The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the (...) sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of “Colligation” Some Common Hazards in Colligation Philosophical Issues Colligation and Postmodernism The Value of Colligation References Further Reading.

Postmodernism has evoked great controversy and it continues to do so today, as it disseminates into general discourse. Some see its principles, such as its fundamental resistance to metanarratives, as frighteningly disruptive, while a growing number are reaping the benefits of its innovative perspective. In Political Theory and Postmodernism, Stephen K. White outlines a path through the postmodern problematic by distinguishing two distinct ways of thinking about the meaning of responsibility, one prevalent in modern and the other in (...) postmodern perspectives. Using this as a guide, White explores the work of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Habermas, as well as 'difference' feminists, with the goal of showing how postmodernism can inform contemporary ethical-political reflection. In his concluding chapter, White examines how this revisioned postmodern perspective might bear on our thinking about justice. (shrink)

In recent years, W. H. Walsh and William Dray have introduced to methodological studies of history the term “colligation.” An historian who colligates explains, roughly, what an event ‘really’ was, or what it ‘amounts to’, by relating particular events into a single entity, by synthesizing parts into a whole. He thus explains many of the events of fifteenth-century Italy as a renaissance or those of eighteenth-century France as a revolution. The explanatory power of colligation is said to lie (...) in the newness of the interpretation of a collection of events which historians have previously ascertained to have occurred. (shrink)

Complexity and Postmodernism explores the notion of complexity in the light of contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science. The book integrates insights from complexity and computational theory with the philosophical position of thinkers including Derrida and Lyotard. Paul Cilliers takes a critical stance towards the use of the analytical method as a tool to cope with complexity, and he rejects Searle's superficial contribution to the debate.

In _Complexity and Postmodernism_, Paul Cilliers explores the idea of complexity in the light of contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science. Cilliers offers us a unique approach to understanding complexity and computational theory by integrating postmodern theory into his discussion. _Complexity and Postmodernism_ is an exciting and an original book that should be read by anyone interested in gaining a fresh understanding of complexity, postmodernism and connectionism.

W. H. Walsh argued that historians used colligatory terms to describe historical change, and defined such terms as those which relate a group of events by a common idea or value. The colligatory term identifies a general relationship among singular events. Events give concrete expression to the ideas shared by the people who initiated them. Thus, colligatory terms, such as "French Revolution," are always singular proper nouns, rather than general classifications. However, in addition to common ideas, colligatory terms are used (...) to describe the form of the historical change. Terms like "revolution" and "renaissance" do convey meaning when applied generally. Colligatory terms, then, can relate formal structures as well as dispositional. attitudes, and can function both as general classifications and as singular entities. (shrink)

Zagorin presents a critique of F. R. Ankersmit's postmodernist philosophy of history as fallacious and opposed to some of the fundamental convictions and intuitions historians feel about their discipline. It questions Ankersmit's conclusion that the overproduction of historical writings and continuing generation of new interpretations has obliterated the past as an object of knowledge. It argues that Ankersmit's attempt, in accord with Hayden White, to aestheticize historiography and regard it as a linguistic construction indistinguishable from literature, must sever it from (...) its necessary grounding in reality and truth. It also rejects as groundless Ankersmit's claim to have deconstructed causality, and concludes that the postmodernist conception trivializes historiography and deprives it of its essential function in education and culture. (shrink)

We no longer have any texts, any past, but just interpretations of them. The evident multi -interpretability of a text causes it gradually to lose its capacity to function as arbiter in the historical debate. It is necessary to define a new link with the past based on a complete and honest recognition of the position in which we now see ourselves placed as historians. In recent years, many people have observed our changed attitude towards the phenomenon of information. For (...) postmodernism, science and information are independent objects of study which obey their own laws. Language and art are not situated opposite reality but are themselves a pseudo-reality and are therefore situated within reality. Because of the relation between the historiographical view and the language used by the historian to express his view - a relation which nowhere intersects the domain of the past -historiography possesses the same opacity and intensional dimension as art. The essence of postmodernism is precisely that we should avoid pointing out essentialist patterns in the past. There is reason to assume that our relation to the past and our insight into it will in future be of a metaphorical nature rather than a literal one. (shrink)

Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective offers answers to the questions, what is postmodernism? and what exactly are the characteristics of the modernism that postmodernism supercedes? This comprehensive reader chronicles the western engagement with the nature of knowledge during the past four centuries while providing the historical context for the postmodernist thought of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty and Hayden White, and the challenges their ideas have posed to our conventional ways of thinking, writing and knowing. (...) From the science of things to the science of human beings to the grand social theorizing associated with Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx and Max Weber, Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective presents readings from the succession of thinkers whose writings helped define modern sensibilities by analyzing the human capacity for generating knowledge. The volume follows the knowledge-generating project of the modern age as it blossoms in the Enlightenment and bears fruit in the nineteenth century. The writings included reveal the linkages between science, the history of science, hermeneutics, anthropology, sociology, linguistics and philosophy from Francis Bacon's call for experimental engagement with nature in the seventeenth century to Jurgen Habermas' recent analysis of the civil society spawned by the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Postmodernism, a poorly defined term, is nevertheless influencing art, architecture, literature and philosophy. And despite its definitional ambiguities, some philosophers see in postmodernism a reason for the rise and interest in business ethics. This view is challenged on two grounds: (I) its philosophical source in Europe; and (2) its vocabulary. Martin Heidegger, one of the major forces in postmodernism’s rise, left a confusing legacy. In his early years, Heidegger advocated moral subjectivism; in his later years, he argued (...) that moral standards could be found in the lives of human gods whose pronouncements would replace the precepts of a Western Civilization he found decadent.Contemporary postmodernism seems to take inspiration from the views of both the younger and older Heidegger even though he, himself, saw contradictions between them. The confusion is compounded by incorporation of Neitzsche’s God-is-dead thesis into Heideggerian thought, thereby, confronting philosophers with a dilemma: if God is out of the picture, and if objective rules derived from human nature do not exist, what human gods can lead us? Will they come from a political or cultural elite? How should we know them? Why should we trust them? Unless-and until-these questions are answered, it is unwise to build business ethics on a postmodern foundation.Another-and seemingly insignificant-reason for rejecting postmodernism ethics is the esoteric vocabulary used by its expositors to advance it. More jargon will not help philosophers who try to respond to moral questions raised by business managers themselves. (shrink)

Postmodernism, a poorly defined term, is nevertheless influencing art, architecture, literature and philosophy. And despite its definitional ambiguities, some philosophers see in postmodernism a reason for the rise and interest in business ethics. This view is challenged on two grounds: (I) its philosophical source in Europe; and (2) its vocabulary. Martin Heidegger, one of the major forces in postmodernism’s rise, left a confusing legacy. In his early years, Heidegger advocated moral subjectivism; in his later years, he argued (...) that moral standards could be found in the lives of human gods whose pronouncements would replace the precepts of a Western Civilization he found decadent.Contemporary postmodernism seems to take inspiration from the views of both the younger and older Heidegger even though he, himself, saw contradictions between them. The confusion is compounded by incorporation of Neitzsche’s God-is-dead thesis into Heideggerian thought, thereby, confronting philosophers with a dilemma: if God is out of the picture, and if objective rules derived from human nature do not exist, what human gods can lead us? Will they come from a political or cultural elite? How should we know them? Why should we trust them? Unless-and until-these questions are answered, it is unwise to build business ethics on a postmodern foundation.Another-and seemingly insignificant-reason for rejecting postmodernism ethics is the esoteric vocabulary used by its expositors to advance it. More jargon will not help philosophers who try to respond to moral questions raised by business managers themselves. (shrink)

Introduction -- Is the truth stranger than fiction? -- The emergence and analysis of the postmodern -- Baudrillard and his works on social theory -- An assessment of postmodernism and Baudrillard -- Conclusion.

At the heart of the current surge of interest in religion among contemporary Continental philosophers stands Augustine’s Confessions. With Derrida’s Circumfession constantly in the background, this volume takes up the provocative readings of Augustine by Heidegger, Lyotard, Arendt, and Ricoeur. Derrida himself presides over and comments on essays by major Continental philosophers and internationally recognized Augustine scholars. While studies on and about Augustine as a philosopher abound, none approach his work from such a uniquely postmodern point of view, showing both (...) the continuing relevance of Augustine and the religious resonances within postmodernism. Posed at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and religious studies, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of Augustine as well as those interested in the invigorating discussion between philosophy, religion, and postmodernism. Contributors include Geoffrey Bennington, Philippe Capelle, John D. Caputo, Elizabeth A. Clark, Hent de Vries, Jacques Derrida, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Richard Kearney, Catherine Malabou, James O’Donnell, Michael J. Scanlon, and Mark Vessey. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor. (shrink)

The persistence of Romantic thought and literary practice into the late twentieth century is evident in many contexts, from the philosophical and ideological abstractions of literary theory to the thematic and formal preoccupations of contemporary fiction and poetry. Though the precise meaning of the Romantic legacy is contested, it remains stubbornly difficult to move beyond. This collection of essays by prominent critics and literary theorists was first published in 1999, and explores the continuing impact of Romanticism on a variety of (...) authors and genres, including John Barth, William Gibson, and John Ashbery, while writers from the Romantic and Victorian period include Wordsworth, Byron and Emily Brontë. Many critics have assumed that the forms and modes of feeling associated with the Romantic period continued to influence the cultural history of the the first half of the twentieth century. This was the first book to consider the mutual impact of postmodernism and Romanticism. (shrink)

The following is an attempt to grasp synthetically the strategy and development of Jean Baudrillard’s intellectual standpoint. My view emphasizes late ideas by French Philosopher, while the earlier ones are treated from this perspective as preliminary. After having left Marxist and post-Marxist positions, Baudrillard developed an original and idiosyncratic way of thinking about contemporary world that—inspired by Nietzschean idea that the power of interpretation prevails over representation of truth—evolves around rejection of the traditional ideas of the social, reality and revolt, (...) while employing categories of mass, simulation or catastrophe. This attitude took him not only beyond good and evil, but also to affirmation of death and terror, conducting to an extreme standpoint of “intellectual terrorism”. (shrink)

Since existentialism lost its influence in philosophy in the 1960s, postmodern theory has taken over criticizing basic concepts of western thought. From a postmodern point of view, the main shortcomings of existentialism is that it criticizes traditional unitarian concepts, while re-inventing new unitarian models. Against these unitarian approaches postmodernism holds that the world can only be described in terms of difference. In this article the postmodern program and its differences from existentialism are explained in reference to three concepts of (...) western philosophy: subject, truth, and ethics. Applying these concepts, the relevance of postmodernism for medical theory is illustrated. (shrink)

The suitability of a new philosophical paradigm for geography needs to be assessed in the context of the questions it was designed to address and on the basis of clearly articulated criteria. Postmodernism, the latest contender for the attention of geographers, is here assessed in relation to Collingwoodian idealism. As an intellectual movement postmodernism arose in the unique circumstances of academic life in post Second World War France. In this rigidly structured academic environment a new generation of French (...) scholars, well schooled in the philosophies of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger and the ideas of Marx and Freud, discovered the radical nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and drew upon his ethical and philosophical writings to address contemporary issues of power, knowledge, truth and modernity. All the central anti-humanist ideas of what was to become postmodernism are to be found in Nietzsche: a distrust of science and knowledge truth claims, the notion of multiple interpretations and the subordination of knowledge to power. This situated knowledge, set in the traditions of Continental thought, is not easily incorporated into the empiricist philosophies that have hitherto defined the mainstream of Anglo-American science and humanist scholarship including geography. Geographers need to retain a commitment to the foundational value of science, recognize human agency in the form of the conscious, thinking individual, and continue to affirm the empirical nature of human geographical research. (shrink)

The entire Who's Who of postmodern thought--Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard and others, can trace their philosophical ancestry to Nietzsche's radical relativism.

Pushing past the constraints of postmodernism which cast "reason" and"religion" in opposition, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, seizes the opportunity to question the authority of "the modern" and open the limits of possible experience, including the call to religious experience, as a new millennium approaches. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, engages with Jean-Luc Marion and other religious philosophers to entertain questions about intention, givenness, and possibility which reveal the extent to which deconstruction is structured like religion. New (...) interpretations of Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida emerge from essays and discussions with distinguished philosophers and theologians from the United States and Europe. The result is that God, the Gift, and Postmodernism elaborates a radical phenomenology that stretches the limits of its possibility and explores areas where philosophy and religion have become increasingly and surprisingly convergent. Contributors include: John D. Caputo, John Dominic Crossan, Jacques Derrida, Robert Dodaro, Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Marion, Frangoise Meltzer, Michael J. Scanlon, Mark C. Taylor, David Tracy, Merold Westphal and Edith Wyschogrod. (shrink)

Although rejecting the core values of the modern worldview, postmodernism may prove to be more blessing than bane for worshiping communities. From deconstruction to apologetics, the postmodern context calls for new ways of preaching the gospel.

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's relation to postmodernism, evaluating whether he was a relativising postmodernist rather than the father of existentialism. It discuses Gilles Deleuze's treatment of Kierkegaard in his Difference and Repetition and Jean-Paul Sartre's assertion in his Kierkegaard: The Singular Universal that Kierkegaard's impact should not be reduced to general truths described in his thought and that his importance lies in his withdrawal from such structures of comprehension.

Understanding Experience: Psychotherapy and Postmodernism is a collection of innovative interdisciplinary essays that explore the way we experience and interact with each other and the world around us. The authors address the postmodern debate in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis through clinical and theoretical discussion and offer a view of the person that is unique and relevant today. The clinical work of Binswanger, Boss, Fromm, Fromm-Reichmann, Laing, and Lacan is considered alongside the theories of Buber, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and others. (...) Combining clinical data from psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with insights from European philosophy, this book seeks to fill a major gap in the debate over postmodernism and bridges the paradigmatic divide between the behavioural sciences and the human sciences. It will be of great interest to clinicians and students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who wish to come to terms with postmodernism, as well as those interested in theinteraction of psychoanalysis, philosophy and social theory. experience. (shrink)

A POSTMODERN THINKER might very well be dismayed by the suggestions embedded in my title that the breach between modernism and postmodernism can be overcome and that Husserl is at all relevant to a discussion of postmodernism. Has not, after all, the postmodern critique revealed once and for all the poverty of the modern philosophical tradition with its epistemological and foundationalist concerns? And what better example of a philosopher working in the modern tradition than Husserl, who clearly identifies (...) his own philosophy as a form of "transcendental idealism" and who is clearly committed to the discovery of both an indubitable starting point upon which and a clear methodology by which philosophy can establish itself as a sure science of cognition? (shrink)

Therapeutic touch, a healing technique based upon the laying‐on of hands, has found wide acceptance in the nursing profession despite its lack of scientific plausibility. Its acceptance is indicative of a broad antiscientific trend in nursing. Adherents of this movement use the jargon of postmodern philosophy to justify their enthusiasm for a variety of mystically based techniques, citing such postmodern critics of science as Derrida and Michel Foucault as well as philosophical forerunners Heidegger and Husserl. Between 1997 and 1999, 94 (...) articles in nursing journals referred to postmodernism, according to a database search. This paper criticizes the postmodern movement for abandoning the biological underpinnings of nursing and for misreading philosophy in the service of an antiscientific world‐view. It is also suggested that nursing can retain its tradition of ‘caring’ without abandoning the scientific method. (shrink)

Differences That Matter challenges existing ways of theorising the relationship between feminism and postmodernism which ask 'is or should feminism be modern or postmodern?' Sara Ahmed suggests that postmodernism has been allowed to dictate feminist debates and calls instead for feminist theorists to speak (back) to postmodernism, rather than simply speak on (their relationship to) it. Such a 'speaking back' involves a refusal to position postmodernism as a generalisable condition of the world and requires closer readings (...) of what postmodernism is actually 'doing' in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Sara Ahmed hence examines constructions of postmodernism in relation to rights, ethics, subjectivity, authorship, meta-fiction and film. (shrink)

The model of feminism as humanist in practice and postmodern in theory is inadequate. Feminist practice and theory directly inform each other to displace both humanist and postmodern conceptions of the subject. An examination of feminism's use of rights discourse suggests that feminist practice questions the humanist conception of the subject as a self-identity. Likewise, feminist theory undermines the postmodern emphasis on the constitutive instability and indeterminacy of the subject.

“Business Ethics and Postmodernism: A Response” considers the contribution of Ronald Green, David Schmidt, Clarence Walton, RonDuska, and Richard Neilsen to a special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly entitled “Business Ethics and Postmodernism.” This essay poses a fundamental question: to what extent can a position which characterizes itself as postmodern be ethical? The paper argues on philosophical grounds that the debate between modernity and postmodernity is a debate over the very possibility of an ethic. The paper concludes that (...) although Jacque Derrida has made the most convincing argument for an ethic within postmodernity, it remains skeptical because such an argument simply presupposes assumptions which owe their origin to modernity. (shrink)