That is the heading of a recent piece in The Weekend Australian newspaper by Luke Slattery, an experienced reporter and editor on education, arts and letters. He has been a sympathetic but critical commentator on postmodernism (sympathetic, like myself, in the sense of being prepared to read it to find out what it is up to, and critical, again like myself, finding that by and large it is up to no good). This critical stance raised concerns that he was flirting with the dreaded “rightwing”or “neoconservative” forces, and this accusation caused him to adopt a very plaintive tone in self-defence, insisting that such a charge is unfair and uncalled for. This may appear to be amusing but in the dominant literary/intellectual culture in Australia, any suggestion of political deviance can be very damaging, both professionally and socially.
He wrote “The enlightenment is back…Of course the European enlightenment that bridged the 17th and 18th centuries has never been entirely abandoned. But it seemed to lack vigorous defenders during a period of attack from intellectuals influenced by postmodernism”.
Comment: the best defenders are classical liberals such has Ludwig von Mises, his colleague Fritz Hayek and Hayek’s friend Karl Popper, but these players were sidelined in postwar debate in favour of outright socialists, left-liberals, Keynesian economicsts and social democrats who are relatively feeble defenders of the flame.
He went on “Postmodernism is yesterdays dogma [I hope he is correct]. But for nearly two decades it managed to stupify large sections of the intelligentsia”. He identified some promising events in the revival of the enlightenment.
First, the publication of a book called Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali lady who has become a prominent critic of aspects of Islam, especially the violence of militant Islam (Popper and Hayek are high on her list of intellectual heroes).
Second. “Two prominent thinkers with markedly different backgrounds – A. C. Grayling and Tzvetan Todorov – have recently gone to print with pro-enlightenment books.” Todorov is the Bulgarian-born director of a cultural research centre in Paris. Grayling is an analytical philosopher and a prolific public intellectual based in London. The former wrote a book called In Defence of the Enlightenment and Grayling has recently produced Liberty in the age of Terror: A Defence of Civil Liberties and Enlightenment Values. He reports that both authors see a need to re-invigorate the defence of rationality, liberty, free inquiry and free speech. “Neither is moved by sentimentality or nostalgia, and both are alert to the enlightenment’s tainted heritage.” It would help to have more on the tainted heritage, perhaps the quasi-religious belief in progress and the over-optimistic “manifest truth” theories of knowledge which inspired people to overthrow the authorities of tradition, kings and popes but also has a downside in the “conspiracy theory of ignorance” that can cause fanaticism and the persecution of deviants and unbelievers.
So Slattery writes that the modern call to arms is a little weary and far removed from the overwhelming optimism of the original englightenment. “A little sadder, and a little wiser”.
But not wise enough, in the case of Grayling, to take on board the thoughts of Karl Popper. In one of his books, scanned in a bookshop today, there are two index references to Popper. One is a passing reference (in a dismissive tone) to his idea of the objective content of books and data bases. The other is a sentence that reads in substance (no pen at hand to record) “those statements, [or this statement] is not falsifiable and so in Popper’s terms is vacuous”. Come again? To be untestable is to be vacuous (meaningless?).
Give me a break. I appreciate that the new enlightenment will not be immediately ushered in by correct readings of Popper, but you don’t have to share my regard for Popper to think that it would help.
David Horowitz notes that, at precisely the moment the political left was utterly and totally refuted by the verdict of history, they discovered that there really is no objective truth anyway, and that any attempt to say otherwise is a rightwing conspiracy. Hence the rise of postmodernism.
Yes, Stephen Hicks has the same take on POMO.
http://www.stephenhicks.org/publications/explaining-postmodernism/
He notes that the practical failure of socialism is the driver of POMO but he remains a justificationist and he so has to leave the challenge of POMO to traditional rationalism hanging in mid-air. This is the end of the book.
Post-postmodernism
Showing that a movement leads to nihilism is an important part of
understanding it, as is showing how a failing and nihilistic move-
ment can still be dangerous. Tracing postmodernism’s roots back to
Rousseau, Kant, and Marx explains how all of its elements came to
be woven together. Yet identifying postmodernism’s roots and
connecting them to contemporary bad consequences does not refute
postmodernism.
What is still needed is a refutation of those historical premises,
and an identification and defense of the alternatives to them. The
Enlightenment was based on premises opposite to those of post-
modernism, but while the Enlightenment was able to create a
magnificent world on the basis of those premises, it articulated and
defended them only incompletely. That weakness is the sole source
of postmodernism’s power against it. Completing the articulation
and defense of those premises is therefore essential to maintaining
the forward progress of the Enlightenment vision and shielding it
against postmodern strategies.
my italics.
He has not taken on board the Popper/Bartley response, though I have told him about it in private mail and in comments on his blog. He liked my paper on fallible apriorism, so maybe he is moving in that direction.