Brian, you wrote: "Since I've used the term [postmodern] to describe an unfolding, evolving, unfrozen (and, in fact, biased-against-freezing) mindset, I've always considered specificity, authenticity, and values as inherent in postmodernity ... " BRAVO!!! and some thoughts (you've seen in different form before) I hope it is the last word on postmodernISM! For, as I see it The postmodern "critique" (not a "system") recognized that methods precede systems, that science, philosophy, culture and religion were methodologically-autonomous (each necessary, probing reality with distinctly different questions) even though otherwise axiologically-integral (none, alone, sufficient for human value-realizations). Now, humanity had so long been immersed in systematic approaches that some just could not bring themselves to JOTS (jump outside the system) to properly enjoy this paradigm shift and so, ironically, perverted this critique into a system, postmodernISM, which celebrated these new-found methodological autonomies while forsaking their axiological integrality, "gifting" humankind with a faux apologetic for a practical nihilism, which, itself, was nothing new insofar as it's always been a bad apple from which humanity has occasionally taken a bite. Some intuited a wisdom in the critique and thus retreated from what was a terribly naive realism to a self-congratulatory "critical" realism but, for similar reasons (having to do with an inveterate system-ism), could not fully accomplish the paradigm shift and, instead, embraced a "weakened" foundationalism, unable to even conceive how a nonfoundational epistemology could deliver value (axiologically). Hence, because they were now not only methodologically, but also- axiologically divorced, different people (perhaps due to temperament or even aptitude?) desperately sought epistemic refuge in one method or another (largely to the exclusion of the other methods) "gifting" humankind with scientism (science), rationalism (philosophy), provincialism (culture) and fideism (religion). Some not only tasted but saw the wisdom in the critique and were able to JOTS into a nonfoundational epistemology that articulated -not a departure from humankind's unconditional, existential orientations to such transcendental
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imperatives as truth, beauty, goodness and love, butknowledge, which expressed a new understanding of our autonomous approaches even while maintaining their axiological integrality. nonfoundational accounts can be found in the contrite the pragmatic semiotic realism of Charles Sanders Peirce, "emergentist" explanation of human knowledge properly an evolutionary anthropology and epistemology.
a new theory of methodological A paragon of fallibilism of who provided an consistent with
Interestingly, throughout the history of Christianity, this type of approach has always enjoyed at least a minority status in practice as well as some inchoate expressions in theory, practices and expressions that, in my view, have been well chronicled by Phyllis Tickle, well explicated by Brian McLaren and well preserved by Richard Rohr and his Franciscan ancestors, all who, per my intuitions, resonate with other "minority reports" throughout history (that it's been neither the "dominant" discourse nor power structure, more so esoterica than exoterica, may be much of the point?) dating back to the Kabbalah (Jewish) and Plotinus (Neoplatonist), Origen and Pseudo Dionysius and John Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and John Duns Scotus and John of St. Thomas (Poinsot), and Charles Sanders Peirce, as well as some of our contemporaries like Thomas Merton and Walker Percy. Now, many will resist such accounts as ours because they have a subversive ring to them. But that nagging gong they hear comes from their own systems, which are self-subverting! later, mon ami jboy
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