Tag Archives: Immanuel Kant

Postmodernism vs. Postmodernism, Part 2: Ontic vs. Epistemic Postmodernism

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Last week, we took a look at the basic origin of postmodern philosophy, exploring how Kant’s distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal set the stage for a crisis in modernist (i.e. more or less Enlightenment-era and, sometimes, post-Enlightenment) philosophy. I suggested at the end of that piece that the main reaction to this crisis—what we generally call postmodernism—took two distinct paths, one of which is the better-known (and frequently attacked), the other of which gets much less attention (but I think should get much more). So let’s dive right in1 (though if you haven’t read Part 1 and you aren’t that familiar with Kant’s work, you may want to read that first).

Western philosophers in the 19th century, who took Kant’s distinction seriously, were indeed in an intellectual crisis, for if the phenomena of our thinking lives—sensory impressions, concepts, the reasoning that binds them, etc.—have no guaranteed access to the noumena of reality, of things as they are in themselves, then it would be easy to give into despair: perhaps our thinking makes no contact with reality. If Kant is right, we can’t actually ever check or verify whether it does, since any new evidence we could evaluate would be, of course, evidence that we gathered with our senses and used our reason to organize into concepts—all evidence of the noumenal must become phenomenal for us to consider it at all.

From one perspective, then, post-Kantian philosophy found itself “locked in” to the mind. They wanted to say true things about reality, but had lost confidence that they could do so. What does an aspiring philosopher do in such dire straits?

Continue reading on my substack at: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/p/postmodernism-vs-postmodernism-part-c1c

Postmodernism vs. Postmodernism, Part 1: The Birth of Postmodernism

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“Postmodern” is one of those words we often hear, but which rarely gets defined. This is already a suspicious state of affairs, but when we add the fact that it’s almost always used as a pejorative or accusation which is hurled at one’s ideological enemies, our suspicion should intensify. If we are going to go around trying to disparage each other with 10-dollar words, we ought at least to know what they mean.

Right off the bat, though, let’s set some limits. The first thing to know is that “postmodernism” is used to refer to a range of different human activities: there is postmodern architecture, postmodern painting, postmodern literature, and postmodern philosophy—and I am sure there are plenty of other fields which host postmodern content, as well. Although there are some threads that connect these different kinds of postmodern activity, they are also very diverse: someone could like postmodern architecture, for example, but not like postmodern painting.

This is a substack about philosophy (and also other things, but none of those things are architecture or art), so I doubt it’ll surprise you hear that I won’t be addressing any kind of postmodernism except postmodern philosophy.1 So what is postmodern philosophy?

Continue reading at my substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/phenomenologyeastandwest/p/postmodernism-vs-postmodernism-part

Phenomenology, East & West

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I have been writing here at Wrestling with the Angel for about 10 years, often only intermittently. It’s changed names and focuses a few times. In the last year, my own interest has moved more and more towards a discussion of some particular topics, most notably phenomenology (broadly conceived) and related discipline like Vedanta and Neoplatonism.

So, I have started a Substack, Phenomenology, East & West. I will be posting there weekly. I will be linking those posts here as well (for a while), so if you are curious about that work, you can still check back here, and/or subscribe the Substack directly. I will likely also post some things only on this blog, especially if I want to write on something not really related to phenomenology itself.

(Note: I included links to the first few months’ worth of articles on the Substack here on my WordPress blog. I have since stopped doing so, since I figure anyone who wanted to follow me over there has done so. Rest assured, I have continued publishing over there. You can find all of those articles on my main substack page: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/)

Without further ado, here’s the first, introductory post: Keeping Up Appearances: The Why, How, and Already of Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a ten-dollar word for something that you probably already do, at least some of the time. Phenomenon is the Greek word for “appearance”, and so phenomenology is just the study of, or focused ordering of, the appearances. But what, exactly, is an appearance?

The use of this word in its more-or-less post/modern philosophical sense can be traced back to Immanuel Kant, in at least two ways. For one thing, the word “phenomenology” seems to have first appeared in a letter written to Kant. Second, and more importantly, the basic frame of phenomenology was set by Kant himself in his (in)famous Critique of Pure Reason.

In the Critique, Kant introduces a fundamental metaphysical distinction between the appearances (phenomena) and things-themselves (noumena). Kant was pointing out something that is, for most people, pretty obvious, but which we often ignore and which has massive philosophical consequences: the way things appear to us is not the same as the way things actually are, in and of themselves.

Click here to continue reading on Substack.