Abstract

In Postmodernism and Democratic Theory, Aryeh Botwinick is concerned with defining postmodernism and exploring its political-economic dimensions. Previous attempts at definition have foundered because the theory has a built-in incoherence: in their rejection of reasoned argument, postmodernists must rely on reasoned argument to make their case. This issue of "self-referentialism" is pivotal, for example, in Jurgen Habermas's criticism of the postmodernists. But Botwinick shows that postmodernism can be coherently conceived as a "generalized agnosticism," which remains open to all possibilities - including the possibility of its own falsity. In developing this view of postmodernism, the author applies it to the work of a wide range of contemporary political philosophers, from Jurgen Habermas and Jean-Francois Lyotard to Leo Strauss. Botwinick also invokes a "generalized agnosticism" in assessing the ideas of such classic thinkers as Rousseau, Freud, and Wittgenstein. In the second part of the book, Botwinick uncovers and analyzes participatory undercurrents in the thought of both Hobbes and Plato. On the basis of their work, Botwinick tries to plot the transition between modernist and postmodernist democratic society.