Can Humanists Talk to Postmodernists? Why, yes. Yes, they can.

I've been meaning to respond to this article at Ducts by Mark Goldblatt for some time. Now that I'm pretty much immobile, I will. Goldblatt's argument centers on the supposed law of non-contradiction in logic accepted by humanists, and it's more or less flexible status among postmodernists. The very world itself is often self-contradictory, and philosophy will serve us a little better once it gets on that. PoMos see that logic breaks down, not just in the world, but in the texts of the philosophers themselves. Also, Hums he argues accept, or rather, insist on an objective verifiable reality, the real, out there, farily static and Newtonian; while PoMo's hold that language and sign systems and points of view determine what the real appears to be, and that in the extreme, there is no The Real (which is going too far, but some go there). Now, this is long, and I'm on meds, but read on after clicking &c.PoMos (Derrida principally, and Foucault a bit). Hums (largely Aristotle). Let's talk about history for a second. Aristotle was not a humanist. Many humanist principles are based on the work of The Philosopher, but Aristy himself was a Greek and very much involved in the first development of what in the West became philosophy. Aristy was a Renaissance man of sorts, with explorations into biology, ethics, logic, art. Aristy was wrong, objectively, on a number of points of biology for instance. Not because he was dumb, but because there just hadn't been enough science developed for him to get some things right. Women are the result of insufficient cooking in the womb, for instance, and this is one sign of their natural inferiority to men. He bases this conclusion on two things: an analogy to the sexuation of turtle eggs in their sandy nests (where this is true), and a cultural belief that women were just not really people. Rather PoMo of Aristy I would say, what with the justifying the lens of your culture with convenient natural facts and rather fishy analogies, and all.

Now, Hums were people very interested in the discovery and understanding of the natural world, the creation of legal equality among white men, and the clearly "objective" necessity of lovely things like democracy and human rights. Good on them. I myself tend to thing that the problems of Humanism is that we haven't lived up to the full radicality of its agenda and implications.

PoMos, on the other hand, come into being mostly after little "objective" discoveries like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Einstein's theory of general and special relativity, and a couple of really atrocious world wars in which the "logic" of humanism was put in the service of some the most inhumane activity ever. It looked as if Humanism didn't really hold out that much promise when Generation PoMo was coming up. And, objective science had very clearly told us that the mere process of observation does, in fact, change the phenomena being observed. So, Aristy, for all his might and brilliance, is, on some points, beside the point now. See, Derrida figured out that when Socrates was telling us about the Ideal Forms and whatnot, well, that was a metaphor, and Socs was Making It Up. It's a nice metaphor for learning, and contemplation, and Sophia, and all, but it is not a description of a real fact. This opens the door all manner of skepticism, at which PoMo is pretty good.

Logic and get you anywhere, is what we learned. And logic is not naturally or divinely bound to the Real. It is a system of signs and rules, and those can be used to get you the Declaration of Independence just as easily as they can get you The Final Solution. Yes, there's a law in logic against starting with flawed or fallacious or just mean and stupid first premises, but the only force that saves one from this mistake is ethics, good heartedness, and a humane heart. Of which there is no promise.

Humanism is still very useful, and many PoMo's think so. If we move from logic to culture and politics. Humanism is the driving force behind making the world a better place for everyone, not just the people of my tribe or religion. Humanism is all about working out these rather dicey negotiations and learning curves. I love it. That's why I'm postmodernity's redheaded step-child. I also love PoMos.

It's important to remember that PoMo's also wants a good world. Much of what they are describing is the lacunae and failures in Humanism that prevent it, as well as the rather curious permutations of contemporary history and culture, which is ruled by signs and signification and completely their turf. Some look at language, some look at history, some look at gender, some at race, some at how we might keep what's Good in various cultures while moving beyond what is damaging. PoMo says there's more than one way to look at a blackbird, but it does not say that they are all equally right, or just, or good.

Derrida sneaked into Czechoslovakia in order to jack with the Soviet program of erasing the Czech history, and got in some trouble. He has a commitment to the well being to people. It was a rather, ahem, Humanist gesture. The Soviet erasure of history in order to re-write the Czech culture, that was the worst kind of PoMo.

The trouble with some PoMos is that they don't sound Alarmed. Baudrillard's Simulacrum is very much like Marcuse's One Dimensional Man, but M sounds alarmed, like something should be done, where B seems to be telling you that the world of signs took over, and you are screwed, here, enjoy the show. This leads some readers to think that all PoMos respond to damage and man-made atrocity with Rorty's shrug. They do not. Foucault describes the Panopticon because he does not want us to live in it. There are too many examples, and don't even get me going on the PoMo feminists and how hard they and there other-kinds of feminists sisters and brothers are working to get us off of this, well, historical slaughter bench.

PoMos are trying to get real about just how complex the world really is, and how complex the media we use to understand and intervene really are. They are not saying it's impossible, just that it's a much more paradoxical and subtle job than we used to think it was.

Also, if you want to see Hums talking to PoMos in the mind of one very smart dude, just read Stanely Cavell. His special gift is that he found where and how the two can and do work together in a way that is not only philosophically sound, but ethically inspiring. Also, Paul Ricoeur. Also Luce Irigaray. Also.... I mean really, no one tried to kill Humanism; history kept happening.

This notion that there is some abyss between Hum and PoMo is a sign of one of the failures of Hum -- it pretends to universality, but only if the universe is just like it. And the universe is far more complicated, dare I say self-contradictory, than that. PoMo didn't advocate the breakdown of Master Narratives; PoMo described it.

What PoMo fails to do is figure out how to respond to that Problem (and others). PoMo is a critical enterprise. A necessary one. What it not is an imaginative enterprise. It's a little afraid of imagination because that can get you anywhere, and anywhere is sometimes very very damaging indeed. But, I want to imagine, carefully, responsibly. That response is my project. I'm not alone.

Goldblatt thinks Hums and PoMos can't talk to each other. I would say that we had better damn well do so, and a good start would be by realizing that we are not talking about the same things in the same way and learn to translate and listen. Each has its problems and limits. Each has tools and implications that can, if we would focus on it, help get us out of the Ginormous Stupid Avoidable Trainwreck we seem to keep getting into.