Apologetics for Post-Moderns

A Position Paper for the King's College and Seminary
By Dr. Bob Wenz

The term `postmodern' first came into use in the 1930’s as the designation for certain developments in the arts. Later it denoted a new style of architecture. But not until the 1970s did the postmodernism gain widespread attention, first as the label for theories expounded in university English and philosophy departments and eventually as the description for a broader cultural phenomenon.

Specifically, it is a rejection of the modern mindset – which grew out of the Enlightenment. Other historians postulate that modernism comes out of the Renaissance and the writing of Francis Bacon who envisioned man exercising power over nature by scientific means.

The high water mark of the Enlightenment came here in Philadelphia when John Hancock and others signed on to Tom Jefferson’s screed in which he wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among those are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Enlightenment began from the belief in a rational, orderly and comprehensible universe and proceeded to form a rational and orderly organization of knowledge and the state. There was a greater focus on individual liberty as a fundamental right of man, given by "Nature and Nature's God”. God was not directly involved in his creation, but governed it through Natural Law, exemplified by the natural philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton. The ideas of Newton, which combined the mathematics with delineated laws of physics, resulted in a coherent system of verifiable predictions – the universe was seen as an orderly place.

Baruch Spinoza expounded a pantheistic view of the universe where God and Nature were one. This idea became central to the Enlightenment from Newton through to Jefferson.

Immanuel Kant defined it as follows:

Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. . . . “Have the courage to use your own intelligence” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

The Enlightenment elevated the individual self to the center of the world. The French philosopher Descartes laid the philosophical foundation for the modern thought with his focus on doubt which led him to the idea that the thinking self is the first truth which doubt could not deny (Cogito ergo sum.), thereby defining a human person as an autonomous rational subject.

At the intellectual foundation of the Enlightenment project are certain epistemological assumptions. Specifically, the modern mind assumes that knowledge is certain, objective, and good, and that such knowledge is obtainable, at least theoretically.

Enlightenment knowledge is not only certain (and hence rational), it is also objective. There are two modern aspects of truth – correspondence and coherence. Truth is something that either corresponds to some aspect of reality, or truth is that is consistent and coherent to the accepted body of truth.

The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as and serve as the basic ideas of humanism.

1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or differences substantially affect how this self operates.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only objective form.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.).
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified).

For the modern mind, knowledge is inherently good, which is why the modern scientist assumes that the discovery of knowledge is a self-evident, unchallengeable axiom. The inherent goodness of knowledge also means that the Enlightenment outlook is optimistic because progress is inevitable. There is for many steeped in the Enlightenment the conviction that science coupled will eventually provide a solution for every problem.

Modernity has been under attack since Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) lobbed the first volley in the late nineteenth century. But the full scale frontal assault did not begin until the 1970s. The immediate impulse for the dismantling of the Enlightenment project came from the rise of deconstruction as a literary theory, which influenced a new movement in philosophy.