jwright82
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
The Radical Orthodoxy seems to be considered by some to be a criticism of postmodernism through the usage of postmodern terms*, I've heard bad things about postmodernism, but I myself don't really understand it, can anyone say anything particular on that?
This was asked in another thread but to answer it would take the thread way off topic, so I decided to answer it in new thread.
My take on Postmodernism (after this PM) is this. The idea of Modernism was essentially an exstension of the Enlightenment ideal that reason alone could solve every human problem imaginable. All scientific, philosophical, and social problems could be solved by the "right use of reason". This idea underwent a majorly destructive crisis in WW2 with Hitler's brutal regime. You see the Nazi's project was anything but irrational. In fact the machine's of death were purely rational in that they applyed modern scientific ideas to bring about a better world, hence use "reason" to make a "better" society which was the Enlightenment dream.
After the war Contienental philosophy (basicaly European philosophy excluding Britian) having lived through the war tried to come to grips with this. So they criticized rationality itself. They blamed in a way the philosophies that came before them as being responsible for what happened. PM is far too complex to break down into a simple definition but we can sketch some general features.
1. Critical of any claim to "get things as they are". Or as one thinker puts it metanarratives or large "stories" that supposedly explain reality as it is.
2. Critical of differences being made between people. You're one race and I am another so your are bad and I am good. In fact a mantra taken from Levinas and Derrida could be this: difference equals violence.
3. Critical of the idea of a pure or privledged position. This means that viewing things from a "nuetral" P.O.V. are mistaken. We are all shaped by are own subjective experiences and places in the world. Or as we hear all the time don't trust what that person says because they have an "agenda".
4. That translating ideas from one social context to another is very problematic. This is the saying don't judge me until you walk a day in my shoes. That is that you cannot understand "my reality" until you experience it first hand.
Well this is problematic because as anyone can notice my 4 points are all critical points or negative ideas.There was no positive philosophy, for the most part, to build anykind of way forward out of PM. This is why despite many people's claims we don't live in a PM society but some hybrid of Modernism and PM. PM collapsed under its own critical weight.
Now Radical Orthodoxy (after this RO) is a theolgical response to PM in a way. RO agrees with Nietzche (the godfather of PM) and PM that the old philosophies have led to Nihilism (the idea that no values of anykind exist) because they could not do what they claimed to do. Pure reason could never establish the value of anything. Nietzche called these Enlightenment ideals "idols" and used a "hammer" to philosophize against them. But RO, like the Reformed faith, claims that orthodox theolgy provides the foundation that reason alone sought to establish (although they are more Catholic than anything else).
RO claims that all positions are inherently religous, like the Reformed faith, and so it is the right thing to do to take "orthodox" theology as our starting place in doing philosophy or sociology. RO's problem is not their method but their content. That is they start with a bad theology and move from there into defeat. They have the right idea but the wrong theological starting point. Only the Reformed faith can provide the right starting point to acheive what RO, PM, or Modernism could ever hope to acheive.
I know that this is a lot of information but I had no choice due to the question. If there are any points that are confusing than post questions or private message me about them. I will do my best to clear them up. This thread is for all things PM or RO, so feel free to respond.