Reason’s Collapse from American Philosophy

● Reason is subjective and unreliable in reaching truths about reality; ● Reason’s elements—words and concepts—are obstacles that must be unpacked, subjected to Destruktion, or otherwise unmasked; ● Logical contradiction is neither a sign of failure nor of anything particularly significant at all; ● Feelings, especially morbid feelings of anxiety and dread, are a deeper guide than reason; ● The entire Western tradition of philosophy— whether Platonic, Aristotelean, Lockean, or Cartesian—based as it is on the law of non-contradiction and the subject/object distinction, is the enemy to be overcome.

Postmodernism would draw heavily from Heidegger, but as we will see later in the next chapter, much of the fumbled grasping for the metaphysical that is still found in the German (idealist) tradition due to religious commitments will be rejected by the atheistic postmodernists. The idea of Being and Nothing as something discoverable, as the source of contradiction we are trying to reach, will come to be rejected. Instead, to postmodernists, there is no “source;” contradictions are merely the inevitable result of using an uncritical empirical and thus conforming lens on otherwise independent phenomena.

We have reviewed the collapse of reason on the mainland of Europe, but how did this occur in Britain and North America? Much of the English-speaking world, even up to the early 20th century, honored the Enlightenment project,

keeping faithful to the goals of the scientific tradition and the Lockean society. The inroads of metaphysical Continental philosophy were slow, despite the highly religious nature of American society, and yet its Protestant slant, including in England, was enough to keep them on a practical philosophical footing. Ironically, postmodernism—even with its origins in Europe—found a far more receptive host in the 20th century North American academy whose influence now pervades American society. This is due to the collapse of analytical philosophy, or more generally, positivism; we will spend some time unraveling this surprisingresult.

Analytical philosophy significantly influenced the course of British and American philosophy. Developed in the 19th century, analytical philosophy emerged as a strong proponent of science—it principally argued that all ideas must be capable of scientific or logical proof. It accepted David Hume’s fact and value dichotomy (you cannot get an “ought” from an “is”), as well as Kant’s analytic/synthetic dichotomy, but tended to reject metaphysics as pure speculation. Rather than worry about the source of subjects and objects that generate experience, positivism tended to focus on organizing and explaining the flow of phenomena— things and events in the world. Into the latter parts of the 19th century, mathematics and logic were adopted to further direct the focus on inquiry. One important foothold was established by Bertrand Russell.

Out of the dominance of German philosophy for the last two centuries emerged Russell, a Brit. He became the next important figure in philosophy for the following half century, now into the 20th century. Highly productive, Russell published numerous books, many for a general audience,

seemingly recasting the platform, territory, and consequences of philosophy. In the final chapter of his highly popular introductory book, The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Russell frames the history of philosophy as struggling with several basic questions. These, and his overall answers have been summarized below:

Table 4: A terse summary of Russell’s basic points from The Problems of Philosophy

Question posed by Russell

Answer Can we prove there is an external world? No Can we prove that there is cause and effect? No Can we prove the objectivity of induction? No Can we find an objective morality? Definitely not

Conclusion: Philosophy cannot offer truth or wisdom

Germany also had a circle of logical positivists, one representative being Ludwig Wittgenstein. They went a step further than Russell, declaring that the questions traditionally grappled with in philosophy to be meaningless and lacking sufficient formulation to merit an answer. In fact, the traditional branches of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, theology, and aesthetics were all improperly constituted, as if philosophy had its own field of study, like science. Instead, philosophy can only be a method, an analytical tool. Philosophy also needed a new aim: no longer could it be truth or knowledge, but it should be precisely the opposite - to make clear the problems that arise in language itself.

By the mid-20th century, many analytical philosophers— to name a few, Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and W. V. O. Quine—while differing in their own positions, broadly agreed that perception was “theory-laden,” meaning that whatever theory chosen to examine something (and we must choose a theory) will inevitably alter our examination. In other words, we are stuck inside a subjective system and have no direct access to reality.

Furthermore, most of the logical positivists agreed that mathematics and logic were conventional, meaning that they had purpose not because of their consistency with reality, but because of their inherent coherence due to their definitions. For example, 2+2=4 is merely true because of the definitions of each of the numbers, not from testing this in reality. Essentially, logic and mathematics are human constructs. These analytical positions are mere symbols, are necessarily true via their definitions, and therefore, being circular, do not express any truth about reality. The Kantian disconnection with reality is evident here. In contrast, any conclusions from reality, such as the synthetic proposition “the car is white,” cannot necessarily be true, for the concepts involved, car and white, are not made equal (by the “is”) due to their definitions alone. Instead, they have been connected due to a perception of reality. Perception, however, is contingent. Therefore, any synthetic proposition cannot necessarily or by definition be true. This is essentially Kant’s analytic/synthetic dichotomy.

And so, “truth” under logical positivism became either, 1) “cheating” or circular, when we define our terms to give us the conclusions we want, or 2) a claim about a perception, which is always contingent and thus temporary. One

can see how it would not take long for truth to slip into “language games” and symbolic manipulation. Upon this basis, how can science’s dependence on rigorous objectivity be sustained? Like a car out of gear, the engine of perception, when disconnected from the logic of the gears, will not result in any momentum in knowledge production. The products of logical positivism became either circular logic or temporary observations, neither of which is useful to scientists exploring a common subject.

Two alternatives emerged in logical positivism. The neo-Kantian option argued that logic is innate to us; it is therefore a natural framework, subjective but human. However, what became more dominant is the neo-Humean idea that logic and mathematics are socio-cultural. The concepts we use, which are essentially methods of wrapping up our observations or our understandings, have been decided haphazardly over generations of use. They are nominal, meaning that they are based on whatever names we have decided to package our beliefs with. What follows from this nominalism is conceptual relativism and the resultant controversy about which relative concept was “true” for you.

One example: Mathematics and logic are true and universal merely because we have not given anything else a chance to compete with them. If a society no longer likes the consequences of a particular logical or mathematical conclusion, they might engage in community activism to change it, as would any other social convention be debated and altered.

Science would be the next victim of this relativistic unraveling. Exhibit A: Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962. Science itself became an evolving, subjective enterprise. Knowledge or truth

emerged out of “paradigms,” and these paradigms change, from astrology to astronomy, for example, or from alchemy to chemistry. Truth is relative to a paradigm, an intellectual culture, or a worldview. A paradigm more or less corresponded to the values and beliefs of a culture. And since fact and value are disconnected à la Hume, it was totally arbitrary what paradigm a particular culture was currently adopting. There was no case to be made of science having any kind of advantage or superiority over other “ways of knowing,” which became a ubiquitous term.

In place of the waning pro-reason, pro-science American tradition, anti-realism became more fashionable in intellectual circles. Along these lines, Rorty in 1989 wrote that we should …ceas[e] to see truth as a deep matter, as a topic of philosophical interest… ‘The nature of truth’ is an unprofitable topic, resembling in this respect ‘the nature of man’ and ‘the nature of God’…

Likewise, historian John Passmore in 1985 wrote of the Kuhnian era, “the Kantian revival is so widespread as scarcely to lend itself to illustration.” Now that the walls had been sapped, the Anglo-American intellectual sphere was primed to receive the next onslaught in anti-realist philosophy from Nietzsche and Heidegger.

This prologue is neatly summarized in the seminal book on the subject, Stephen Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism: Postmodernism is the first ruthlessly consistent statement of the consequences of rejecting reason, those consequences being

necessary given the history of epistemology since Kant.

Continental philosophy, up to Heidegger, provides the foundation necessary for postmodernism to metastasize. The surrender of the advocates of reason and reality led to a demoralization of support for objective truth, which allowed the tide of skepticism and relativism to wash away the debris of the Enlightenment project. Postmodernism promised a new synthesis of traditional philosophy that was unmatched by the disorganized opposition. Postmodernism rallied the following positions: metaphysical antirealism, epistemologicalsubjectivity, and values sourced in feelings.

The results for culture and society followed: without any foundation in truth, what basis was there for morality, values, and social order? Conservatives tended toward preservation of their traditions, but postmodernists pushed a more progressive outlook, despite not having a basis to claim this was a superior agenda over conservatism. Feelings, then, became as powerful as Truth traditionally was. A person’s feelings were now to be unquestioned. Kierkegaard and Heidegger wrote much about dread and guilt; Marx wrote about alienation, victimization, and rage; Nietzsche, about lust for power; and Freud, our aggressive sexual urges.

Postmodernists were often split on the source of emotions, their “metaphysics” between biology and society. Overall, however, postmodernists tended to agree that no one was in control of their emotions, instead the source was often their group memberships, whether gender, race, class, or sexuality. Even if “reason” was an available tool,

since groups have no common experience, they had nothing to reason about together. Balkanization was inevitable, power-struggle and conflict expected, and dominance and submission the end, unjust, result. We will continue to unravel the next stage for postmodernism’s incursion into politics in the next chapter.