Lecture 9. Schools and trends in philosophy of the XXth century. Postmodernism

1. General philosophical traditions of XXth century

2. Scientism and anti-scientism in philosophy of the XX century.

3. Modernism and Postmodernism.

20th Century philosophy has been dominated to a great extent by the rivalry between two very general philosophical traditions, Analytic philosophy (the largely, anglophone mindset that philosophy should apply logical techniques and be consistent with modern science) and Continental Philosophy (really just a catch-all label for everything else, mainly based in mainland Europe, and which, in very general terms, rejects Scientism and tends towards Historicism).

Analytic Philosophy (or sometimes Analytical Philosophy) is a 20th Century movement in philosophy which holds that philosophy should apply logical techniques in order to attain conceptual clarity, and that philosophy should be consistent with the success of modern science. For many Analytic Philosophers, language is the principal (perhaps the only) tool and philosophy consists in clarifying how language can be used.

Analytic Philosophy is also used as a catch-all phrase to include all (mainly Anglophone) branches of contemporary philosophynot included under the label Continental Philosophy, such as Logical Positivism, Logicism and Ordinary Language Philosophy. To some extent, these various schools all derive from pioneering work at Cambridge University in the early 20th Century and then at Oxford University after World War II, although many contributors were in fact originally from Continental Europe.

Analytic Philosophy as a specific movement was led by B. Russell, A.N. Whitehead, G.E. Moore and L. Wittgenstein. Turning away from then-dominant forms of Hegelianism (particularly objecting to its Idealism and its almost deliberate obscurity), they began to develop a new sort of conceptual analysis based on new developments in Logic, and succeeded in making substantial contributions to philosophical Logic over the first half of the 20th Century.

Continental Philosophy refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th Century philosophy in mainland Europe. It is a general term for those philosophical schools and movements not included under the label Analytic Philosophy, which was the other, largely Anglophone, main philosophical tradition of the period. As a movement, Continental Philosophy lacks clear definition, and may mark merely a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views, its main purpose being to distinguish itself from Analytic Philosophy, although the term was used as early as 1840 by John Stuart Mill to distinguish European Kant-influenced thought from the more British-based movements such as British Empiricism and Utilitarianism.

Continental Philosophy, then, is a catch-all label incorporating such Continental European-based schools as German Idealism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Romanticism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Marxism, Deconstructionism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Hermeneutics, French Feminism, and the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School.

Pragmatism (or Pragmaticism) is the view that considers practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of both meaning and truth. More simply, something is true only insofar as it works. It argues that the meaning of any concept can be equated with the conceivable operational or practical consequences of whatever the concept portrays. Like the related notion of Instrumentalism, Pragmatism asserts that any theory that proves itself more successful in predicting and controlling our world than its rivals can be considered to be nearer the truth.

Thus, slow and stumbling ratiocination is not necessarily to be automatically preferred over instinct, introspection and tradition, which are all valid methods for philosophical investigation, even if they each have their own drawbacks.

Phenomenology is a philosophical tradition or movement of the first half of the 20th Century, developed largely by the German philosophers E. Husserl and M. Heidegger, which is based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events ("phenomena") as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness.

Phenomenology, as it is understood today, is essentially the vision of one man, E. Husserl, which he launched in his "Logical Investigations" of 1901, although credit should also be given to the pioneering work on intentionality (the notion that consciousness is always intentional or directed) by Husserl's teacher, the German philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano (1838-1917) and his colleague, Carl Stumpf (1848-1936).

M. Heidegger criticized and expanded Husserl 's phenomenological enquiry (particularly in his "Being and Time" of 1927) to encompass our understanding and experience of Being itself, and developed his original theory of "Dasein" (the non-dualistic human being, engaged in the world).

Husserl charged Heidegger with raising the question of ontology but failing to answer it, but Heidegger's development of Existential Phenomenology greatly influenced the subsequent flowering of Existentialism in France.

Positivism is a philosophical school developed by the French sociologist and philospher Auguste Comte in the mid-19th Century. Comte believed that Metaphysics and theology should be replaced by a hierarchy of sciences, from mathematics at the base to sociology at the top. The school is based around the idea that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method.

As a religious system, developed by Comte later in his life, Positivism denies the existence of a personal God and takes humanity ("the great being") as the object of its veneration and cult, and in this respect has similarities to Humanism. Comte developed a hierarchical priesthood, positive dogmas, an organized cult, and even a calendar on the model of Catholicism.

Although not a large movement in terms of individual contributors, its influence on subsequent philosophic thought was quite profound.

The principles of Positivism as a philosophical system were accepted and applied in England by J.S. Mill, a major figure in the Utilitarianism movement. Later, in the early 20th Century, it gave rise to the stricter and more radical movement of Logical Positivism.

Ordinary Language Philosophy (aka Linguistic Philosophy or Natural Language Philosophy) is a 20th Century philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by forgetting what words actually mean in a language, and taking them in abstraction and out of context.

Ordinary Language Analysis typically involves eschewing philosophical "theories" in favour of close attention to the details of the use of non-technical everyday "ordinary" language. Thus, it argues, the contemplation of language in its normal use, can"dissolve" the appearance of philosophical problems, rather than attempting to solve them.

Analytic philosophers such as the young L. Wittgenstein, B. Russell, W.V.O. Quine and R. Carnap (1891-1970), all attempted to improve upon natural language using the resources of modern Logic, in an attempt to make it more unambiguous and to accurately represent the world, in order to better deal with the questions of philosophy ("ideal language" analysis).

However, Wittgenstein's later unpublished work in the 1930's began to centre around the idea that maybe there is nothing wrong with ordinary language as it stands, and that perhaps many traditional philosophical problems were only illusions brought on bymisunderstandings about language and related subjects. Although heavily influenced by Wittgenstein and his students at Cambridge, Ordinary Language Philosophy largely flourished and developed at Oxford in the 1940s, under Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin (1911-1960), Peter Strawson (1919-2006), John Wisdom (1904-1993) and others, and was quite widespread for a time before declining rapidly in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Existentialism is a movement in philosophy and literature that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It began in the mid-to-late 19th Century, but reached its peak in mid-20th Century France. It focuses on the question of human existence, and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness is by embracing existence.

Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal responsibility for themselves, and emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental in rising above the essentially absurd condition of humanity.

Both philosophers considered the role of making free choices on fundamental values and beliefs to be essential in the attempt to change the nature and identity of the chooser. In Kierkegaard's case, this results in the "knight of faith", who puts complete faith in himself and in God, as described in his 1843 work "Fear and Trembling". In Nietzsche's case, the much maligned "Ubermensch" (or "Superman") attains superiority and transcendence without resorting to the "other-worldliness" of Christianity, in his books "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (1885) and "Beyond Good and Evil" (1887).

The Phenomenologist Heidegger was an important philosopher in the movement, especially his influential 1927 work "Being and Time", although he vehemently denied being an Existentialist in the Sartrean sense.

Other major influences include Max Stirner (1806-1856), Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) and Husserl, and writers like the Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and the Czech Franz Kafka (1883-1924).

Existentialism came of age in the mid-20th Century, largely through the scholarly and fictional works of the French existentialists, J.-P. Sartre, Albert Camus (1913-1960) and Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), all of whose works popularized existential themes, such as dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment and nothingness. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) is another influential and often overlooked French Existentialist of the period.

Sartre is perhaps the most well-known, as well as one of the few to have actually accepted being called an "existentialist". "Being and Nothingness" (1943) is his most important work, and his novels and plays, including "Nausea" (1938) and "No Exit" (1944), helped to popularize the movement.

In "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942), Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth of Sisyphus (who is condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, only to have it roll to the bottom again each time) to exemplify the pointlessness of existence, but shows that Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it.

Modernism refers to a reforming movement in art, architecture, music, literature and the applied arts during the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. There is no specifically Modernist movement in Philosophy, but rather Modernism refers to a movement within the arts which had some influence over later philosophical thought. The later reaction against Modernism gave rise to the Post-Modernist movement both in the arts and in philosophy.

By the time Modernism had become so institutionalized and mainstream that it was considered "post avant-garde", indicating that it had lost its power as a revolutionary movement, it generated in turn its own reaction, known as Post-Modernism, which was both a response to Modernism and a rediscovery of the value of older forms of art. Modernism remains much more a movement in the arts than in philosophy, although Post-Modernism has a specifically philosophical aspect in addition to the artistic one.

Post-Modernism is a broad movement in late 20th Century philosophy and the arts, marked in general terms by an opennessto meaning and authority from unexpected places, and a willingness to borrow unashamedly from previous movements or traditions. It is often defined negatively as a reaction or opposition to the equally ill-defined Modernism, although some claim that it represents a whole new paradigm in intellectual thought.

In Philosophy specifically, Post-Modernism was heavily influenced by Continental Philosophy movements like Phenomenology, Structuralism and Existentialism, and it is generally skeptical of many of the values and bases of Analytic Philosophy. It is generally viewed as openness to meaning and authority from unexpected places, so that the ultimate source of authority is the actual "play" of the discourse itself. It can be considered a "pick-and-mix" approach, whereby basic problems are approachable from a wide range of theoretical perspectives.

Among the best-known Post-Modernist philosophers are Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Fransois Lyotard (1924-1998), Richard Rorty (1931-2007), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) and Roland Barthes (1915-1980).

Lyotard is perhaps one of the most identifiable Post-Modernists, and he has described Post-Modernism as a condition of the present state of culture, social structure and self. He is largely concerned with the role of narrative in human culture, and particularly how that role has changed as we have left modernity and entered a post-industrial or post-modern condition.

Baudrillard has argued that we live in a "hyperreal", post-modern, post-industrial, post-everything sort of a world, and global reality has become dominated by an internationalized popular culture to such an extent that people have great difficulty deciding what is real.

Structuralism is a 20th Century intellectual movement and approach to the human sciences (it has had a profound effect on linguistics, sociology, anthropology and other fields in addition to philosophy) that attempts to analyze a specific field as a complex system of interrelated parts.

Broadly speaking, Structuralism holds that all human activity and its products, even perception and thought itself, are constructed and not natural, and in particular that everything has meaning because of the language system in which we operate. It is closely related to Semiotics, the study of signs, symbols and communication, andhow meaning is constructed and understood.

Although they would probably all have denied being part of this so-called movement, the philosopher Michel Foucault, the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the linguists Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) and Noam Chomsky (1928), the literary critic Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and the Marxist theorists Louis Althusser (1918-1990) and Nicos Poulantzas (1936-1979) were all instrumental in developing the theory and techniques of Structuralism, most of this development occurring in France.

Barthes, in particular, demonstrated the way in which the mass media disseminated ideological views based on its ability to make signs, images and signifiers work in a particular way, conveying deeper, mythical meanings within popular culture than the surface images immediately suggest (e.g. the Union jack signifies the nation, the crown, the empire, "Britishness", etc).

By the 1960s, it had become a major force within the overall Continental Philosophy movement in Europe, and came to take Existentialism’s pedestal in 1960s France.

In the 1970s, however, it came under increasing internal fire from critics who accused it of being too rigid and a historical, and for favouring deterministic structural forces over the ability of individual people to act.

Schools like Deconstructionism and Post-Structuralism attempted to distinguish themselves from the simple use of the structural method and to break with structuralistic thought. In retrospect, it is more these movements it spawned, rather than Structuralism itself, which commands attention.

Post-Structuralism is a late 20th Century movement in philosophy and literary criticism, which is difficult to summarize but which generally defines itself in its opposition to the popular Structuralism movement which preceded it in 1950s and 1960s France. It is closely related to Post-Modernism, although the two concepts are not synonymous.

Post-Structuralism emerged in France during the 1960s, a period of political turmoil, rebellion and disillusionment with traditional values, accompanied by a resurgence of interest in Feminism, Western Marxism, Phenomenology and Nihilism.

Many prominent Post-Structuralists (generally labelled as such by others rather than by themselves), such as Derrida, Foucault and Roland Barthes, were initially Structuralists but later came to explicitly reject most of Structuralism's claims, particularly its notion of the fixity of the relationship between the signifier and the signified, but also the overall grandness of the theory, which seemed to promise everything and yet not quite to deliver.

In his 1966 lecture "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Science", Derrida, was one of the first to propose some theoretical limitations to Structuralism, and identified an apparent de-stabilizing or de-centring in intellectual life (referring to the displacement of the author of a text as having greatest effect on a text itself, in favour of the various readers of the text), which came to be known as Post-Structuralism.

Roland Barthes, originally a confirmed Structuralist, published his “The Death of the Author” in 1968, in which he argued that any literary text has multiple meanings, and that the author was not the prime source of the work's semantic content. In his 1967 work "Elements of Semiology", he also advanced the concept of the metalanguage, a systematized way of talking about concepts like meaning and grammar beyond the constraints of traditional (first-order) language.

Other notable Post-Structuralists include Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Julia Kristeva (1941), Umberto Eco (1932), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) and Judith Butler (1956).

Deconstructionism (or sometimes just Deconstruction) is a 20th Century school in philosophy initiated by Derrida in the 1960s. It is a theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings. Although Derrida himself denied that it was a method or school or doctrine of philosophy (or indeed anything outside of reading the text itself), the term has been used by others to describe Derrida's particular methods of textual criticism.

Major influences on Derrida's thinking were the Phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, although mainly in a negative sense (Derrida's early work was mainly an elaborate critique of the limitations of Phenomenology). The development of Deconstructionism mainly took place at Yale University between the 1960s and 1980s, in a climate heavily influenced by the contemporaneous development of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. In addition to Derrida, other Yale philosophers who had a hand in the development of Deconstructionism include Paul de Man (1919-1983), Geoffrey Hartman(1929), and J. Hillis Miller (1928).

Required reading:

1. Russell, B: "A History of Western Philosophy", Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1972.

2. Delacampagne, C., De Bevoise, Valcolm B. (Translator). A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Johns Hopkins University Press, September 27, 2001.

3. Wittgenstein, L. 1921/1966. Tractatus-logico-philosophicus. Trans, D F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.

4. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945/1962. Phenomenology of Perception (Phénoménologie de lye Perception). Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

5. Husserl, E. 1929/1960. Cartesian Meditations: an Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorian Cairns. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.

6. Rorty, R. Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Cambridge, UK, 2007.

7. Derrida, J. Speech and Phenomena, tr. David B. Allison (Northwestern University Press: 1973).

8. Maritain, J. Introduction to Philosophy. Westminster MD: Christian Classics, 1991.

9. Camus, A. Between Hell and Reason, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1991 [Available online].

10. Barthes, R. Writing Degree Zero. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968.

Optional reading:

1. Pettegrew, J., ed., A Pragmatist's Progress? Richard Rorty and American Intellectual History. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.

2. Bernstein, J. M. (ed.), 2010, Art and Aesthetics after Adorno, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3. Brandom, R, ed., Rorty and His Critics. Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000.

4. Brittain, C. C., 2010, Adorno and Theology, London: T. & T. Clark.

5. Burke, D. A., et al. (eds.), 2007, Adorno and the Need in Thinking: New Critical Essays, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

6. Claussen, D., 2008, Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius, trans. R. Livingstone, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

7. Cook, D., 2004, Adorno, Habermas, and the Search for a Rational Society, New York: Routledge.

8. Sagi, A., 2002, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V.