Abstract

Postmodernism has had a significant and divisive impact on late-Twentieth Century thought. Proponents of the postmodernist critique of absolute knowledge have felt it necessary to jettison the Enlightenment concepts of truth, reason and the self. Opponents of postmodernism have seized on this abandonment of rational standards only to ignore the very real problems raised by the postmodernists. Michael Luntley provides a lively introduction to debate and offers a clear and careful exposition of how rational debate can survive even if the main postmodernist critique of the Enlightenment is accepted. Reason, Truth and Self covers many of the key questions of our age: the rationality of science; the availability of rational but non-scientific ways of understanding ourselves and our world; the nature of mind and of knowledge; the nature of moral judgement and the scope for accounts of the self that do justice to our situatedness in real historical circumstances.