower definition' in relation to perception, concepts, and thinking, but always misses this basic point. And it's even true that this is the only thought that remains true to the Christian belief in the infinite inwardness of the soul, and the infinite context and scope of God. It comes right out of the Christian tradition, and not in opposition to it at all.
@@AngloSaks666 "Changes the nature of its truth"...? What does that even mean? The truth is objective. As is its value. 'The sun is hot' is an objectively true statement. To contextualise by asking 'compared to what?' does not change the fact that the sun is hot. It may be millions of degrees colder than another star, but the sun would still be hot. Context only enables the verification of objectivity and an assessment/verification of its value. The Mona Lisa is of objectively less value to a man on a dessert island than a bottle of water. Verifiably so as it is the only one unable to sustain his life. Value itself is objective and only exists within the relationship between a person and the world/a thing. That truth here is absolute, water vs the Mona Lisa, there is no path to go down, no nuance to find. So no, you cannot 'always' take 'any' truth down some post modern rabbit hole, which sounds suspiciously like Hegelian dialectical nonsense to me. 'Value' can be swapped out for 'good'. Both only exist within the same relationship, between an individual and a thing. Goodness only exists within, and is defined by that relationship (hence God wants a personal relationship with you). So not all truths are equal, because some truths have little or no relationship to us. Some truths can be refined with context, some reach their absolute limit quickly, but many truths lose their value as the relationship between us and them moves apart. 'The sun is hot' shares a strong relationship to us, that fact is both valuable and good, the fact it is cooler than other stars is a truth of considerably less value, having little consequence to anybody. 'Value' and 'good' exist within meaning, and truth is weighed by its meaning, not its nuance. You can contextualise or nuance truths until they are meaningless, of no value and of no good. Jorden Peterson is a clown with a study bible. He seeks to remake God in his image and the truth is not in him. As a Christian I have no idea what you mean by "belief in the infinite inwardness of the soul". Where did you get that rubbish from? It certainly is not biblical. Sounds Catholic or New Age to me. Are you trying to say post modernism is compatible with Christianity? Can you confirm that with scripture? I promise you it isn't.
I live in Cambodia. It's recovering from the effects of post-modernists called the Khmer Rouge whose leaders educated in France in the mid 20th century.
Pol pot is kind of fascinating. I’m probably not even the millionth person to point out the irony of Dude studying in Paris, France, one of the world cities at the precipice of intellectual and cultural development at the time.. and he goes back to Cambodia to murder people wearing glasses because he associated glasses with intellectualism.
@@constantinethecataphract5949 Even if.. I wouldn't focus on that aspect too much as it is giving leftists the leverage to dismiss any criticism as "antisemitic conspiracy theory" or whatever buzzword they like to use for it. They do the same thing with Cultural Marxism.
And postmodernism is for stupid people to excuse their ignorance and incompetence at science by saying the game is rigged, racist, and a power structure, as if they reverse cause & effect. Newton and Einstein gained popular respect because they did good scientific work; their power was a result, not a cause of their influence.
@@stephan1752They made a lucid and logical summary of what they understand is happening. Somehow that mobilized your inner Frantz Fanon and took you down the road of predator/prey and a helpless victim. This argument is fallacious as it is an emotionless synopsis and yet you inferred fear. This speaks more about you and your own beliefs in the victim/oppressor theory, and is not relevant to the topic on hand
As a Frenchman, I feel tremendous sadness and pain that my country has such a deep part in the degeneration and ultimate destruction of Western civilization. Post-World War II French philosophy is, for the most part, truly horrific and nihilistic. They have done everything in their power to deprecate their country's heritage and achievements.
It was problematic in the 18th century already. The idiocy didn't begin with Derrida and Foucault, they're just the end point where everything was deconstructed and nothing makes sense anymore. Deconstructionism started with Rousseau, who believed that people were born as a blank paper and were entirely shaped by their upbringing and cultural surroundings. This isn't true, due to genetics. However, believing it's true is a prerequisite for embracing postmodernism. Rousseau also influenced Marx and various other left-leaning thinkers to a large degree.
Idk man I think this is kinda black pilled . France is still a great country. The west has its issues . Have you tried living in a third world country? Totally different life and planet . Keep doing your best . There still many great French people
France is not to blame. There were lots of different writers here. American universities picked what they liked, modified and amplified it. It's not a French thing whatsoever. Yanks just can't own up and need a scapegoat.
I studied it for 20 flucking years (so 20 wasted years), and I came to the same conclusion. Although pomo is not just a signal, but a symptom of this exhaustion that it cannot comprehend.
I studied philosophy in Germany: Not at all, with all due respect. Adorno couldn't be further from Postmodernism as he comes from Hegel, Marx and Freud, all of whom are famous examples of thinkers Postmodernist philosophy broke with.
Also note that Foucault was thought to be paedophile who tried to justify his desire for boys with valueless philosophy. Derrida and Lyotard seemingly did not judge this as wicked. Postmodernism was useful to point out the limitations of modernism, but it lacks the depth to be a philosophy in its own right. Modernism should always be the basis of reasonable and rational thought and policy, while its limitations are ideally understood.
Those who tear down can never replace what they took or create their own thing. Post-Modernism can never be of substance because its inherent nature is to Deconstruct.
it doesn't lack the depth, but rather the monolithic unifying corpus to make it a philosophy. Philosophies are also metanarratives, so postmodernism itself would not see itself as one. I like to look at it more as an theoretical framework or an analytical lens. In that way, it has all the depth (and then some) for you to conduct super interesting and salient analysis of history, society, art, culture, etc. Postmodernism is actually really cool and this video mischaracterises it to an enormous extent. it's obvious to me that whoever made this never actually read or studied the postmodernists. They likely saw a lecture by Jordan Peterson (who also hasn't read them) and are respewing the bullshit he spews about it.
I surfed some of the post-modernist theoretical waves in the early 90s, and once I'd finished my masters thesis got a rather more realist job and mostly forgot about it, not sure whether the main point of post-modernism was marketing, academic purge, or prank. Lyotard is a good read, as a descriptor. Spivak is more evidently retributive. Baudrillard is delirious. The big change happened when pomo hit American politics and social mobilization. What a wonderful way to counter Fukuyama and the neoliberal triumphalists, to breathe new vitriol into stale partisan debates, get a job, a book deal, and a talkshow spot! The problem, seems to me, is not the weird, the extreme, the intersectional, partisan and nihilist. They are not new. The problem is that the center has been so damned weak, vacillating, wanting to triangulate and not be associated with the wrong kind of right and maintain the moderate left while losing the core liberal values that should define the center: fundamental freedoms, open society. I suspect liberal centrists could do a better job of marketing Locke, Smith, Burke, Popper, Olsen, even Hayek. The appetite is there - I look at the recent general election in New Zealand and see around 30% swing vote to the center right, putting a coalition in office at about 64%. That's huge for a proportional rep system. I'm watching Canada and Aus closely too. Many voters are sick of the screaming and yelling, being told they're bad and ghastly because of things they cannot change, being punished for past tolerances, and none of this has paid off, given the state of the job market, cost of living, and interest rates.
The left seems comfortable at being the navel gazer and the cynic about ideas. Look at threads on soc media - the left has evolved an assymetric strategy of accepting and rejecting deconstruction et al. When used by state actors with ties to media, this strategy has proven to be utterly unstoppable. Hope lies only in a smaller state, less/no state funding for humanities, more choice in online study, more STEM and more open civillian journalism - msm's advantage is that it's backed by the funding which has interests that generally coalesce with the interests of otherwise unemployable midwits. We're being gamed and the gaming is very effective.
MXVEGA writes > I suspect liberal centrists could do a better job of marketing Locke, Smith, Burke, Popper, Olsen, even Hayek Smith's core argument was an attack on Locke’s mercantilist system (Read del Mar) Burke was an elitist anti-democrat (read Burke!) Hayek got Popper his job via the CIA (read Hacohen) Actually Shils dumped Popper very early for Polanyi - then Polanyi for Kuhn. What I actually dislike about Popper is the way he hid in his office at LSE when Russell turned out there to attack the Vietnam war (Read Grattan-Guinness). Why waste time on Olsen when you could be reading Robert Michels? Never mind - it sounds good - and it seems nobody here knows any different
I think you answered your own (unasked) question with your last sentence. I think maintenance of the status quo was conceivably the point. Which would be a shame since I've enjoyed reading most of the Continental philosophers. At any rate, the CIA's very generous funding of Radical Leftism (as a sexier alternative to staid Marxism) through the Congress of Cultural Freedom is a matter of record. I'm against throwing the baby out with the bathwater (Baudrillard, etc), but the meddling of third parties (who, broadly speaking have a vested interest in persevering certain hierarchical structures) in Leftist thought may help explain how we got here. Instead of someplace better.
@@shannonm.townsend1232 MXVEGA writes > I suspect liberal centrists could do a better job of marketing Locke, Smith, Burke, Popper, Olsen, even Hayek Smith’s core argument was an attack on Locke’s mercantilist system (Read del Mar) Burke was an elitist anti-democrat (read Burke) Hayek got Popper his job via the CIA (read Hacohen) Actually Shils dumped Popper very early for Polanyi - then Polanyi for Kuhn. Open Society and its Enemies is a great on Plato - but Popper the Man hid in his office at LSE when Russell turned out there to attack the Vietnam war (Read Grattan-Guinness). Why read Olsen when you could be reading Robert Michels?
That brain being one that belongs to an impressionable female student, in the hopes that she'll perform physical masterbation and much more for the professor.
@@nicolasjanvier8617 Calling postmodernism 'thinking' is an example of taking the principle of intellectual charity far beyond its useful bounds. OP is correct: it is not thinking, but w***ing.
You might think you're being very witty, and that you just got some minor 'haha! Got you' moment by bringing in self-referentiality, but actually what you are attacking here is not postmodernism, but logic itself (the old Russel paradox). And with it, you're also taking maths down (Godel's incompleteness theorem). Meanwhile postmodernism comes out relatively unscathed as it has long preempted your criticism through its emphasis on irony as a mode of discourse.
@@Primitarian I just told you: it's the problem of self-referentiality. The presence of contradictions like Russell's paradox in an axiomatic set theory is nothing short of disastrous.
@@Primitarian Define invalid... I'm saying it suggests logic is either inconsistent, or incomplete. Some logicians will certainly see that as disastrous... I tend to think of it as a blessing in disguise, but you would probably not approve of my reasons for doing so.
I found the music bed better than most (some are awful and horribly distracting). But the presentation was so singularly excellent the background didn't matter
F for content too. This video mischaracterises postmodernism like crazy. It does a genuinely awful job at 1) telling you what postmodernism is, 2) how postmodernism works, 3) the implications of postmodernist thought
Thank you. Postmodernism has now crept into every corner of social and political discourse and action. At one time it found its home in graduate departments of universities with students congratulating themselves at being able to crack the dense code of postmodernist philosophers. Now it has filtered down to the body politic and given way to a world of "alternative facts" where scientific fact and method is replaced with the supremacy of feelings- hurt feelings reigning supreme.
French postmodern theory is not prescriptive... It merely describes a state of affairs (read Baudrillard and Lyotard again). What has crept into every corner of social and political discourse is not postmodernism itself (as you seem to suggest), but rather the symptom that is the object of postmodern analysis. You (and people like Helen Pluckrose) are mistaking the messenger for the message.
This was a poorly done piece. She should have listed out in clarity what post modernism is, its faulty assumptions and what it gets wrong. The truth westerners don’t want to admit is the enlightenment and western advancement relied heavily on exploitation of labor, along identity lines, and the plunder of lands and peoples all over the world. Post modernism is simply calling bullshit on the values western hegemony claims it’s built on.
Problem is that especially back then, TV and institutions were big. So these people could infiltrate institutions and spread their ideas to other midwits who struggled to think for themselves.
There are a lot, and I mean a lot of resentful, jealous, and angry people who lap these ideas up. Always easier to blame someone or something else than take personal account of your own failures.
@@learnedhand8559 Perhaps there are. But just because people are angry and resentful (jealous is a subjective term) does not diminish the usefulness of continental theory in understanding society. The left have always had pet intellectuals, some better than others. For what it's worth I think some of these simply rewrite the same book over and over (there's a market and a man's got to eat), and then a lot of second-rate American academics make a living "educating" gullible youngsters whose course of studies will at best lead to a job at Starbucks while the live with their parents. A society needs only so many sociologists. It needs more tradespeople and engineers, but bright youngsters get sold on a degree that nobody wants and somebody has to pay for. There's a racket.
Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff was driven by a desire to subvert, corrupt, and destroy the foundations of Western civilization and demoralize us in an ultimate effort, whether conscious or subconscious, to bring about the destruction of the West. The plan to wipe out "Edom and Amalek" has become more than apparent in the last decade.
Brilliant. Spot on. I dropped out of my English Masters program a few years ago because the professors were whack jobs, inviting a communist speaker at one point in an attempt to get students to join him in his "radical imagination" activities. The postmodern nonsense was an insult to the writers we were attempting to study. The young female students rolled with the nonsense in order to get their degrees so they could become teachers, but the three male students wanted to become writers, one to write poetry another for fiction and another screenplays became demoralized, attended fewer classes and stopped reading the nonsense material. I was the only one who attempted to debate with the profs. I was always quickly shut down. The professors made clear they were anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-individualism, anti-science, etc. I have completely lost interest in becoming a professor despite my father being a professor and president of a university. I earn so much less than he did, but I am happier than he was. One of his jobs was to get rid of the whack job professors, most who were in the sociology department. This was back in the 1990s. The situation has gotten worse since then. Thank you Helen Pluckrose for all you've done. Your courage, intelligence and candour is greatly needed and appreciated.
You had my polite intrest, even if I found in your account no correlation with my own college experience, until you said "Helen Pluckrose". Honestly, Derrida would serve you better and that's saying alot.
Hey, man, I'm sorry your Professors were total asshats. I'll admit, my experience was the exact opposite of yours (curious, student-oriented professors) and I continue to find postmodern critique quite useful to approaching the world. I ended up clicking on your account and watching all your videos. Good luck with the children's books!
Sorry to hear that. To be a poet or a writer truly you will need to wage open war against communism and Marxist deconstructionism. One thing the dictatorship truly cannot stand is the poet who speaks the truth from their heart from primary experience untarnished by false societal ego-alters. To be a poet you must own the words themselves, to take possession of them.
I read Foucault for a college class back in the mid-80s. It has been a long time, but I remember thinking that his views were deeply corrosive and also somewhat dishonest. I also remember that none of the other students, as far as I could tell, and not even the professor seemed to notice how problematic and dark his philosophy was. I became a Catholic a year later. Thank God. I would not say that my conversion was entirely just a response to engaging with Foucault’s thought, but it played a part.
You started well and then had to find refuge in mythology. Too bad imo. Foucault only provides tools to study when systems achieve their goals, and when instead they fulfil their own interests. It’s not corrosive at all: it’s empowering.
Love it! Welcome. 'Crusader' takes on a different tone in this context. Discernment, which you obviously have the ability to do, is a cornerstone of Jesus' goal for us. Thank you.
Foucault was an extremely disturbed, hateful, unbalanced, and disingenuous individual. He made his mark through his infamous works on mental asylums and prisons, the so called histories. He only attacked western modern era, was not interested in any other civilisation nor any other period including antiquity or medieval Europe. All he cared about was the post Renaissance and its achievements. Why was that? A great question. Where did his endless animus and destructive impulses come from? What was the endgame? What was his real “vision”? After all, this is a character who considered the emerging clerical fascism in Middle East during the late 1970s as the genuine voice of progress and avant garde intellectual endeavours! His infamous dispatches for Corriere della Serra are available for all to read. Foucault was no friend of humanity.
@@JoeSchmo-oj9px Try to read his studies on Medieval Europe and architecture. He doesn't hate Europe at all, nor is destructive. It's only about understanding how power is tied to our social organisation, when it matches the expressed utility of a service and when it doesn't. It's not even a Marxist theorist.
15:35 _... if it's a fact that giraffes are taller than ants. She replied that it's not a fact but a religious believe in our culture._ Proof that "postmodern" and "philosopher" is a contradiction unless the meaning of "philosopher" has shifted to "bullshitter".
Someone believing that this issue is a 'religious belief in our culture' has zero relation to postmodernism. Any proponent of the validity and/or use of postmodernist thinking would neither believe such a thing nor say it. It's plucked out of ignorant fantasy.
Part of the problem with the social sciences in academia is that the employment of these professors in contingent on them being able to generate original ideas which have not been said before. Given the vast ocean of literature that has already been written, professors have to look to ever more radical and absurd ideas in order to come up with something original- a lot of this radicalism is then internalised and pass onto students, many of whom enter academia because nowhere in the world other than universities will they will be able to find a well-paying job that offers opportunities for career advancement other than in the universities, which directly relates to their obscure field of interest, e.g postmodernism. The cycle of radicalism and postmodernism is thus self-perpetuating. The irony is that most of these intellectuals do not actually believe in their ideas when taken to their logical progressions but still argue for them zealously because their careers depend on them having original ideas. They are more concerned with the purity of their ideas than the consequences of them. Many of them will go into academia and spend their days decrying the oppressive institutions of marriage, government and capitalism, while living in monogamous family units, collecting a generous salary and happily making investments, buying houses etc and abiding by the laws of the land at all times. However, their ideas are invariably a disaster for those who follow them… Look at the sexual revolution as one example- this happened out of intellectuals arguing that the nuclear family and sexual morality is an oppressive, arbitrary structure and that we should be able to follow our sexual whims at will. The consequences of this have been a complete disaster, however: millions of men are now addicted to pornography, Western countries are filled with ghettos of fatherless kids stabbing and shooting each other and filling prisons and various other matters that are hidden from view for middle class professors who live in their sheltered communities. I think so many of these ideas and ideologies that have arisen out of postmodernism can cause deep unhappiness and despair for people. To attribute suicides being at record highs in Western countries to merely being a “mental health crisis” is very reductive, and inaccurate, in my opinion. So many of these ideologies breed resentment, jealousy and self-pity, each of which alone can destroy a man’s wellbeing, let alone all three combined. Postmodern ideas, for example, has managed to convince millions of Western women who earn £40k plus salaries and own expensive cars, houses, designer clothing brands etc- people who would be objectively judged as some of the most materially prosperous who have ever lived and have complete equality under the law, that they are a class of people who are oppressed in every way imaginable. I think a lot of this deconstructionist and postmodern desire to destroy comes has its origins in internal psychology of the individuals expounding these ideas, deep feelings of empty and meaninglessness and so a need to externalise change arises rather than a need to look within for the answers. Many of these feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness flourish in the first place because of internalisation of postmodern ideas like materialism, hedonism and nihilism, all of which inevitably lead to despair, whether consciously or unconsciously. For all their rejection of capitalism, hierarchies and social institutions, it is ironic to see how many of these postmodernists obsess over wage and power gaps, the very things they supposedly wish to destroy I find it very common for people who follow these types of ideologies to be diagnosed with mental health problems when a shift back towards traditional paradigms like taking responsibility for one’s actions and examining one’s conduct on a regular basis, I.e. through the Christian doctrine sin, would undo much of the damage to their mental wellbeing
I agree postmodernism and it's effects are problematic, but are you really going to argue mid-20th century French theorists affected consumption of pornography? Possible, but not likely. Post of the big names of postmodernism couldn't have imagined the internet, not did they even bother. Most of them except Foucault are quite decent thoughtful individuals and lead faultless lives. Recent changes, the internet, and breakdown of mortality since Enlightenment- from Hobbes, Rousseau - has nothing to do with postmodernism. Add to that the weakness of human nature. You can't blame obscure figures for that.
@@erlinacobrado7947 yes, I think widespread pornography use is tied into the moral degradation brought about through the sexual revolution, much of which comes from the efforts of liberal intellectuals to destroy Christian values and the nuclear family, no matter how dire the consequences may be. I am not saying they played a part in the development of the internet, the internet is just a means of disseminating this moral leprosy in a quicker, more widespread way than anything we have seen before
About the women who ear 40k +..... They didn't say that they're opressed in every way possible, they (most) said that sexism still affects them, because it does. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence for example. You can't expect people to stay silent just because their situation is better than it was before, they still have the right to improve and be treated like others. And no Christian doctrine won't help, in fact it will make everything worse. I'd like to remind you that before postmodernism, Christianity denied science if it didn't fit into the Christian world view (example: "the Earth is flat because religion says so"). When it comes to social problems, religions are even worse (example: witch hunts). I'd also like to remind you that in the deeply Christian nations of history (example: Germany) some people used to EAT their kids when food became unavailable. It's important to note that while philosophers' ideas can affect the world, most people don't keep up with said ideas. The rise in crime rates, suicide rates.... you see today isn't because of postmodernism, it's because of an economic crisis.
In postmodernism, truth is either fluid or amorphous or fuzzy or relativistic or inaccessible or irrelevant. Truth is the main victim of postmodernism, followed by reason, critical thinking, aesthetic, ethics, knowledge, etc.
I saw a post modernist professor say post modernists don’t care about being right, they just care about being interesting. Of course only the painfully dull have the sole desire to be interesting at all costs. If only they had realized that the way to be interesting is to acquire wisdom, knowledge and beauty, not a contrarian ideology that rejects everything good the way that a spoilt adolescent disrespects their parents. They have to be the slimmest, most weasely pathetic scumbags the modern world has ever produced.
""In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy." (George Orwell, 1984).
Postmodernism comes of the very kind of thinking that would undermine this stupidity, not of the type of thinking that would create such nonsense. It's a falsehood, a paranoid delusion, to see in postmodernism the opposite of what is there.
Deconstruct modern values to suggest up is down and down is up. But only selectively, to justify one's delusions of victimhood, to avoid the work of taking on responsibility. Or just to find meaning in activism. To create problems to save the world from.
There is nothing in postmodernism that suggests that 'up is down and down is up' or that giraffes aren't taller than ants, or to turn an interpretation of truth towards any one agenda, or to deny truth or truths. Nothing. People that make that claim, either suggesting they are for postmodernism or against it, merely don't understand it. Probably haven't even read any of it.
Science was created to find objective truths. Nothing in this world will change said objective truths. The eclesiarcy of yesteryear basically turned into "intellectuals" and peddled the same shamanistic bullshit but in philosophy terms.
I think his work has been used and abused, though I think his book Discipline and Punish needs to be understood and contended with - especially his ideas about the panopticon. His work on psychiatry and sexuality is a jumble of contradictions.
Postmodernism is not a philosophy - its a condition described by philosophers, starting with Nietzsche's pronouncement that God is Dead. All of the writers you are criticising are carrying Nietszche's project of trying to find meaning in a society that is fundamentally constructed by relations of power. I mean Nietszche explicitly said that the world is will-to-power and nothing besides. Its just bad scholarship to ignore him when discussing postmodernism. And if you don't think relations of power influence our perception of reality you've not really paid much attention to human history.
The succesor of Foucault at college de France (J. Bouveresse) wrote a book showing Foucault only read the early work of Nietszche and did not understand it properly : "Nietszche against Foucault" was the title.
You can go back even further. To René Descartes or even back to Plato. Because most of this, comes from people plagiarizing Plato's writing. And that does not make it good. All of this is based on believing the real world is not real. And that way, you only find madness.
@@haraldbredsdorff2699 you never attempted to open the books of Foucault because otherwise you wouldn't say such stupidities even a first degree in philosophy would say blushing
I might listen to this if only there wasn't music. Totally unnecessary, and a pain for anyone with hearing difficulties. We are many, by the way! Young and old.
I suspect that the syphilis which caused Henry VIII's break with the church of Rome allowing for the development of science in Britain and the agricultural and industrial revolutions came out of France.
Postmodernists have a plausible premise, truth can be affected by all sorts of socio-economical factors, and morality is almost entirely relative; natural morality is really just individual respect and evolutionary logic. Emotions are an extremely important part of truth, but moreso in deconstructing the elements of that truth, rather than defining it only through emotions. The main problem with post-modernism is that it goes too far within its black and white relativism, forgetting that despite relativism, different truths/experiences will involve different thinking systems that don’t apply to everything precisely due to this epistemic relativism. An emotional truth will never be the same as empirical truth because an emotional truth by definition only presents the emotional aspect of an experience. However, it doesn’t necessarily worthless and shouldn’t be dismissed but rather acknowledged and discussed respectfully, which most post-modernists don’t really do, because they are too focused on validating their own biases, ironically.
They are wrong about the idea of different truths. There is room for subjective opinion and experience but that doesn’t negate or warp objective truth and morality that functions independently and externally. There is a natural moral order to the universe, just as there are laws to physics. We have to understand our subjective views are shaped by emotional biases and lack of information. But objectivity should always be what we strive for.
You raise some valid points. Empirical truth is as close to objective truth as we can get, hence the great leaps in the scientific and engineering fields. There is always going to be bias. No process is free from this, sadly.
@@BevWood-e8g As per the currently accepted definition of kilogram, I weigh more or less 60 kilos. What is the "extremely important" role of emotions in this?
I want to agree that science, reason and rationality must be defended. But we can´t forget that Postmodernism was the result of a long way of philosophers that asked: Why Science, Reason and Rationality created the Zyclone B gas, the Holocaust and World Wars? The Ilustration wasn´t suppose to create that horror. The philosophy of Adorno and Horkenheimer started asking: why this happened? and tried to explained it like reason instrumentalized to follow objectives, without asking if that objectives must be achieved. This was followed for a long chain of continental philosophers and their many explanations, like Reason is a tool of power, Reason and its explanations are only narratives used to justify the Power, etc. etc. I agree that those arguments were wrongly dirailed to praise irrationality. But we must be awere, that dream of reason and the woke reason create monsters.
Look into Heidegger " Black notebooks " where one find that under the heavy construction of Existentialism - an ultra rationalist effort - lays the will to kill the Ur Father meaning the will to overkill the Prophecy of Hebrew Prophets . Not by accident all post modern are flirting with antisemitism . That Modern era ( 400-1960) was established upon Judeo-Christian cornerstones is unbearable to Post-Modernism . The mixing of Palestinism ( Edward Said ..) is another aspect where anticolonialism aggregates with Post-Modernism . Here appears a big contradiction of Post-Modernism since the Palestinism is rooted into Islam religious hatred of jews and use Djihad as a military tool .
Religious people have always said that reason and logic have been the devil's seductive weapons to justify his own pretensions and immoralities. And it seems that they were not wrong.
@@kimberlywoetzel I know that Frankfurt school weren´t postmo. For that reason I talked of "long chain of continental philosophers" starting with their ideas, that many others explored with their own stances (Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, etc.) and many of the last of them will be labeled Postmodern .
The intellectual contributions of the French to European thought are indeed very significant indeed. The problem is that Anglophones are culturally disinclined to think about things in any great detail.
While I suppose this was possibly aimed at a left-leaning audience, I still found it strange that the narrator states “we on the left need to…” as if people on the right either don’t care about rationality and quality scientific approaches or that they are incapable of comprehending them. As someone who leans right and found myself watching this video (because I happen to appreciate science, philosophy, etc) I was a little like “Hang on, us too!”
A doctoral program in comparative literature consisted of exactly this in 1993. I left after 3 1/2 years, found corporate work, and spent the next 15 years rereading Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, and the whole bunch. I have spent the last several years watching the pendulum swing back again. It lands because people can be something without actual proof or commitment, simply by feeling like it. "Bodies that Matter" bothered me especially, and I am pleased to say that I got a good grade on a review saying it was stupid.
We tried. For the last 50+ years the right wing have tried to combat postmodernism, and all of the left attacked us for it. Now, the left want us to help combat the monster they created, but claim it is a far right ideology. As long as the left is not willing to say "this was us, and this is bad", the right wing not only should do nothing, but can not do anything. Hel, we keep getting told that Nazism is far right, when all of Nazism is based on left wing philosophy. And, as if that is not bad enough, she claim it is bad when right winger support popularism, that is doing what the majority of voters want while being on the right. No. If the left want to stop this deconstruction monster, then they need to first accept that they where wrong. And as long as that does not happen, the right wing can not do anything.
That’s Helen Pluckrose for you. Philosophically I can find no fault (although I’m no expert) but she has the common blind spot of centre left academic types of thinking that every intelligent thinking person must have the same political beliefs as herself.
Wow, what a great piece… I’m sad that most people out there on this medium watching this won’t understand the details of the brilliant work done here. Great job!
There is a rigidity to modern rationalist thought. But the answer isn’t to try to convince oneself that ants are bigger than giraffes. There are a lot of things that can’t be known empirically. In fact, it could be argued that the most important things in life can’t be known empirically. What’s needed is a place for, not irrationality, but intuitive sense and belief.
No-one who has even a half understanding of postmodernism believes that ants are bigger than giraffes, and anyone who even suggests that they do is selling you their own utter lack of understanding.
Identity isn't an illusion, it's who you are. The illusion is when you try to take on an identity that never was yours to begin with. Like a rat claiming to be a Stallion.
All knowledge is relative. That is not controversial. The problem is most people don't have the training to handle that truth. Anybody who would want you to believe in an absolute knowledge about anything is a charlatan, and probably wants to manipulate you. That doesn't mean knowledge is not valuable, or Impossible to acquire. It just means one has to be conscious that any knowledge has limitations, and these limitations are worthy of exploration.
Right, it’s still requires individual or small groups thinking, learning. I don’t think anything is solved by being anti-thinking, because you’re afraid of being deceived .
No there are absolute truths eg. the sky is blue, 1+1=-2 , just there are also eternal mysteries eg. what happened before the big bang. And things in-between. But sometimes the truth is hidden from us.
Postmodernism is specifically focused on breaking down power structures. Your description misrepresents many of its components. It is worth criticizing alternative ideologies but dangerous to ignore one’s own…
@@Tarantula-hawk Some people benefit and some people suffer in the current system. Sadly, a lot of people are currently oppressed. Hence, it can be valuable to at least critically examine the system we exist in, so we can improve and develop as humanity
For a long time I didn’t understand why I was so averse to French thought. It turns out that it isn’t the French I despised, but this disguise of “intellectualism”
To simplify a brilliant explanation, “I am a failure and am frustrated and I blame western philosophy for it.” In other words, “I am not responsible for my failure and frustration.”
And cherry on the top is Paris 2024 opening ceremony. But two can play this game. In response we will mock slavery, racism, LGTB+, colonialism, "progress" etc, etc ...
A good, solid presentation. However, I found the background music to be a very unnecessary distraction. It even, at time, makes it difficult to understand what the narrator is saying.
Reasonable arguments, though the use of music is more than needed. And zizek is not a post modernist, he is actually a critic against post modern arguments. As an academic living in an increasingly authoritarian country, i see the results of post modern arguments, and reaction to this deconstruction is coming from radical right as "a call for returning to old values". many others who consider themselves as leftists are actually criticizing left for things described in this video. In short, we are living a time where deconstruction has done his work, and desperate youngsters are trying to see an exit from smoke. Far right already saw the opportunity, but left is still embedded with identity politics instead of class struggle in a new techofeudal world.
This is a masterpiece! Helen Pluckrose, I envy you so much! This is exactly what I wish I could do on RUclips, making important ideas accessible. You've knitted together so many of the discussion threads that I've found exquisitely interesting but hadn't put into context. The best of the best. Cogent, comprehensive, superbly edifying. An authoritative vindication of ideas I only glimpsed but couldn't really put into a cogent summary like you have. Thanks so much.
It is true that the French intellectuals were catastrophic but the U.S. university are also responsible for the spread of wokism. In France it remained inside the Universities, it went to US universities and came back to Europe.
Would be good to consider impact of Hegel's 'realized necessity' and related concepts, especially combined with Hobbes' central idea of 'all out war', just as faulty Rousseau's 'noble savage'.
@@shannonm.townsend1232 Depends on viewers' / readers' interests I guess. You can't adequately discuss French philosophers of that period without context of Institute for Social Research in University of Frankfurt, their staff and source set of ideas they worked with though.
@@lordkelvin441 I think there's probably a throughline from postwar re-formulations of Marx exported to the West as a soft Marxism, and the New Left, with a concomitant move away from worker's movements towards pure radicality, irony, etc. Marcuse's time in the OSS is worth noting, considering their anti-communist stance.
The Americans universities were not obliged to be influenced by the French intellectuals. In France the theories of these intellectuals didn't spread through society as it is in the US. The Americans also have their responsibility, the postmodernists influence went to America and went back to France like a boomerang
Instead of condemning post-structuralist and postmodern philosophers we would do well to read them with attention and with the valuable hindsight we now have. We today take much of what they laid out for granted because the postmodern patterns of thought are now part of the way we think. But here is the catch. Contrary to what too many comments in this section say (sorry could not watch the whole vid, music was too tiring) however, these thinkers were very sharp, especially before they became stars. The intellectual project they embark on (and each of them is very different from the other) could have a huge value if the detail in their work were to be taken seriously. If that were the case none of this activist hogwash would be considered 'postmodern'. Foucault himself would call the so-called left-wing activists of the woke agenda "agents of normalization" for whom the insight into the panoptic society as he laid it out in Discipline and Punish would fit perfectly. That having been said there is a very real and dangerous dark side to all post-structuralist and postmodern philosophy. This is because it is so extreme, and also in a way so shallow when it comes to reflecting on its own motivations. My point being, we still have much to learn from them, and much to learn because of the serious flaws in their work. Sorry for the long one
Balanced and nuanced comment, I appreciate it and totally agree about the importance of Discipline and Punish. And for me Judith Butler is a thinker who balances deconstruction with other thinkers like Hegel, Hannah Arendt, Wittgenstein, Levinas and Habermas in a respectable way. I think my main concern is with other thinkers after poststructuralism who take Foucault and Derrida as gospel truth and weaponize their ideas to silence any dissenting opinions.
@@andrewcraigmusic strange seems we are both musicians :) thanks for your comment, and while I don't share your view of Judith Butler - as I see her as representative of one polarity in a multipolar entanglement, and I have the feeling you and I would disagree passionately about many things given the chance, it is only in a true and sincere consideration of another's perspective that we have any chance of bringing some understanding to these great tectonic shifts in thought and identity. Thanks again and good luck
@@andrewcraigmusic I tried to read Discipline and Punish once. But while I couldn't, amidst my horror, tear my eyes from the ghastly, gory descriptions of old-time punishments, my concentration faded in the next section about modern methods of discipline eg employing a Panopticon-like gaze on prisoners and citizens generally etc. So I wasn't sure what argument he was developing. But I had my suspicions. These seemed to have been confirmed by my brief internet-based research just now and from what I've just read amount at least partly to the idea that modern methods of social control etc are no more acceptable than those of say 3 hundred years ago, just different or ?perhaps worse as more intrusive?, and based on more or less universal surveillance & imprisonment for rule-breakers rather than torture and death. Well I don't know, perhaps for a masochist, as I understand Foucault was (as well as an admirer of the Maquis de Sade) modern methods seem just as bad or worse but coward as I am I'd take the option of being continually watched &/or imprisoned if the alternative was be to burnt alive or torn limb from limb alive by horses or a myriad other frightful fates. Others may feel differently of course.
Finally a comment that doesn't just take the extreme end. Obviously there are serious problems and issues. The criticism is not entirely wrong. But this comment makes sense in that there is still much to pick out and build from some of the foundational works in postmodern criticism of society. Just because we question certain scientific narratives, it doesn't mean we are disclaiming the validity of science. It is always better to question and challenge knowledge, whatever field it may be
We dont need to learn anything. We need to stop trying to reinvent the philosophical wheel in the west. What we need is to follow the philosophy that has lead to Europe ruling the world in the 19th century, inventing 99% of all things we now hold for granted.
Language =/= violence. Can it affect someone emotionally? Certainly but words are just words. You have the power to decide whether those words affect you.
I completed a M.A. in English lit. in 2007. It was eye-opening. I had no idea about the history or experience of women, colored people, or others. My views were changed by the compelling arguments back then. Now. I try to have conversations with people on the left, and I'm told that "truth" cannot come from someone of my race and gender. Which is insane ... or worse, machiavellian. Either way, the left has changed radically. And as I've become a centrist, I would say it has not changed for the better.
I've been lectured for like two hours today on inclusive language, schwa and discrimination. I'm attending a class for future teachers in Italy. I feel exausted and hopeless, the youth is being trained and educated by this people guys, it doesn't make any sense. They're trying to destroy everything west culture has created.
There's also a youth that's increasingly deciding that this nonsense must be opposed, or even annihilated. Invest in companies that make clothing like grey, black, brown shirts, and military boots now.
I'd suggest a longer video. Attempting to think about and breakdown Foucault in 5min, using predominantly the same obscure language he did would surely fail. Personal such video should be split in too parts. The person of the philosopher should be explored in the context of their work. It makes a huge difference when you are trying to understand Foucault. Fantastic video for those who have investigated the matter vigorously.
I have a question regarding all the discussions around who to blame for starting PM. Shouldn't everyone who came after and who bought into PM theory be considered equally guilty? What happened to personal agency?
May I recommend subtitles? I appreciate the video and acknowledge the efforts put into making this video, but at times, it is hard to hear what is being said. RUclips subtitles didnt help.
Everyone needs to remember that this is designed for the upper middle class with a very good education and a great deal of income that leaves their lives very comfortable. It's kind of boring when you're rich and intelligent.
I don't know whether there is some measure of misrepresentation going on but under the positions as explained at 0:16 the premodern position is the only sensible one.
I found this to be difficult to listen to with the interference of the constant background music. If you must use it, please consider muting it to a more bearable level!
Remember the clever aphorism that most people decide to accept a theory if it fits the facts. The French decide to accept the facts if they fit the theory.
It's almost like when Lyotard was a kid he encountered basic philosophy in an encyclopedia or something and heard 'I think therefore I am' and people trying to grapple with 'what is real.' Then he went to his classmates and tried to show off by saying 'how do you know that table exists, how do you know what is real?' And then he was laughed out of the room and sperged out shouting: 'I'll show you, I'm going to create a theoretical framework that questions objective reality and academics everywhere will lap it up.'
They tried to change philosophy from intellectual tools to discover truth into a social movement. It eroded the foundation of our shared method for discussing objective reality. The Yale school messed up big time
If you want to add background music to future music, try adding something ambient without a beat so that the rhythm viewers follow is the cadence of speech.
Dissolving binaries sounded pretty cool in the 90s, what young chap or lass didn't want a rationale to exemplify their idiosyncrocies? Particularly those that freed one from family, tradition etc. I must admit now that at that time I did not consider refusing my government higher education grant. The binary of where the money came from held sway all the while the binaries of behaviour and values were put to the sword, a metaphor that has tragic and painful connotations today as gender binaries are erased via a surgical knife. And ironically end up reinforcing the offending binary. The irony of the irony. How postmodern. As a younger person in the 90s death was far away, that ultimate binary of death- life didn't really enter the consciousness. Until now. Exactly how is that stark reality dissolved by post modernism? By a fleeing into a religious belief? Or atheism? More irony.
A very enlightening video-essay. I wascurrently thinking about how they are twisting the language and meaning and also creating it impossible to debate with facts. This video showed me the roots of it and opened place for digging by myself. Some things make more sense now. Also, it shows that academia and humanities are important for a society, to keep a good core of pursuit of truth, challenging outdated beliefs and be a lighhouse for morals. When this roots, it slowly spreads to the rest of society.
"There is [in Derrida] an explicit denial that differences can be other than oppositional and therefore a rejection of Enlightenment liberalism's values of overcoming differences" (9:56) Holy misrepresentation Batman. Citation needed lol.
"A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative', is asking you not to believe him. So don't."
- Roger Scruton
Hahaha. Indeed!
"There is no such thing as absolute truth!"
Is that true?
"Absolutely!"
Wait... what?
The point is not that there is no truth, or no truths, or that all truth or truths are 'merely relative', the point is that you can ever more define and contextualise that truth, giving it a 'higher definition', further implications and ramifications, and ultimately in a sense that 'changes the nature of its truth'. It's not saying there is no truth or truths at all. It's not even denying the earlier less nuanced and less well-contextualised truth. That truth remains and still is true very often, though sometimes that truth ends up overturned. The point is that you can always take any truth further down this path into shedding more light onto it and making it a more nuanced truth. Maybe you can find some 'post-modernist' professors who disagree with me, but they're just bad teachers. It is not what the actual theory is even trying to suggest. It's funny that Jordan Peterson often uses the nice concept of 'higher definition' or 'lower definition' in relation to perception, concepts, and thinking, but always misses this basic point. And it's even true that this is the only thought that remains true to the Christian belief in the infinite inwardness of the soul, and the infinite context and scope of God. It comes right out of the Christian tradition, and not in opposition to it at all.
@@AngloSaks666 "Changes the nature of its truth"...? What does that even mean? The truth is objective. As is its value. 'The sun is hot' is an objectively true statement. To contextualise by asking 'compared to what?' does not change the fact that the sun is hot. It may be millions of degrees colder than another star, but the sun would still be hot. Context only enables the verification of objectivity and an assessment/verification of its value. The Mona Lisa is of objectively less value to a man on a dessert island than a bottle of water. Verifiably so as it is the only one unable to sustain his life. Value itself is objective and only exists within the relationship between a person and the world/a thing. That truth here is absolute, water vs the Mona Lisa, there is no path to go down, no nuance to find. So no, you cannot 'always' take 'any' truth down some post modern rabbit hole, which sounds suspiciously like Hegelian dialectical nonsense to me.
'Value' can be swapped out for 'good'. Both only exist within the same relationship, between an individual and a thing. Goodness only exists within, and is defined by that relationship (hence God wants a personal relationship with you). So not all truths are equal, because some truths have little or no relationship to us. Some truths can be refined with context, some reach their absolute limit quickly, but many truths lose their value as the relationship between us and them moves apart. 'The sun is hot' shares a strong relationship to us, that fact is both valuable and good, the fact it is cooler than other stars is a truth of considerably less value, having little consequence to anybody. 'Value' and 'good' exist within meaning, and truth is weighed by its meaning, not its nuance. You can contextualise or nuance truths until they are meaningless, of no value and of no good.
Jorden Peterson is a clown with a study bible. He seeks to remake God in his image and the truth is not in him.
As a Christian I have no idea what you mean by "belief in the infinite inwardness of the soul". Where did you get that rubbish from? It certainly is not biblical. Sounds Catholic or New Age to me. Are you trying to say post modernism is compatible with Christianity? Can you confirm that with scripture? I promise you it isn't.
In effect postmodernist stances are anarchic and Anti Christian,self defeating .@@AngloSaks666
I live in Cambodia. It's recovering from the effects of post-modernists called the Khmer Rouge whose leaders educated in France in the mid 20th century.
Khmer rouge was messed up, wasnt it ? Your government tried to erase your past and failed miserably.
Just so. ❤
Pol pot is kind of fascinating. I’m probably not even the millionth person to point out the irony of Dude studying in Paris, France, one of the world cities at the precipice of intellectual and cultural development at the time.. and he goes back to Cambodia to murder people wearing glasses because he associated glasses with intellectualism.
You mean hardcore communists that thought of progress as linearity?
Sounds like the most modern thinking to me.
The CIA funded and operated Khmer Rouge?
French: "Let's erode everything until there's nothing left"
Everyone: "Wow so smart"
Everyone 'I'm not smart but I can appear smart by denying reality.... Wow so smart'
Are they French tho or are they Hewish?
@@constantinethecataphract5949 most of them joos
@@constantinethecataphract5949 Even if.. I wouldn't focus on that aspect too much as it is giving leftists the leverage to dismiss any criticism as "antisemitic conspiracy theory" or whatever buzzword they like to use for it. They do the same thing with Cultural Marxism.
@@Divide_et_lmpera
They do that anyway
Post-modernism is basically a way to intellectually rationalize narcissism and the pursuit of power for one's self at all cost.
You sound like the prey whose angry at the predator for being born the prey.
@@stephan1752 you sound lost.
And postmodernism is for stupid people to excuse their ignorance and incompetence at science by saying the game is rigged, racist, and a power structure, as if they reverse cause & effect. Newton and Einstein gained popular respect because they did good scientific work; their power was a result, not a cause of their influence.
@@stephan1752They made a lucid and logical summary of what they understand is happening.
Somehow that mobilized your inner Frantz Fanon and took you down the road of predator/prey and a helpless victim.
This argument is fallacious as it is an emotionless synopsis and yet you inferred fear. This speaks more about you and your own beliefs in the victim/oppressor theory, and is not relevant to the topic on hand
THIS!
In Foucault's case, his own p dophilia.
As a Frenchman, I feel tremendous sadness and pain that my country has such a deep part in the degeneration and ultimate destruction of Western civilization. Post-World War II French philosophy is, for the most part, truly horrific and nihilistic. They have done everything in their power to deprecate their country's heritage and achievements.
It was problematic in the 18th century already. The idiocy didn't begin with Derrida and Foucault, they're just the end point where everything was deconstructed and nothing makes sense anymore. Deconstructionism started with Rousseau, who believed that people were born as a blank paper and were entirely shaped by their upbringing and cultural surroundings. This isn't true, due to genetics. However, believing it's true is a prerequisite for embracing postmodernism. Rousseau also influenced Marx and various other left-leaning thinkers to a large degree.
Idk man I think this is kinda black pilled . France is still a great country. The west has its issues . Have you tried living in a third world country? Totally different life and planet . Keep doing your best . There still many great French people
What the hell is goin on over there? How will France survive another 50 years the direction it’s going? Godspeed Frenchmen
France is not to blame.
There were lots of different writers here.
American universities picked what they liked, modified and amplified it.
It's not a French thing whatsoever.
Yanks just can't own up and need a scapegoat.
I understand. Ilived briefly in France. I left. I'm a Jew. France hates Jews, Christian, Buddhist and sane people
For a complex topic, I'd suggest no background music. I found it distracting.
Voice is too faint.
Ane especially not a mindless, computerised rhythm track.
Agreed
I had to stop it almost at the end because it was driving me nuts. Sucks because the content itself is enlightening.
I'm not watching for that exact reason.
I'm french and I absolutely DESPISE these people.
Move to RUSSIA.
@@Ggaia-d9z No ; culturally fight to shame them out of existence.
@@cdv5514 You are the one who should be ashamed of yourself. But since that is not an option: MOVE TO RUSSIA!
@@Ggaia-d9zcm'on! Russia is only an alternative if you are from South Sudan 😂
Who are not French !! Jewish intellectuels are globalists NOT FRENCH
When I studied Postmodernism in school, my assessment was that it signalled the exhaustion of Western creativity.
Whaddaya mean? There's still hols and queezeen! 😵💫
Συμφωνώ.
@@Λουθηρανισμός Euxapistw! 😉
I studied it for 20 flucking years (so 20 wasted years), and I came to the same conclusion. Although pomo is not just a signal, but a symptom of this exhaustion that it cannot comprehend.
@@Stephan-ci9ji Great insight.
Let's not leave the Germans blameless here. Frankfurt school is at the heart of this
Yes, including Herbert Marcuse who found a sinacure at the University of California and trained Angela Davis.
@@georgegeller1902 Marcuse was also heavily inspired by Mao and practical Maosim.
And there I was, thinking the Frankfurt School was a Jewish operation!
I studied philosophy in Germany: Not at all, with all due respect. Adorno couldn't be further from Postmodernism as he comes from Hegel, Marx and Freud, all of whom are famous examples of thinkers Postmodernist philosophy broke with.
@@matthouston4068 There's nothing Jewish about those guys. Not in theory or practice.
Also note that Foucault was thought to be paedophile who tried to justify his desire for boys with valueless philosophy. Derrida and Lyotard seemingly did not judge this as wicked. Postmodernism was useful to point out the limitations of modernism, but it lacks the depth to be a philosophy in its own right. Modernism should always be the basis of reasonable and rational thought and policy, while its limitations are ideally understood.
Those who tear down can never replace what they took or create their own thing. Post-Modernism can never be of substance because its inherent nature is to Deconstruct.
it doesn't lack the depth, but rather the monolithic unifying corpus to make it a philosophy. Philosophies are also metanarratives, so postmodernism itself would not see itself as one. I like to look at it more as an theoretical framework or an analytical lens. In that way, it has all the depth (and then some) for you to conduct super interesting and salient analysis of history, society, art, culture, etc.
Postmodernism is actually really cool and this video mischaracterises it to an enormous extent. it's obvious to me that whoever made this never actually read or studied the postmodernists. They likely saw a lecture by Jordan Peterson (who also hasn't read them) and are respewing the bullshit he spews about it.
I surfed some of the post-modernist theoretical waves in the early 90s, and once I'd finished my masters thesis got a rather more realist job and mostly forgot about it, not sure whether the main point of post-modernism was marketing, academic purge, or prank. Lyotard is a good read, as a descriptor. Spivak is more evidently retributive. Baudrillard is delirious.
The big change happened when pomo hit American politics and social mobilization. What a wonderful way to counter Fukuyama and the neoliberal triumphalists, to breathe new vitriol into stale partisan debates, get a job, a book deal, and a talkshow spot!
The problem, seems to me, is not the weird, the extreme, the intersectional, partisan and nihilist. They are not new. The problem is that the center has been so damned weak, vacillating, wanting to triangulate and not be associated with the wrong kind of right and maintain the moderate left while losing the core liberal values that should define the center: fundamental freedoms, open society.
I suspect liberal centrists could do a better job of marketing Locke, Smith, Burke, Popper, Olsen, even Hayek. The appetite is there - I look at the recent general election in New Zealand and see around 30% swing vote to the center right, putting a coalition in office at about 64%. That's huge for a proportional rep system. I'm watching Canada and Aus closely too. Many voters are sick of the screaming and yelling, being told they're bad and ghastly because of things they cannot change, being punished for past tolerances, and none of this has paid off, given the state of the job market, cost of living, and interest rates.
Popper was George Soros's mentor. That should be enough to give anyone pause.
The left seems comfortable at being the navel gazer and the cynic about ideas. Look at threads on soc media - the left has evolved an assymetric strategy of accepting and rejecting deconstruction et al. When used by state actors with ties to media, this strategy has proven to be utterly unstoppable.
Hope lies only in a smaller state, less/no state funding for humanities, more choice in online study, more STEM and more open civillian journalism - msm's advantage is that it's backed by the funding which has interests that generally coalesce with the interests of otherwise unemployable midwits.
We're being gamed and the gaming is very effective.
MXVEGA writes > I suspect liberal centrists could do a better job of marketing Locke, Smith, Burke, Popper, Olsen, even Hayek
Smith's core argument was an attack on Locke’s mercantilist system (Read del Mar)
Burke was an elitist anti-democrat (read Burke!)
Hayek got Popper his job via the CIA (read Hacohen)
Actually Shils dumped Popper very early for Polanyi - then Polanyi for Kuhn. What I actually dislike about Popper is the way he hid in his office at LSE when Russell turned out there to attack the Vietnam war (Read Grattan-Guinness).
Why waste time on Olsen when you could be reading Robert Michels?
Never mind - it sounds good - and it seems nobody here knows any different
I think you answered your own (unasked) question with your last sentence. I think maintenance of the status quo was conceivably the point. Which would be a shame since I've enjoyed reading most of the Continental philosophers. At any rate, the CIA's very generous funding of Radical Leftism (as a sexier alternative to staid Marxism) through the Congress of Cultural Freedom is a matter of record. I'm against throwing the baby out with the bathwater (Baudrillard, etc), but the meddling of third parties (who, broadly speaking have a vested interest in persevering certain hierarchical structures) in Leftist thought may help explain how we got here. Instead of someplace better.
@@shannonm.townsend1232 MXVEGA writes > I suspect liberal centrists could do a better job of marketing Locke, Smith, Burke, Popper, Olsen, even Hayek
Smith’s core argument was an attack on Locke’s mercantilist system (Read del Mar)
Burke was an elitist anti-democrat (read Burke)
Hayek got Popper his job via the CIA (read Hacohen)
Actually Shils dumped Popper very early for Polanyi - then Polanyi for Kuhn.
Open Society and its Enemies is a great on Plato - but Popper the Man hid in his office at LSE when Russell turned out there to attack the Vietnam war (Read Grattan-Guinness).
Why read Olsen when you could be reading Robert Michels?
This adds credence to the saying "if you wonder what the right decision is just look at what the French are doing then do the exact opposite"
That's right, become Catholic.
You invented that lol
Indeed. Supporting that treasonous rabble in the colonies was a very bad idea.
then you should stop doing/using all the things listed here :
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_inventions_and_discoveries
@@smal750 I noticed soap wasn't on that list.
Sorry, you kind of walked into that one.
Postmodernism: basically, mental masturbation until the brain turns to goo.
That brain being one that belongs to an impressionable female student, in the hopes that she'll perform physical masterbation and much more for the professor.
You could even call it 'thinking'.
@@nicolasjanvier8617 Calling postmodernism 'thinking' is an example of taking the principle of intellectual charity far beyond its useful bounds. OP is correct: it is not thinking, but w***ing.
@@Ubu987Have you tried to read some of the thinkers mentionned in the video? That said, Barthes & Baudrillard might be easier places to start...
is that what Jordan Peterson told you?
I believe that the spectacle we were served during the ouverture of the Paris Olympics has a lot to do with Postmodermodism.
You destruction is not a mistake, it's a plan, the people you want to protect you are actually the people who hate you and want to destroy you.
If postmodernism is serious about rejecting the notion of overarching truth, then it must reject itself as overarching truth. QED.
You might think you're being very witty, and that you just got some minor 'haha! Got you' moment by bringing in self-referentiality, but actually what you are attacking here is not postmodernism, but logic itself (the old Russel paradox). And with it, you're also taking maths down (Godel's incompleteness theorem). Meanwhile postmodernism comes out relatively unscathed as it has long preempted your criticism through its emphasis on irony as a mode of discourse.
@@nicolasjanvier8617 How was I attacking logic?
@@Primitarian I just told you: it's the problem of self-referentiality. The presence of contradictions like Russell's paradox in an axiomatic set theory is nothing short of disastrous.
@@nicolasjanvier8617 What do you mean by "nothing short of disastrous"? Are you saying that Russell's paradox proves that logic is invalid?
@@Primitarian Define invalid... I'm saying it suggests logic is either inconsistent, or incomplete. Some logicians will certainly see that as disastrous... I tend to think of it as a blessing in disguise, but you would probably not approve of my reasons for doing so.
An A+ for content, an F minus for the manic music loop that resented (in a postmodern kind of way) being labeled as "background"
I found the music bed better than most (some are awful and horribly distracting). But the presentation was so singularly excellent the background didn't matter
I thought the music was good
F for content too. This video mischaracterises postmodernism like crazy. It does a genuinely awful job at 1) telling you what postmodernism is, 2) how postmodernism works, 3) the implications of postmodernist thought
Thank you. Postmodernism has now crept into every corner of social and political discourse and action. At one time it found its home in graduate departments of universities with students congratulating themselves at being able to crack the dense code of postmodernist philosophers. Now it has filtered down to the body politic and given way to a world of "alternative facts" where scientific fact and method is replaced with the supremacy of feelings- hurt feelings reigning supreme.
It has not. Maybe you are just paranoid.
French postmodern theory is not prescriptive... It merely describes a state of affairs (read Baudrillard and Lyotard again). What has crept into every corner of social and political discourse is not postmodernism itself (as you seem to suggest), but rather the symptom that is the object of postmodern analysis. You (and people like Helen Pluckrose) are mistaking the messenger for the message.
These people are vermin @@nicolasjanvier8617
👍🤔
So isn't religion just another form of postmodernism then?
If a small group of French writers can undermine an entire culture, then that culture was a rotten door waiting to be kicked in.
This was a poorly done piece. She should have listed out in clarity what post modernism is, its faulty assumptions and what it gets wrong. The truth westerners don’t want to admit is the enlightenment and western advancement relied heavily on exploitation of labor, along identity lines, and the plunder of lands and peoples all over the world. Post modernism is simply calling bullshit on the values western hegemony claims it’s built on.
Problem is that especially back then, TV and institutions were big.
So these people could infiltrate institutions and spread their ideas to other midwits who struggled to think for themselves.
There are a lot, and I mean a lot of resentful, jealous, and angry people who lap these ideas up. Always easier to blame someone or something else than take personal account of your own failures.
@@learnedhand8559 Perhaps there are. But just because people are angry and resentful (jealous is a subjective term) does not diminish the usefulness of continental theory in understanding society. The left have always had pet intellectuals, some better than others. For what it's worth I think some of these simply rewrite the same book over and over (there's a market and a man's got to eat), and then a lot of second-rate American academics make a living "educating" gullible youngsters whose course of studies will at best lead to a job at Starbucks while the live with their parents. A society needs only so many sociologists. It needs more tradespeople and engineers, but bright youngsters get sold on a degree that nobody wants and somebody has to pay for. There's a racket.
@@learnedhand8559The effeminate masses are stupid and spiteful.
Your music is objectively too loud
Alternative title: The Western History of Covert Demoralisation
Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff was driven by a desire to subvert, corrupt, and destroy the foundations of Western civilization and demoralize us in an ultimate effort, whether conscious or subconscious, to bring about the destruction of the West. The plan to wipe out "Edom and Amalek" has become more than apparent in the last decade.
Amen
I think "demoralisation" is an euphemism here.
Cool it with the antichosen remarks...
It is not Western, it is that group that we are not allowed to criticise.
Brilliant. Spot on. I dropped out of my English Masters program a few years ago because the professors were whack jobs, inviting a communist speaker at one point in an attempt to get students to join him in his "radical imagination" activities. The postmodern nonsense was an insult to the writers we were attempting to study. The young female students rolled with the nonsense in order to get their degrees so they could become teachers, but the three male students wanted to become writers, one to write poetry another for fiction and another screenplays became demoralized, attended fewer classes and stopped reading the nonsense material. I was the only one who attempted to debate with the profs. I was always quickly shut down. The professors made clear they were anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-individualism, anti-science, etc. I have completely lost interest in becoming a professor despite my father being a professor and president of a university. I earn so much less than he did, but I am happier than he was. One of his jobs was to get rid of the whack job professors, most who were in the sociology department. This was back in the 1990s. The situation has gotten worse since then. Thank you Helen Pluckrose for all you've done. Your courage, intelligence and candour is greatly needed and appreciated.
You had my polite intrest, even if I found in your account no correlation with my own college experience, until you said "Helen Pluckrose". Honestly, Derrida would serve you better and that's saying alot.
Hey, man, I'm sorry your Professors were total asshats. I'll admit, my experience was the exact opposite of yours (curious, student-oriented professors) and I continue to find postmodern critique quite useful to approaching the world. I ended up clicking on your account and watching all your videos. Good luck with the children's books!
Sorry to hear that. To be a poet or a writer truly you will need to wage open war against communism and Marxist deconstructionism. One thing the dictatorship truly cannot stand is the poet who speaks the truth from their heart from primary experience untarnished by false societal ego-alters. To be a poet you must own the words themselves, to take possession of them.
@@shannonm.townsend1232 What do you not like about her?
@@Sam-d7m8w her stupid non-scholarly book and alliance with the very disingenuous gifted Lindsay.
So many smirks of duper's delight on these professor's faces.
this is how they expose themselves
Seems to me the smirk is in Pluckrose's tone, not on the professor's faces.
They have the grifters' smirk.
Far too fast!
Never actually seen Butler's and Crenshaw's smug faces before. Hope I can unsee them.
I read Foucault for a college class back in the mid-80s. It has been a long time, but I remember thinking that his views were deeply corrosive and also somewhat dishonest. I also remember that none of the other students, as far as I could tell, and not even the professor seemed to notice how problematic and dark his philosophy was. I became a Catholic a year later. Thank God. I would not say that my conversion was entirely just a response to engaging with Foucault’s thought, but it played a part.
You started well and then had to find refuge in mythology. Too bad imo. Foucault only provides tools to study when systems achieve their goals, and when instead they fulfil their own interests. It’s not corrosive at all: it’s empowering.
Love it! Welcome. 'Crusader' takes on a different tone in this context. Discernment, which you obviously have the ability to do, is a cornerstone of Jesus' goal for us. Thank you.
I always thought Foucault looked evil. The best way to describe his darkness is a reincarnation of Aliester Crowley.
Foucault was an extremely disturbed, hateful, unbalanced, and disingenuous individual. He made his mark through his infamous works on mental asylums and prisons, the so called histories. He only attacked western modern era, was not interested in any other civilisation nor any other period including antiquity or medieval Europe. All he cared about was the post Renaissance and its achievements. Why was that? A great question. Where did his endless animus and destructive impulses come from? What was the endgame? What was his real “vision”? After all, this is a character who considered the emerging clerical fascism in Middle East during the late 1970s as the genuine voice of progress and avant garde intellectual endeavours! His infamous dispatches for Corriere della Serra are available for all to read. Foucault was no friend of humanity.
@@JoeSchmo-oj9px Try to read his studies on Medieval Europe and architecture. He doesn't hate Europe at all, nor is destructive. It's only about understanding how power is tied to our social organisation, when it matches the expressed utility of a service and when it doesn't. It's not even a Marxist theorist.
not sure why when explaining the 'Far Right' it pictures the current Italian Government. Not all Right parties are Far Right.
15:35
_... if it's a fact that giraffes are taller than ants. She replied that it's not a fact but a religious believe in our culture._
Proof that "postmodern" and "philosopher" is a contradiction unless the meaning of "philosopher" has shifted to "bullshitter".
15:35 This segment also proves why women were not allowed to vote or why it wasn't them who constructed the airplane! :)
Someone believing that this issue is a 'religious belief in our culture' has zero relation to postmodernism. Any proponent of the validity and/or use of postmodernist thinking would neither believe such a thing nor say it. It's plucked out of ignorant fantasy.
@@AngloSaks666
The philosopher said it. Ask her.
Never underestimate the ability of a lot of women not to reason but to Feeeeeeel reality.
@@TarpeianRock
You might "feel" Earth were flat, but no one will ever convince me that anyone "feels" that a giraffe might not be taller than an ant.
I hope Europe wakes up and embraces its history
Put it again without music please
UP
No music here: quillette.com/2024/05/07/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-foucault-lyotard-derrida/
@@Quillette thank you!
Part of the problem with the social sciences in academia is that the employment of these professors in contingent on them being able to generate original ideas which have not been said before. Given the vast ocean of literature that has already been written, professors have to look to ever more radical and absurd ideas in order to come up with something original- a lot of this radicalism is then internalised and pass onto students, many of whom enter academia because nowhere in the world other than universities will they will be able to find a well-paying job that offers opportunities for career advancement other than in the universities, which directly relates to their obscure field of interest, e.g postmodernism. The cycle of radicalism and postmodernism is thus self-perpetuating.
The irony is that most of these intellectuals do not actually believe in their ideas when taken to their logical progressions but still argue for them zealously because their careers depend on them having original ideas. They are more concerned with the purity of their ideas than the consequences of them. Many of them will go into academia and spend their days decrying the oppressive institutions of marriage, government and capitalism, while living in monogamous family units, collecting a generous salary and happily making investments, buying houses etc and abiding by the laws of the land at all times. However, their ideas are invariably a disaster for those who follow them…
Look at the sexual revolution as one example- this happened out of intellectuals arguing that the nuclear family and sexual morality is an oppressive, arbitrary structure and that we should be able to follow our sexual whims at will. The consequences of this have been a complete disaster, however: millions of men are now addicted to pornography, Western countries are filled with ghettos of fatherless kids stabbing and shooting each other and filling prisons and various other matters that are hidden from view for middle class professors who live in their sheltered communities.
I think so many of these ideas and ideologies that have arisen out of postmodernism can cause deep unhappiness and despair for people. To attribute suicides being at record highs in Western countries to merely being a “mental health crisis” is very reductive, and inaccurate, in my opinion. So many of these ideologies breed resentment, jealousy and self-pity, each of which alone can destroy a man’s wellbeing, let alone all three combined. Postmodern ideas, for example, has managed to convince millions of Western women who earn £40k plus salaries and own expensive cars, houses, designer clothing brands etc- people who would be objectively judged as some of the most materially prosperous who have ever lived and have complete equality under the law, that they are a class of people who are oppressed in every way imaginable. I think a lot of this deconstructionist and postmodern desire to destroy comes has its origins in internal psychology of the individuals expounding these ideas, deep feelings of empty and meaninglessness and so a need to externalise change arises rather than a need to look within for the answers. Many of these feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness flourish in the first place because of internalisation of postmodern ideas like materialism, hedonism and nihilism, all of which inevitably lead to despair, whether consciously or unconsciously. For all their rejection of capitalism, hierarchies and social institutions, it is ironic to see how many of these postmodernists obsess over wage and power gaps, the very things they supposedly wish to destroy
I find it very common for people who follow these types of ideologies to be diagnosed with mental health problems when a shift back towards traditional paradigms like taking responsibility for one’s actions and examining one’s conduct on a regular basis, I.e. through the Christian doctrine sin, would undo much of the damage to their mental wellbeing
I agree postmodernism and it's effects are problematic, but are you really going to argue mid-20th century French theorists affected consumption of pornography? Possible, but not likely. Post of the big names of postmodernism couldn't have imagined the internet, not did they even bother. Most of them except Foucault are quite decent thoughtful individuals and lead faultless lives. Recent changes, the internet, and breakdown of mortality since Enlightenment- from Hobbes, Rousseau - has nothing to do with postmodernism. Add to that the weakness of human nature. You can't blame obscure figures for that.
@@erlinacobrado7947 yes, I think widespread pornography use is tied into the moral degradation brought about through the sexual revolution, much of which comes from the efforts of liberal intellectuals to destroy Christian values and the nuclear family, no matter how dire the consequences may be. I am not saying they played a part in the development of the internet, the internet is just a means of disseminating this moral leprosy in a quicker, more widespread way than anything we have seen before
@@erlinacobrado7947 exactly, not to mention, life has become more lonely, leading people to pornography addiction.
About the women who ear 40k +..... They didn't say that they're opressed in every way possible, they (most) said that sexism still affects them, because it does. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence for example. You can't expect people to stay silent just because their situation is better than it was before, they still have the right to improve and be treated like others. And no Christian doctrine won't help, in fact it will make everything worse. I'd like to remind you that before postmodernism, Christianity denied science if it didn't fit into the Christian world view (example: "the Earth is flat because religion says so"). When it comes to social problems, religions are even worse (example: witch hunts). I'd also like to remind you that in the deeply Christian nations of history (example: Germany) some people used to EAT their kids when food became unavailable. It's important to note that while philosophers' ideas can affect the world, most people don't keep up with said ideas. The rise in crime rates, suicide rates.... you see today isn't because of postmodernism, it's because of an economic crisis.
In postmodernism, truth is either fluid or amorphous or fuzzy or relativistic or inaccessible or irrelevant. Truth is the main victim of postmodernism, followed by reason, critical thinking, aesthetic, ethics, knowledge, etc.
You never opened their books. It shows.
I saw a post modernist professor say post modernists don’t care about being right, they just care about being interesting. Of course only the painfully dull have the sole desire to be interesting at all costs. If only they had realized that the way to be interesting is to acquire wisdom, knowledge and beauty, not a contrarian ideology that rejects everything good the way that a spoilt adolescent disrespects their parents. They have to be the slimmest, most weasely pathetic scumbags the modern world has ever produced.
This video has a lot of dense info, and I think it would be easier to follow without the background music, and more or longer pauses between ideas
the music was so irritating. I decided to print a transcript because it was too annoying
I think it is meant to be distracting so you don't realize that it is a propaganda hit peice on freedom of thought and understanding.
""In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy." (George Orwell, 1984).
sir keir starmer
a woman can have a penis
michel foucault
haw hee haw
nothing like a healthy frisco bath house
lastpost infection
Postmodernism comes of the very kind of thinking that would undermine this stupidity, not of the type of thinking that would create such nonsense. It's a falsehood, a paranoid delusion, to see in postmodernism the opposite of what is there.
Deconstruct modern values to suggest up is down and down is up. But only selectively, to justify one's delusions of victimhood, to avoid the work of taking on responsibility. Or just to find meaning in activism. To create problems to save the world from.
Then it is corrupt.
Sounds like someone has had it up to here with these danged rabble rousers (i.e., women, minorities, homosexuals, et al).
There is nothing in postmodernism that suggests that 'up is down and down is up' or that giraffes aren't taller than ants, or to turn an interpretation of truth towards any one agenda, or to deny truth or truths. Nothing. People that make that claim, either suggesting they are for postmodernism or against it, merely don't understand it. Probably haven't even read any of it.
It provides a proxy of meaning for those with lives without meaning.
Science was created to find objective truths. Nothing in this world will change said objective truths.
The eclesiarcy of yesteryear basically turned into "intellectuals" and peddled the same shamanistic bullshit but in philosophy terms.
I do not understand how anyone can take Foucault seriously or consider him to be an intellectual.
I think his work has been used and abused, though I think his book Discipline and Punish needs to be understood and contended with - especially his ideas about the panopticon. His work on psychiatry and sexuality is a jumble of contradictions.
@@andrewcraigmusic Yeah, D&P was the only semi-decent work of his.
Probably because you don´t understand his work, if you ever attempted to read it...
The panopticon it's not his, it's Bentham, and the point is the frame of power relations représented by the panopticon as metaphor
Unlike Sartre, his writing just doesn't speak to me.
Never leave your child in the room alone with a French philosopher 😂
How about Jean Jacques Rousseau?
Postmodernism is not a philosophy - its a condition described by philosophers, starting with Nietzsche's pronouncement that God is Dead. All of the writers you are criticising are carrying Nietszche's project of trying to find meaning in a society that is fundamentally constructed by relations of power.
I mean Nietszche explicitly said that the world is will-to-power and nothing besides. Its just bad scholarship to ignore him when discussing postmodernism.
And if you don't think relations of power influence our perception of reality you've not really paid much attention to human history.
The succesor of Foucault at college de France (J. Bouveresse) wrote a book showing Foucault only read the early work of Nietszche and did not understand it properly : "Nietszche against Foucault" was the title.
So? Them being inspired by Nietzsche doesn’t make their philosophy less damaging
@@marcobelli6856 damaging how ?
Be precise.
Did you ever opened their books ?
The answer is no, of course.
You can go back even further. To René Descartes or even back to Plato. Because most of this, comes from people plagiarizing Plato's writing. And that does not make it good. All of this is based on believing the real world is not real.
And that way, you only find madness.
@@haraldbredsdorff2699 you never attempted to open the books of Foucault because otherwise you wouldn't say such stupidities even a first degree in philosophy would say blushing
I might listen to this if only there wasn't music. Totally unnecessary, and a pain for anyone with hearing difficulties. We are many, by the way! Young and old.
I love this comment❤
read it then.
@@matiasiampietro8990Music is still totally unnecessary here and disturbing for everyone with hearing issues.
Thank you yes.
No music here: quillette.com/2024/05/07/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-foucault-lyotard-derrida/
Dr David Starkey has often said that nothing good ever came out of France except, perhaps, for their food and wine. I agree completely.
I suspect that the syphilis which caused Henry VIII's break with the church of Rome allowing for the development of science in Britain and the agricultural and industrial revolutions came out of France.
It is honestly a challenge to missunderstand or missrepresent a theory at such levels.
Postmodernists have a plausible premise, truth can be affected by all sorts of socio-economical factors, and morality is almost entirely relative; natural morality is really just individual respect and evolutionary logic. Emotions are an extremely important part of truth, but moreso in deconstructing the elements of that truth, rather than defining it only through emotions. The main problem with post-modernism is that it goes too far within its black and white relativism, forgetting that despite relativism, different truths/experiences will involve different thinking systems that don’t apply to everything precisely due to this epistemic relativism. An emotional truth will never be the same as empirical truth because an emotional truth by definition only presents the emotional aspect of an experience. However, it doesn’t necessarily worthless and shouldn’t be dismissed but rather acknowledged and discussed respectfully, which most post-modernists don’t really do, because they are too focused on validating their own biases, ironically.
They are wrong about the idea of different truths. There is room for subjective opinion and experience but that doesn’t negate or warp objective truth and morality that functions independently and externally. There is a natural moral order to the universe, just as there are laws to physics. We have to understand our subjective views are shaped by emotional biases and lack of information. But objectivity should always be what we strive for.
Finally, a good comment.
Very balanced response
You raise some valid points. Empirical truth is as close to objective truth as we can get, hence the great leaps in the scientific and engineering fields. There is always going to be bias. No process is free from this, sadly.
@@BevWood-e8g As per the currently accepted definition of kilogram, I weigh more or less 60 kilos. What is the "extremely important" role of emotions in this?
I want to agree that science, reason and rationality must be defended. But we can´t forget that Postmodernism was the result of a long way of philosophers that asked: Why Science, Reason and Rationality created the Zyclone B gas, the Holocaust and World Wars? The Ilustration wasn´t suppose to create that horror. The philosophy of Adorno and Horkenheimer started asking: why this happened? and tried to explained it like reason instrumentalized to follow objectives, without asking if that objectives must be achieved. This was followed for a long chain of continental philosophers and their many explanations, like Reason is a tool of power, Reason and its explanations are only narratives used to justify the Power, etc. etc. I agree that those arguments were wrongly dirailed to praise irrationality. But we must be awere, that dream of reason and the woke reason create monsters.
Look into Heidegger " Black notebooks " where one find that under the heavy construction of Existentialism - an ultra rationalist effort - lays the will to kill the Ur Father meaning the will to overkill the Prophecy of Hebrew Prophets . Not by accident all post modern are flirting with antisemitism . That Modern era ( 400-1960) was established upon Judeo-Christian cornerstones is unbearable to Post-Modernism . The mixing of Palestinism ( Edward Said ..) is another aspect where anticolonialism aggregates with Post-Modernism . Here appears a big contradiction of Post-Modernism since the Palestinism is rooted into Islam religious hatred of jews and use Djihad as a military tool .
Religious people have always said that reason and logic have been the devil's seductive weapons to justify his own pretensions and immoralities. And it seems that they were not wrong.
Adorno and Horkheimer had nothing to do with Postmodernism.
Apparently, the lessons of WW2 are being applied with vigor and passion in Gaza.
@@kimberlywoetzel I know that Frankfurt school weren´t postmo. For that reason I talked of "long chain of continental philosophers" starting with their ideas, that many others explored with their own stances (Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, etc.) and many of the last of them will be labeled Postmodern .
Ah, the French. They've given us so much.
Most of them are not French, look deeper, Just like Marx.
Some of us don't laugh as much. C'est la vie 😢
French people now a protected class. Joke removed. But they still have Jerry Lewis 😮😅😅😂
Pity they haven't given you a free, functioning healthcare service though. Right?
The intellectual contributions of the French to European thought are indeed very significant indeed. The problem is that Anglophones are culturally disinclined to think about things in any great detail.
While I suppose this was possibly aimed at a left-leaning audience, I still found it strange that the narrator states “we on the left need to…” as if people on the right either don’t care about rationality and quality scientific approaches or that they are incapable of comprehending them. As someone who leans right and found myself watching this video (because I happen to appreciate science, philosophy, etc) I was a little like “Hang on, us too!”
Same here. Same here. :)
A doctoral program in comparative literature consisted of exactly this in 1993. I left after 3 1/2 years, found corporate work, and spent the next 15 years rereading Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, and the whole bunch. I have spent the last several years watching the pendulum swing back again. It lands because people can be something without actual proof or commitment, simply by feeling like it. "Bodies that Matter" bothered me especially, and I am pleased to say that I got a good grade on a review saying it was stupid.
Me too.
We tried. For the last 50+ years the right wing have tried to combat postmodernism, and all of the left attacked us for it. Now, the left want us to help combat the monster they created, but claim it is a far right ideology.
As long as the left is not willing to say "this was us, and this is bad",
the right wing not only should do nothing, but can not do anything.
Hel, we keep getting told that Nazism is far right, when all of Nazism is based on left wing philosophy.
And, as if that is not bad enough, she claim it is bad when right winger support popularism, that is doing what the majority of voters want while being on the right.
No. If the left want to stop this deconstruction monster, then they need to first accept that they where wrong. And as long as that does not happen, the right wing can not do anything.
That’s Helen Pluckrose for you. Philosophically I can find no fault (although I’m no expert) but she has the common blind spot of centre left academic types of thinking that every intelligent thinking person must have the same political beliefs as herself.
"I overthink until my brain melts down. Therefore, I am. Maybe. Then again, maybe not."
Wow, what a great piece… I’m sad that most people out there on this medium watching this won’t understand the details of the brilliant work done here. Great job!
We should have let the Germans keep France
The time has come to deconstruct postmodernism, for after all, 'after postmodernism comes modernism.'
*metamodernism
22:26 "We on the left should be very afraid of what our side..."
There is a rigidity to modern rationalist thought. But the answer isn’t to try to convince oneself that ants are bigger than giraffes. There are a lot of things that can’t be known empirically. In fact, it could be argued that the most important things in life can’t be known empirically. What’s needed is a place for, not irrationality, but intuitive sense and belief.
No-one who has even a half understanding of postmodernism believes that ants are bigger than giraffes, and anyone who even suggests that they do is selling you their own utter lack of understanding.
Identity is an illusion; politics requires attachment; attachment to illusion causes suffering; therefore identity politics causes suffering.
What about national identity? I guess this one is real
Identity isn't an illusion, it's who you are.
The illusion is when you try to take on an identity that never was yours to begin with.
Like a rat claiming to be a Stallion.
All knowledge is relative. That is not controversial. The problem is most people don't have the training to handle that truth. Anybody who would want you to believe in an absolute knowledge about anything is a charlatan, and probably wants to manipulate you. That doesn't mean knowledge is not valuable, or Impossible to acquire. It just means one has to be conscious that any knowledge has limitations, and these limitations are worthy of exploration.
Right, it’s still requires individual or small groups thinking, learning.
I don’t think anything is solved by being anti-thinking, because you’re afraid of being deceived .
No there are absolute truths eg. the sky is blue, 1+1=-2 , just there are also eternal mysteries eg. what happened before the big bang. And things in-between. But sometimes the truth is hidden from us.
Postmodernism is specifically focused on breaking down power structures. Your description misrepresents many of its components. It is worth criticizing alternative ideologies but dangerous to ignore one’s own…
What components does it misrepresent?
Maybe you shouldn't break down power structures.
@@tcg1476 check out this Channel. It’s quite balanced and offers an in depth analysis: Jonas Ceika - CCK
Philosophy
@@Tarantula-hawk Some people benefit and some people suffer in the current system. Sadly, a lot of people are currently oppressed. Hence, it can be valuable to at least critically examine the system we exist in, so we can improve and develop as humanity
It's not about breaking down power structures, it's about maligning western man.
For a long time I didn’t understand why I was so averse to French thought. It turns out that it isn’t the French I despised, but this disguise of “intellectualism”
"...disguise of intellectualism." I shall add this phrase to my list titled, Wish I Had Said That.
not French. jews.
To simplify a brilliant explanation, “I am a failure and am frustrated and I blame western philosophy for it.”
In other words, “I am not responsible for my failure and frustration.”
And cherry on the top is Paris 2024 opening ceremony. But two can play this game. In response we will mock slavery, racism, LGTB+, colonialism, "progress" etc, etc ...
A good, solid presentation. However, I found the background music to be a very unnecessary distraction. It even, at time, makes it difficult to understand what the narrator is saying.
no music here: quillette.com/2024/05/07/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-foucault-lyotard-derrida/
@@Quillettepaywall here
Reasonable arguments, though the use of music is more than needed. And zizek is not a post modernist, he is actually a critic against post modern arguments. As an academic living in an increasingly authoritarian country, i see the results of post modern arguments, and reaction to this deconstruction is coming from radical right as "a call for returning to old values". many others who consider themselves as leftists are actually criticizing left for things described in this video.
In short, we are living a time where deconstruction has done his work, and desperate youngsters are trying to see an exit from smoke. Far right already saw the opportunity, but left is still embedded with identity politics instead of class struggle in a new techofeudal world.
Post modernism seems to have killed Marxism and taken its place
Would be interesting to know why this ideology fell flat on its arse in France at the time and why it resonated so much on American campuses...
Helen, this summary is absolutely brilliant and worth listening to repeatedly and ought to be mandatory listening for everyone in the west. Thank you.
This is a masterpiece! Helen Pluckrose, I envy you so much! This is exactly what I wish I could do on RUclips, making important ideas accessible. You've knitted together so many of the discussion threads that I've found exquisitely interesting but hadn't put into context. The best of the best. Cogent, comprehensive, superbly edifying. An authoritative vindication of ideas I only glimpsed but couldn't really put into a cogent summary like you have. Thanks so much.
It is true that the French intellectuals were catastrophic but the U.S. university are also responsible for the spread of wokism. In France it remained inside the Universities, it went to US universities and came back to Europe.
Would be good to consider impact of Hegel's 'realized necessity' and related concepts, especially combined with Hobbes' central idea of 'all out war', just as faulty Rousseau's 'noble savage'.
And then what?
@@shannonm.townsend1232 Depends on viewers' / readers' interests I guess. You can't adequately discuss French philosophers of that period without context of Institute for Social Research in University of Frankfurt, their staff and source set of ideas they worked with though.
@@lordkelvin441 I think there's probably a throughline from postwar re-formulations of Marx exported to the West as a soft Marxism, and the New Left, with a concomitant move away from worker's movements towards pure radicality, irony, etc. Marcuse's time in the OSS is worth noting, considering their anti-communist stance.
@@shannonm.townsend1232 Postwar and prewar in fact... IfS was founded around 1920...
Hegel was the epitome of brainless midwit.
The only people who actually take that bullshit seriously are just slow
Rene Guenon was France's only real attempt at creating a philosopher.
In modern times, yes.
They did produce Montaigne, Pascal, and de la Rochefoucauld!
René Girard and his concept of mimetic desire is also interesting.
Descartes is a pretty good philosophy
What about Henri Bergson?
The Americans universities were not obliged to be influenced by the French intellectuals. In France the theories of these intellectuals didn't spread through society as it is in the US. The Americans also have their responsibility, the postmodernists influence went to America and went back to France like a boomerang
Instead of condemning post-structuralist and postmodern philosophers we would do well to read them with attention and with the valuable hindsight we now have. We today take much of what they laid out for granted because the postmodern patterns of thought are now part of the way we think. But here is the catch. Contrary to what too many comments in this section say (sorry could not watch the whole vid, music was too tiring) however, these thinkers were very sharp, especially before they became stars. The intellectual project they embark on (and each of them is very different from the other) could have a huge value if the detail in their work were to be taken seriously. If that were the case none of this activist hogwash would be considered 'postmodern'. Foucault himself would call the so-called left-wing activists of the woke agenda "agents of normalization" for whom the insight into the panoptic society as he laid it out in Discipline and Punish would fit perfectly. That having been said there is a very real and dangerous dark side to all post-structuralist and postmodern philosophy. This is because it is so extreme, and also in a way so shallow when it comes to reflecting on its own motivations. My point being, we still have much to learn from them, and much to learn because of the serious flaws in their work. Sorry for the long one
Balanced and nuanced comment, I appreciate it and totally agree about the importance of Discipline and Punish. And for me Judith Butler is a thinker who balances deconstruction with other thinkers like Hegel, Hannah Arendt, Wittgenstein, Levinas and Habermas in a respectable way.
I think my main concern is with other thinkers after poststructuralism who take Foucault and Derrida as gospel truth and weaponize their ideas to silence any dissenting opinions.
@@andrewcraigmusic strange seems we are both musicians :) thanks for your comment, and while I don't share your view of Judith Butler - as I see her as representative of one polarity in a multipolar entanglement, and I have the feeling you and I would disagree passionately about many things given the chance, it is only in a true and sincere consideration of another's perspective that we have any chance of bringing some understanding to these great tectonic shifts in thought and identity. Thanks again and good luck
@@andrewcraigmusic I tried to read Discipline and Punish once. But while I couldn't, amidst my horror, tear my eyes from the ghastly, gory descriptions of old-time punishments, my concentration faded in the next section about modern methods of discipline eg employing a Panopticon-like gaze on prisoners and citizens generally etc. So I wasn't sure what argument he was developing. But I had my suspicions. These seemed to have been confirmed by my brief internet-based research just now and from what I've just read amount at least partly to the idea that modern methods of social control etc are no more acceptable than those of say 3 hundred years ago, just different or ?perhaps worse as more intrusive?, and based on more or less universal surveillance & imprisonment for rule-breakers rather than torture and death. Well I don't know, perhaps for a masochist, as I understand Foucault was (as well as an admirer of the Maquis de Sade) modern methods seem just as bad or worse but coward as I am I'd take the option of being continually watched &/or imprisoned if the alternative was be to burnt alive or torn limb from limb alive by horses or a myriad other frightful fates. Others may feel differently of course.
Finally a comment that doesn't just take the extreme end. Obviously there are serious problems and issues. The criticism is not entirely wrong. But this comment makes sense in that there is still much to pick out and build from some of the foundational works in postmodern criticism of society. Just because we question certain scientific narratives, it doesn't mean we are disclaiming the validity of science. It is always better to question and challenge knowledge, whatever field it may be
We dont need to learn anything. We need to stop trying to reinvent the philosophical wheel in the west. What we need is to follow the philosophy that has lead to Europe ruling the world in the 19th century, inventing 99% of all things we now hold for granted.
Overall, it was very good. But I can't agree with your prescription at the end. I agree with Javier Milei, post modernism "out!"
You never opened their books, it shows, and you are therefore a clown.
Language =/= violence. Can it affect someone emotionally? Certainly but words are just words. You have the power to decide whether those words affect you.
i agree the outrage culture is annoying but everything affects us
One person’s “ intellectual “ is another’s effete navel gazer…
Indeed
I completed a M.A. in English lit. in 2007. It was eye-opening. I had no idea about the history or experience of women, colored people, or others.
My views were changed by the compelling arguments back then.
Now. I try to have conversations with people on the left, and I'm told that "truth" cannot come from someone of my race and gender. Which is insane ... or worse, machiavellian. Either way, the left has changed radically. And as I've become a centrist, I would say it has not changed for the better.
Bravo Helen and James, wonderfully written
I've been lectured for like two hours today on inclusive language, schwa and discrimination. I'm attending a class for future teachers in Italy. I feel exausted and hopeless, the youth is being trained and educated by this people guys, it doesn't make any sense. They're trying to destroy everything west culture has created.
There's also a youth that's increasingly deciding that this nonsense must be opposed, or even annihilated.
Invest in companies that make clothing like grey, black, brown shirts, and military boots now.
It would be so great if people talking about these people and their subjects actually read them and knew what they were talking about
You might as well ask pigs not to roll around in shit
I'd suggest a longer video. Attempting to think about and breakdown Foucault in 5min, using predominantly the same obscure language he did would surely fail. Personal such video should be split in too parts. The person of the philosopher should be explored in the context of their work. It makes a huge difference when you are trying to understand Foucault.
Fantastic video for those who have investigated the matter vigorously.
I have a question regarding all the discussions around who to blame for starting PM. Shouldn't everyone who came after and who bought into PM theory be considered equally guilty? What happened to personal agency?
So fabulous I had to watch it twice. Maybe a third time.
May I recommend subtitles? I appreciate the video and acknowledge the efforts put into making this video, but at times, it is hard to hear what is being said.
RUclips subtitles didnt help.
Everyone needs to remember that this is designed for the upper middle class with a very good education and a great deal of income that leaves their lives very comfortable. It's kind of boring when you're rich and intelligent.
Who is intelligent?
I don't know whether there is some measure of misrepresentation going on but under the positions as explained at 0:16 the premodern position is the only sensible one.
It's all Marxism
I found this to be difficult to listen to with the interference of the constant background music. If you must use it, please consider muting it to a more bearable level!
Wow great analysis for my understanding on this subject - thank you 🙏
Excellent, and much needed! Thank you.
My question is, is philosophical shaped by the culture or the culture by philosophy?
Let me think.
@@rsandy4077 the answer is, both shaped by both. You can't say culture shape philsophy, philosophy, though, impact culture.
Remember the clever aphorism that most people decide to accept a theory if it fits the facts. The French decide to accept the facts if they fit the theory.
It’s time for post-post modernism
It's almost like when Lyotard was a kid he encountered basic philosophy in an encyclopedia or something and heard 'I think therefore I am' and people trying to grapple with 'what is real.'
Then he went to his classmates and tried to show off by saying 'how do you know that table exists, how do you know what is real?'
And then he was laughed out of the room and sperged out shouting:
'I'll show you, I'm going to create a theoretical framework that questions objective reality and academics everywhere will lap it up.'
Excellent essay but listening to the text through the background music was torture.
the reality is they ruled out consistency and they showed their lack of it thereafter
Lovely reading Iona. Could do without the background track.
second that.
Thank you, Daniel!
Thank you for this Ms. Pluckrose.
They tried to change philosophy from intellectual tools to discover truth into a social movement. It eroded the foundation of our shared method for discussing objective reality. The Yale school messed up big time
If you want to add background music to future music, try adding something ambient without a beat so that the rhythm viewers follow is the cadence of speech.
The simplest way to get rid of " musical" hinterground is to give the warcher the possibility to switch the sonore trace OUT !
can someone explain what is going on in the photo at 1:21?
Dissolving binaries sounded pretty cool in the 90s, what young chap or lass didn't want a rationale to exemplify their idiosyncrocies? Particularly those that freed one from family, tradition etc. I must admit now that at that time I did not consider refusing my government higher education grant. The binary of where the money came from held sway all the while the binaries of behaviour and values were put to the sword, a metaphor that has tragic and painful connotations today as gender binaries are erased via a surgical knife. And ironically end up reinforcing the offending binary. The irony of the irony. How postmodern.
As a younger person in the 90s death was far away, that ultimate binary of death- life didn't really enter the consciousness. Until now. Exactly how is that stark reality dissolved by post modernism? By a fleeing into a religious belief? Or atheism? More irony.
The most concise and clear summary that I have heard
What these philosophers didn't understand is that Harrison Bergeron was intended to be a dystopia.
I wish you could turn the background music off, it’s really distracting
If you want to get the top grades at university, you basically have to sell out to this crap, and quote these philosophers
Postmodernism may not make sense until one experiences it from within. It is reality that manifests itself when voids grow.
A very enlightening video-essay. I wascurrently thinking about how they are twisting the language and meaning and also creating it impossible to debate with facts. This video showed me the roots of it and opened place for digging by myself. Some things make more sense now. Also, it shows that academia and humanities are important for a society, to keep a good core of pursuit of truth, challenging outdated beliefs and be a lighhouse for morals. When this roots, it slowly spreads to the rest of society.
"There is [in Derrida] an explicit denial that differences can be other than oppositional and therefore a rejection of Enlightenment liberalism's values of overcoming differences" (9:56)
Holy misrepresentation Batman. Citation needed lol.