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In the republic of scholarship, every citizen has a constitutional right to get himself as thoroughly lost as he pleases. David Hackett Fischer
There it is, the unbearable lightness of being.
Milan Kundera
One of the approaches in examining post-modernism is to delineate the changes in philosophy or the history of ideas. From this perspective modernism is seen as a phenomenon stressing rationalism based on the universal design or concept which gives order to a reality that can be known through the appropriate, that is scientific, method. It also stresses an optimistic faith in mankind's uniqueness and ability to progress. Post-modernism, on the other hand, emphasizes the lack of foundation in knowledge, the rootedness of understanding in language and context, as well as a rejection of the idea that "man" is at the center of the universe. In many ways post-modernism can be seen as an extension of modernism as the ideas of the one are rooted in the other. I will attempt a brief synopsis of this in the following pages.
Many trace the rise of modernism in philosophy to Descartes' process of radical doubt. His intent was to place knowledge on a secure foundation. To do this he methodologically is called into question everything he felt he knew and discovered that almost everything could be questioned. Descartes ended his doubt, or found bedrock on the tenuous foundation of his own consciousness. His own inner cognition was the only thing of which he could be certain. Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) is his final declaration. While his intention was to find certainty in knowing, Descartes radically changed epistemology by introducing his methodological doubt, a process which did not always end where Descartes had ended.
Though few agreed with Descartes' assertion, none were left unaffected by it. His cogitation began a shift in the way people perceived and experienced reality. The modern paradigm brought with it a search for objectivity established on the tenuous foundations of the individual consciousness. Descartes prompted both the relentless pursuit of the "objective" as well as planting the seeds of its demise. Kierkegaard perceptively identifies this subjective turn as early as 1843 in his publication of Fear and Trembling. He says,
Descartes has not cried 'Fire!' and made it everyone's duty to doubt, for Descartes was a quiet and lonely thinker, not a bellowing streetwatch; he was modest enough to allow that his method was important only for himself [italics mine] and sprang partly from his own earlier bungling with knowledge. ("Thus my design here is not to teach the Method which everyone should follow in order to promote the good conduct of Reason, but only to show in what manner I have endeavored to conduct my own . . .").Footnote56
Whereas Hegel would later attempt to encompass all of reality in his system, according to Kierkegaard, Descartes' intentions were much more modest.
The shift in epistemological method and certainty is at the heart of what is referred to as modernism and post-modernism. The Enlightenment project sought to replace divine revelation with human reason. Empiricism and scientific method were seen as the proper means of gaining access to truth, which is considered knowable within this paradigm. The human individual took center stage. In the post-Descartes world, however, knowledge was perceived to be an increasingly subjective endeavor, which is ironic as he sought to ground knowledge objectively. Lesslie Newbigin sees the Enlightenment mentality as a relentless pursuit of the critical method. "But the critical method must ultimately destroy itself. You cannot criticize a statement of what claims to be the truth except on the basis of some other truth-claim which -- at that moment -- you accept without criticism. But that truth-claim on which your critique is based must in turn be criticized" says Newbigin.Footnote57
While rationalism has reigned supreme from Descartes' time to our own, it has not been without its detractors. The Romantic movement in English and German literature is one of them. Reacting against the sterility and mechanization of all of life including that of religion, as evidenced by Deism, the Romantics sought to affirm the dynamic nature of the universe against the cold, rational system.Footnote58 Romanticism reemphasized the central place of the individual and sought to free the unconscious mind. Existentialism is another form of rebellion against rationalism and it shares a number of similarities with Romanticism. Frederick Copleston assesses the situation nicely when he says, "Hegel sought to capture all reality in the conceptual net of his dialectic, while existence slipped through the meshes."Footnote59 Existentialism reacted against any kind of a universal system or ethical absolute (especially Hegel's metaphysical system) that stands above the individual. The existential psychologist Rollo May summarizes it aptly:
Existentialism means centering upon the existing person; it is the emphasis on the human being as he is emerging, becoming. The word "existence" comes from the root ex-sistere, meaning literally "to stand out, emerge." Traditionally in Western culture, existence has been set over against essence, the latter being the emphasis upon immutable principles, truth, logical laws, etc., that are supposed to stand above any given existence.Footnote60
After existentialism existence gains primacy over essence with the emphasis placed primarily on the individual actualizing his or her existence through choice. Truth is experienced as an inward passion or the recovery of Being as opposed to an immutable principle. As Kierkegaard put it, "An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual" [italics his].Footnote61 I would argue that to the extent that existentialism has succeeded in overthrowing the universal or "essence," the demise of the idea of "absolute truth" has been the result. However, the loss of essence eventually results in the loss of existence with its resultant "unbearable lightness of being."Footnote62 Being no longer has meaning. This state naturally leads to philosophical relativism a condition which is exaggerated by the theories of language that follow. Gene Edward Veith rightly concludes, "Existentialism is the philosophical basis for postmodernism."Footnote63
Stanley Fish, as a post-modern literary theorist, also reflects a dependence on existentialist thought including that of Gadamer in his writings. While his emphasis on what a text does versus what it means may be primarily indebted to pragmatism, the idea of "meaning as an event," is thoroughly existential. Fish reflects the existential priority of the human consciousness as it brings to prominence the existing individual with its focus on experience. Often he characterizes meaning as an experience in opposition to an essence or truth located outside of the individual reader. "In the procedures I would urge, the reader's activities are at the center of attention, where they are regarded not as leading to meaning but as having meaning."Footnote64 And he makes an uncouched declaration regarding the nature of man by contrasting the Stylistics (formalist) approach, which is rooted in empiricism and positivism, with his own by declaring the former unworthy, "for it would deny to man the most remarkable of his abilities, the ability to give the world meaning rather than to extract a meaning that is already there."Footnote65 Fish apparently feels his philosophical freedom threatened by those practitioners who came before him.
But much of Fish's theoretical position can be seen as reactionary when viewed against the backdrop of philosophical modernism, by which I mean the Enlightenment project with its quest for absolute certainty and scientific objectivity. In Fish's thinking, as well as that of most post-modern thinkers, objectivity is an illusion brought about by the Enlightenment for which Descartes often takes the blame. Existence stands over essence and then essentialism or foundationalism, as Fish would call it, loses its independence and becomes dependant on the individual's experience. Fish claims that his formalist predecessors assumed that there were "observable facts that could be described and interpreted."Footnote66 But he argues that what counts as a fact is in itself determined by the presupposition of the interpreter thereby invalidating the entire procedure.
In an article published a few years later, Fish (who must be applauded for having the courage of being logically consistent even if it is illogical) gives up on evidence altogether including evidence that might support his position, "But it is the very possibility of providing such evidence that is denied [in this paper]. . . . I cut myself off from any recourse to evidentiary procedures."Footnote67 At this point one wonders what is the purpose of publishing papers if it is not to propound opinions and arguments, which amounts to the same thing as giving evidence. It is Fish's opinion that objectivity is an illusion, but as with making a claim to relativism, anytime one argues for a position he then stakes a claim to knowledge and anytime one stakes a claim to knowledge a claim to objectivity or truth is implicit.
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, p. 42.
Newbigin here reveals his fideistic assumptions, not completely unlike many post-modern thinkers, p. 29. Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, pp 41e. "It may easily look as if every doubt merely revealed an existing gap in the foundations; so that secure understanding is only possible if we first doubt everything that can be doubted, and then remove all these doubts." In On Certainty he says, "If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty" (sec. 115). Wittgenstein takes a practical approach by securing the foundations of language and thought in "forms of life."
Shiv Kumar, "Toward a Theory of Romanticism," British Romantic Poets, New York: New York University Press, 1966, p. 6.
Copleston, v. IX, p. 335.
Rollo May, Abraham Maslow, et. al., Existential Psychology, Random House, New York, 1961, p. 16.
Kierkegaard, p. 42.
Milan Kundera, responding to Nietsche's comment, said about his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, "If God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master? The planet is moving through the void without any master. There it is, the unbearable lightness of being." Quoted in Veith, Reading Between the Lines, p. 209. see Kundera pp 5-6
Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 38.
Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 158, Cf. p. 28, p. 33, p. 65, p. 159
Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid., p.94.
Ibid., p 177.
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