A (Very) Brief History of Western Thought Leading to Our Current Postmodernist Conundrum

You may think that all this mumbo-jumbo about Postmodernism was just something thought up in the middle of the previous century. It isn't, though this currently popular oft-misused word seems to be getting all the attention. So here I am to deal with this (not so very) pressing issue.

(Very) Early Classical Philosophy on the Problem of Knowledge

It all goes back to Thales and Pythagoras (and I'm not trying to repeat the entire history of Western Philosophy here) who started two independent, though related, streams of thought. Thales introduced the idea that knowledge could flow merely from observation, and that mystical elements were an unnecessary feature (he didn't actually say that but it was implied) of any system of organizing knowledge. Pythagoras (who didn't care jack about Thales) had something else in mind - there is a real world of numbers floating about that represent true reality, and that these had mystical properties. You may be thinking 'huh?" but you are wearing your modernist hat when you think that because a great many people still believe in numerology and such and so it hasn't gone away (in fact it’s constantly being revived.)

Knowledge Warfare Begins

This brings us to that little sub-title up there about out two favorite Athenians. Plato was very wise about many things, so people took him seriously when he suggested that the reality we deal with day to day, is not the essential reality, but merely a imperfect representation of Idea. So the orange you are eating is not the real orange (I love oranges by the way) but just a translation of an idealized orange (something you can’t eat) which actually exists in a metaphysical sense, and defined by certain 'oranginess' qualities such as color, perfect sphericalness (how could it be 'ideal' otherwise), sweetness (sourness you may think as well) and a whole host of etceteras that define the term. Aristotle (who was Plato's friend despite their age and philosophical differences) said, "Rot!" (In Greek of course.) There is no 'idealized' orange. We simply observe enough fruit and categorize them by certain qualities, and those that conform to our mental category of 'orange-like' qualities qualify to be included in a list of things called 'oranges'.

The Longest Dialectic

As you might imagine, these two diametrically opposed views of knowledge led to much argument, one which in the interim between the slow decline of the Roman Empire and it's eventual collapse eventually led to the victory of Platonism (or Neo-Platonism as we call it today), wherein the world was looked upon as a series of ascension from the gross imperfection of everyday reality up to the height of a transcendent and perfect One. A reasonable compromise was reached by Augustine of Hippo in his 'The City of God' where he allowed for divine perfection, as well as our own imperfection, and allowed for Science to extend knowledge without necessarily rejecting the metaphysical origins of knowledge. Despite this however, Western Thought took a decidedly metaphysical approach to everything, a state of affairs which ensured that Plato would be remembered and Aristotle virtually forgotten.

Fast Forward to the Late Middle Ages & Renaissance

Thomas Aquinas wasn't the first to revive Aristotle, but his 'Summa Theologiae' (controversial at the time) brought church thinking in line with an Aristotelian viewpoint, by essentially stating that the world as we see it (knowledge) is not inconsistent with the divine, it being our perceptions of the divine that are at fault. So any observation of nature is how things actually are, not the other way around. This was also cause for much argument, especially those who saw the Bible as Essential Truth, and those unhappy with the Catholic Church's adoption of Aquinas as canonical rebelled to the point that a Protestant movement (and nailing of theses to church doors) occurred. But by and large, mainstream thought took a decidedly Deterministic turn and the progress of Science a faster pace, leading eventually to Modernism.

So what exactly is that Enlightenment Thing Anyway?

Immanuel Kant's formulation of epistemology (we're modern now so let's use that word) considered the ideas underlying Enlightenment and was expressed in his concept of Transcendental Idealism, that what we know of things is how they appear to us, rather than as an idealized concept ('I could have told you that!' said Aristotle's ghost.) Arthur Schopenhauer tried to mix-up the issue by including a concept of Will into the equation, but science as a whole simply ignored him.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argued with him on the point and described the history of knowledge as a dialectical process.

Friedrich Nietzsche ignored them both centered his thoughts on an entirely humanistic perspective, putting human intellect as the center of knowledge.

Meanwhile, the technological revolution went its merry way, discovering new knowledge and inventing useful things.

Ah! Modernism

While we tend to view Modernism as an Aesthetic movement, we must recognize that this movement had its roots in the Modernist attitude in Philosophy. This point of view was exemplified by Bertrand Russell who changed epistemology and attempted to systemize thought ("I thought I already did that with my Logic!" said Aristotle's ghost). Extending Aristotle (bleh! to you oh ghost) Russell’s 'Principia Mathematica' was essentially a mathematical sense of how we organize numbers and attempted an axiomatic approach to the problem. This in itself was a noble (though failed) Deterministic approach to the problem, but did extend the Aristotelian concept into modern terms. Ludwig Wittgenstein went even further in taking an axiomatic approach to understanding Language in his 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'. This is important because this work (considered on of the most important works of 20th Century Philosophy) would lead directly towards our current postmodernist path.

Structuralism, Post-structuralism, the advent of the Postmodern viewpoint and Why A Tomato Soup Can is Art

Because of Wittgenstein, the argument about knowledge became an argument about Language. This is where we start to get Postmodernist in our view of things, since Knowledge is expressed as Language, the proper study of which extends to a study of Symbols; an essential perspective introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure as Semiotics. Structuralism was extended by the Post-structuralism of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard.

Derrida introduced the concept of Deconstruction as a means of analyzing our linguistic and cultural artifacts. Foucault toppled our brief flirtation with metaphysical Existentialism by ignoring it completely in his "The Order of Things" but also demolished any possible approach towards Determinism by studying the organization of knowledge not in itself but by how concepts like knowledge change with history and how this relates to and is expressed by Power (stabbing Hegel in the heart with his own weapon as it were.) Baudrillard extended Foucault be saying that the proper study of symbols needs no relationship to anything materialistic (Smith and Marx – Bang!) but allowed for an Object-Value system on multiple approaches that resulted in structural semiology.

The essential postmodern argument stands both Aristotle and Plato on their respective heads. So tomatoes become neither essential nor merely observable, but are perceived by us in cultural terms, that is, we cannot ignore our cultural baggage in any classification system, and the effects of culture on our thinking becomes the essential reality. Enter Warhol and paintings of Campbell Soup cans, a statement of essential reality as symbolism.

So What Was That About Tomatoes Again?

This path led directly to Jean-François Lyotard who looking again at Wittgenstein realized that Kant's Enlightenment was just so much philosophical hoo-hah. In his seminal 'The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge' (1979), Lyotard essentially demolished any remaining claims to Universal Knowledge and said the word Postmodern for the first time in the currently poplar sense there.

So here we are today.