POMO MO and Curly

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

jonathan schultz wrote:
> 
> Ummm, I think I agree with the general thrust of your argument, however, I
> feel it is necessary to reconcile some of your evidence.  First, on many
> levels postmodernism is not an adoptable philosophy, although the premier
> bucket heads of American academia would like it to be (that way they could
> offer it in colleges as a 101 intro class and co-opt it over to the
> business department.)  It is, for most serious thinkers, an era, a symptom
> of the times in which we find ourselves. 

Yes, i stated as much in my post. 

 Second, can we really speak
> objectively about aesthetics anymore, I mean really, with any sort of 'good
> faith'?  We can certainly base some rhetorical comments on cultural
> precedents, but a belief in an ultimate aesthetic is impossible, despite
> the comfort the possibility of one might give us. 

What do we need cultural precedent for, if we can not speak
about aesthetics anymore?

 As far as metaphysics
> are concerned, you can trace the beginning of the schism between serious
> thought and metaphysics back to Descartes and his meditations.  Although he
> ultimately relies upon God as the stopping point of critical regress,
> evidence suggests that he intended further probing and 'fudged' the logic
> of the VII meditation in order to stay in the good graces of the church who
> was signing his weekly paycheck, and capable of ruining a good logicians
> career permanently.  The first obvious, mainstream break with metaphysics
> that I know of was not Heidegger - who may be great, but was a Nazi,
> besmirched Nietzsche's good name and never managed to explain why he
> created the Volksgeist and then married a Jew - but was Nietzsche himself,
> "God is dead."  

Right, and I could have gone back to the Renaissance, to
Bacon, and Humanist claims of MODERNI, a term later taken
over by some of the Enlightenment PHILOSOPHES of the 18th C,
but I wanted the phrase, not "god is dead" but "metaphysics
is dead" and so I quoted Heidegger. Besides, today,
postmoderns claiming to be making a new break with the
traditions are trading in the currency of Heidegger--the
Parisian Heideggarians, for example. 
As for philosophers who haven't read Wittgenstein, they are
> obviously college graduates who took their studies so seriously they forgot
> to acknowledge the world that was beyond the ivory towers.  The importance
> of Wittgenstein's work, indeed the reason he is dusted off as a compatriot
> by so many Postmodernists is that he tried to create a logical language and
> realized that he could not.  Unfortunately, or fortunately (for folly's
> sake it matters little) no one would have known had he not publicized his
> own recanting.  This quasi-proof for the subjective footing for language
> allows Derrida to prove then that the subject often has ulterior motives,
> hides his crime in his apology, admits what he hopes to conceal.  As for
> the rest of French crew, they have all done their part to deploy a general
> program of study, but all have done so for many different reasons with just
> as varying methods. 

You have read Wittgenstein? Gives me a dull pain in the roof
of my mouth, and I really worked at it. Used the equivalent
of Weisenburger's companion to read him and I think I did
OK, but I can't say I have really read him and I don't know
but now  two that have really read him. 

 If you really want a concise example of some of the
> underlying structures of Postmodern agenda read, "Anti-Oedipus, Capitalism
> and Schizophrenia," by Delueze and Guattari.  Very important book, the kind
> of thing our grandchildren will wonder at why we didn't learn anything from
> it.
> 
> Jonathan Schultz (a high school drop-out, with all the venom for academia
> to prove it)


What an amazing partnership. In my poem 'Crash'--I'll send
it to you if your interested--a howling patient jumps out a
window after hearing that Delueze is dead.

TF