The Death of Truth: Glossary

Postmodern Glossary

Below you will find definitions of terms used in
The Death of Truth:

AAL: African American Language. The street language of African Americans, believed by some to be a combination of African and English influences.

Absolutism: The belief that truth and values are objective and universal. Objective means that truth exists outside of the individual, and objective means that truth applies to every person in every place at every time.
Agnosticism: The belief that we cannot have knowledge of God and that it is impossible to prove God exists or doesn't exist.
Amoral: Ethical judgments lack any meaning. Nothing is objectively good or bad.
Annales: The French school of historiography which sought underlying causes for historical developments. A forerunner of postmodern cultural and social history.
Anthropomorphism: Representation of God, the gods, or natural forces in human forms and attributes.
Apologetics: The branch of theology concerned with the defense or proof of Christianity, and refutation of opposing world views.
Atheism: The naturalistic view of reality; the belief that no gods or God exists-the lack of belief in a particular God.
Atman: A Hindu term for the human essence.
Ayurvedic Medicine: A form of alternative medicine based on Hindu concepts of Prana energy. Prana is similar to one's astral body or aura. The key to health is proper balance in the flow of prana. See Chapter 5.
Basic Beliefs: Ideas individuals accept about the nature of reality, human nature, values and truth. Basic beliefs are the foundation of a world view. Behaviorism: The belief that human behavior, including actions and thoughts, can be explained by biological and environmental conditioning.
Brahman: Impersonal spiritual reality.
Centering: A form of meditation used by practitioners of Therapeutic Touch and some other New Age and Mystical religions. Centering is supposed to allow the practitioner to become well-attuned to the human energy field. See chapter 5.
Constructivism: The postmodern belief that knowledge about the world is not discovered, but constructed in the minds of observers. Constructivism denies that people can ever understand an objective or fixed universal reality. Instead, reality is a social construct--a creation in people's minds, colored by their social background.
Critical Legal Studies movement: A postmodern approach to law which denies that laws can be fair or impartial. This movement views all law as politically motivated by those who have power in our society--mainly whites, males, and the wealthy.
Cultural relativism: Limiting the sphere of truth to a particular society or culture.
Deconstruction: The postmodern literary discipline of uncovering the opposing ideas implied in a text and demonstrating how the author has favored one side over the other because of his or her social context. Demonstrating how texts' truth claims defeat themselves.
Dissociation: In the context of psychology and religion, dissociation means a separation of attention. That is, one's attention to the real world is severed, usually resulting in a trance-like state. Profound dissociation could be sleep, hypnosis or unconsciousness. Mild dissociation could be daydreaming or "zoning out," including the use of drugs.
Duality: The existence of distinct physical and spiritual realms.
Empiricism: Basing all knowledge on sense experience alone.
Enlightenment Era: The period of Western history whose motto according to Immanuel Kant was, "Dare to know." The Enlightenment was shaped by optimism with respect to the possibilities of reason in controlling human life. Progress and perfectibility of the human race were believed possible, and according to some intellectuals, inevitable.
Epistemology: The study of how we know things. It tries to answer the questions: Is our knowledge reliable? How can we be sure?
Essentialism: An error in thinking, according to postmodern analysis, whereby people fail to perceive that every aspect of human existence is socially produced. Thus, to speak of the experience of western women as being a certain way, fails to see the distinctions between thousands of different social experiences which have no relationship to each other.
Existentialism: The attempt to create meaning out of a meaningless universe by the exercise of free will.
Family Systems Therapy: A school of psychotherapy originally developed by Murray Bowen at Georgetown, and now in wide use, especially in the recovery movement. Family systems therapy grew out of Freudian theory, but sees the family of origin (rather than the individual) the source of neuroses. It sees the family as a system forming different personality roles which later cause problems. Dysfunctional families have a "stuck-togetherness" (sic) which results in hyper-dependency (co-dependency) and an incomplete "sense of self." The dysfunctional family is described as an undifferentiated ego mass, and the key to therapy is for the client to "separate" from the family of origin by gaining a complete sense of self. Postmodernism has seized on family systems theory because it teaches that one's culture (family) determines their reality.
Hermeneutics: The science of interpretation. The rules for interpreting a text.
Hinduism: The basis of pantheistic religions, Hinduism originated in India during the early 2nd millennium BC.
Humanism: A philosophy that regards the rational individual as the highest value; it considers the individual to be the ultimate source of value and is dedicated to fostering the individual's creative and moral development in a meaningful and rational way without reference to the concepts of the supernatural.
Islam: Theistic religion founded by Mohammed; term means "submission to God"
Karma: The structure of one's life as resulting from one's prior actions in an earlier existence. The karmic law of cause and effect keeps the unenlightened bound to the cycle of life.
Koran: The sacred book of Islam; means "the reading" or "the lesson."
Marginalizing: Verb. To marginalize, is to exclude people by pushing them to the margins of society. People who are marginalized are not on the "inside."
Marxism: A materialistic ideology based on the teachings of Karl Marx. Marxism sees history as a sequence of class struggles, ultimately leading to the formation of a classless society. Postmodernism draws on Marxism for its view of social oppression of the weaker groups in society, and to some extent for its view that different classes or social groups have different ways of understanding reality.
Materialism: The belief that nothing exists other than matter.
Materialism: The theory that everything can, in principle, be explained by material objects guided by natural law. See Naturalism.
Maya: The Hindu term for this material world. It comes from an ancient stem meaning "illusion." Maya represents the human dilemma of being caught up in the illusion of the material world, and failing to recognize the actual unity of atman (the individual) with Brahman (the universal ALL).
Metanarrative: According to postmodernism, a religious tradition or philosophical system that commits acts of cultural tyranny by promoting the fiction that all knowledge reduces to an absolute unified theory.
Metaphysical dualism: Reality consists of two distinct realms: spirit and matter. Theists, including Christians, are metaphysical dualists.
Modernism: Another term for enlightenment rationalism. Roughly, the modern era impacting culture in the West from 1789 (French Revolution) to 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall).
Monism: The belief that everything is part of one essence--the essential unity of all things. Monism is the philosophical concept underlying major schools of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, as well as much New Age Consciousness.
Monotheistic: Belief that there is one and only one God. He is both personal and knowable.
Multiculturalism: A postmodern ideology teaching that all cultures should be empowered to preserve, unchanged, their unique cultural reality. Any effort to change or reform a cultural group is really repression, domination and colonizing of one group by another.
Muslims: Ones who professes the faith of Islam; followers of Mohammed and the Koran.
Mysticism: The belief that ultimate truth about reality can be obtained neither by ordinary experience nor by the intellect but only by non rational intuition.
Naturalism: The belief that everything that exists is material and natural. Naturalists deny the supernatural. See Materialism.
New Age mysticism: A diverse assortment of modern mysticism, ranging from the occult to traditional Eastern and Native American spirituality.
Nihilism: From the Latin, nihil = nothing. Nothingism. The theory that the universe is meaningless and without purpose; human life and its activities are or no value or significance; nothing is worth living for.
Nirvana: The final state according to Buddhism. Comes from an ancient Sanskrit word meaning to "blow out" like the snuffing out of a candle. Thus, the individual is merged with the universal all, and ceases to exist as an individual.
Objective truth: Truth which is the object of thought. In other words, truth which human thought seeks to discover; truth which is independent of human thought, rather than truth which depends on human thought or experience. See subjective truth.
Pantheism: Belief that God is identical with the universe; God and nature are synonymous. (pan = All, theo = God)
Paradigm: A model. In postmodernism, a paradigm is a way of looking at reality specific to one social group. The rules of thought and consistency apply within a given paradigm, but cannot be applied to any other.
Patriarchy: "The rule of the father." In postmodern usage, patriarchy often refers to any norm or authority which might restrict freedom.
Political correctness: The demand for conformity to attitudes and behaviors deemed important for the sake of tolerance and acceptance.
Politicization of truth: When truth claims are viewed as subliminal attempts to gain or maintain power.
Positivism: The sphere of knowledge is limited to the empirical sciences.
Postmodern: The movement in late 20th century thought that rejects enlightenment rationalism, individualism and optimism. Postmodernism is characterized by nihilism and radical subjectivity. "Affirmative" postmodernists believe that social reality can be changed by activism.
Prana: the Hindu word for people's life energy, or aura. See Chapter 5.
Quantum Physics: The branch of physics that studies the movement of sub-atomic particles within atoms. Findings in this field have attracted popular attention because mystics have claimed that they prove certain monistic principles. See Chapter 11.
Rationalism: The belief that reason is a faithful and (to modernists) sufficient guide to reality and truth. An ideology of rationality where reasonableness is the final judge of all things.
Reader-centered interpretation: The postmodern idea that interpretation depends, not on what the text says or what the author intended, but on how the reader reacts to a text. The meaning is constructed or created by the reader.
Reification: Confusing language about reality with reality itself. Postmodernists charge that others reify concepts when they forget that all their ideas and observations are merely linguistic constructs.
Reincarnation: to again become flesh in some form, based on karmic law. The transmigration of the spirit.
Scientism: The belief that science is the only method for obtaining knowledge. Scientism is a world view based on this belief.
Self-evident: Some idea that appears to be true in such a way that no explanation or proof is necessary.
Social constructions: The belief that reality can not be objectively known. Beliefs about reality are shaped by the culture of which the individual is a product.
Subjective truth: Truth which is only true in people's thought or experience. Truth "in our heads," or that which is "true to me," rather than truth which is true independent of me. See objective truth.
Syncretism: The joining together of different views, especially religious views. Blending even contradictory religions into one.
Syntax: The rules of grammar for a given language. Syntax is the way words are linked together in sentences.
Taoism: The popular Chinese philosophy of life based on the Tao, or "Way." The Way is the divine principle-- a balance between seeming opposites, Yin and Yang.
Theism: The belief in an infinite-personal God. The religious world view based on the Old Testament which includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Also referred to as monotheism.
Therapeutic Touch: A therapy based on the Hindu notion of Prana, or life energy. Therapeutic touch seeks to heal by balancing people's flow of prana. See Chapter 5.
Totalization (to totalize) The artificial gathering together of all knowledge and reality under a so-called "world view" or ideology which claims to explain the world. Postmodern thinkers live in dread of over-arching concepts which see a pattern or truth in the particulars of the world, and claim to explain everything. See Metanarrative.
Transcendent: God is distinct from the universe; his existence is not bound by or limited to space and time.
Transcendental Meditation: A 20th century attempt to fuse Hindu philosophy with pseudo-scientific beliefs.
Upanishads: Hindu scriptures that describe the pantheistic world view.
World view: A philosophy of life. A world view is a set of interrelated basic beliefs.
Zeitgeist: The spirit of the time; a general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time.