February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Here of course what everyone will expect me to note is this: "given what particular context?"Can language express truth? Can language give us a clear picture of reality?
Yes, that's my main "thing" when it comes to philosophy. And why wouldn't it be since, above all else, I come back to connecting the dots existentially in regard to this question: "how ought one to live in a world awash both in conflicting moral and political value judgments and in contingency, chance and change?"
Truth and clarity there.
Here, of course, it depends on how far you go with this. After all, think about your day to day interactions with others. Think about all of the countless times you don't stop to insist, "that’s just interpretation -- subjective -- there’s never really any one meaning."Discussing Postmodernism has become almost prosaic given the intellectual climate of the 2010s. However, it has posed questions which directly challenge the most classical assertions of how we understand the world around us. For that alone it is worth responding to.
Postmodernism also remains relevant because much of current thinking is rooted in Postmodern ideas. This goes beyond just academic circles: it is easy to catch Postmodern ideas in everyday discourse. Nothing is unusual about hearing someone retort in an argument “Well, that’s subjective,” or if they are more well versed and a little bolder “That’s just interpretation, there’s never really any one meaning.”
Nothing much "postmodern" about the laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around is, human biology, the rules of logic.
On the other hand, the language that postmodernists use to deconstruct meaning and purpose in our lives necessarily includes their own arguments. For me, it still comes down to connecting the dots existentially between this or that "core idea" and this or that set of circumstances. Power, oppression and freedom out in what particular world understood in what particular way? That laborious, often futile task of separating what through language we claim to believe is true and what we are in fact able to demonstrate is true for all rational human beings. Postmodernism changed none of that.These ideas originate from Postmodern language theory in particular. What is referred to as “Postmodernism” refers to a specific idea of language and how it functions. These ideas were shaped by numerous thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s: most popularly through French thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, who took the core ideas on language and related them to concepts of power, oppression, and freedom.
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006