watch your language
Russell Arben Fox has given us a nice introduction and response to a debate that’s going on between the Postmodern Conservatives and the Front Porch Republicans. I don't think the debate is getting anywhere, and I think the chief impediment is the key term of the debate.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s line about the weather: Whenever people talk to me about modernity, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. The problem is that what we call “modernity” is a collection of propositions and practices, of varying degrees of interconnectedness, and within various spheres of life. Modernity is a matter of political economy, but also of epistemology, and then again of technology, and so on and so on. No two people seem to conceive of the relations among these in the same ways, and people who are proponents or opponents of modernity — and I include people like the estimable Herr Professor Poulos who are willing employ the “post” language, as well as those who ally themselves with the “pre” — are never really reacting to modernity tout court, but always to some particular aspect of it, one (or at most a few) of the cogs in the great machine.
So when people tell me that they want to recover the wisdom of the pre-modern, I just want to know what in particular they are talking about. At least tell me whether you’re talking economics, politics, moral philosophy, epistemology, theology, or what. And then we can narrow it down from there. Ditto when people vocally embrace the postmodern condition. What is it, precisely, to which you wish to be “post”? And now that you are post-X, what Y have you entered? Spell it out for me, one cog at a time.
The philosopher Bernard Williams used to say that we suffer from a poverty of concepts. Never more so, I think, than when we have useless arguments about modernity and its putative predecessors and successors. We think we know what we mean when we use such language, but the fruitlessness of our debates shows that there really isn't substantive agreement. So my suggestion is that we all try to make our arguments — whether they are for something or against something — without ever employing that particular string of letters: “modern.” It would be a good discipline for everyone.
We think we know what we mean when we use such language, but the fruitlessness of our debates shows that there really isn’t substantive agreement.
I’ll agree if we can also retire words like ‘moral’, ‘immoral’, ‘just’, ‘injust’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, and ‘God’.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jun 30, 05:41 PM · #
Ugh, i meant ‘unjust’, natch. ‘Injust’ would be pretty easy to retire.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jun 30, 05:42 PM · #
I’m going to get rid of all those others and keep “injust.”
— Alan Jacobs · Jun 30, 06:33 PM · #
“unjust” is a weird one anyway — a germanic prefix attached to a latin/french root. “injust” makes more etymological sense.
— kenB · Jun 30, 07:01 PM · #
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 30, 08:22 PM · #
I do agree with your comments re: ‘modern.’ What are we to do then, following the discovey of the process of Reason, in the noetic sense, by the classical Greeks, and a few hundred years later by the appearance of the Logos, but to recover Nous and Logos when they become opaque?
— Bob Cheeks · Jun 30, 08:26 PM · #
I’m very pre-modern, but, as a good post-modernist, I recognize my selective and idiosyncratic pre-modernism is thoroughly, unavoidably, modern.
— JLR · Jun 30, 08:34 PM · #
To me, postmodernity simply involves the understanding that our expressions of the mind are trapped in language, and the mind itself trapped in dualism, and that this disconnect between sign and signifier should create skepticism about any kind of strong truth claims.
— Freddie · Jun 30, 11:20 PM · #
Not sure what you mean by “dualism” in this case, Freddie, but I would reply that (a) the linguistic version of postmodernism is one of several — Foucault, for instance, has little interest in language; and (b) in any case, the arbitrariness of the connection between signifier and signified is commented on by the person who more or less invented semiotics, St. Augustine. (Who obviously didn’t think that that arbitrariness impeded the making os strong truth claims. But that’s neither here nor there.) It’s pretty strange when what many people think of as a key tenet of postmodernism, or at least a key ingredient of postmodernism, was articulated by a Christian theologian at the end of the fourth century A.D. That’s a perfect illustration of why I think the term doesn’t do much serious intellectual work.
(You could also argue, not incidentally, that there’s not much in Foucault’s brand of pomo that’s not already there, at least implicitly, in Machiavelli and Hobbes. And so on with all of the ideas we tend to attribute to that fiction we call “postmodernism.”)
— Alan Jacobs · Jun 30, 11:36 PM · #
I’m just trying to figure out what I think of the fact that Freddie just used “disconnect” as a noun.
— Matt Frost · Jul 1, 02:27 AM · #
I’ve been rocking that shit for years.
By dualism I just mean body/mind, or mind/world, or “really there”/the medium through which it’s interpreted…. I mean “language” in that broader sense, because the human mind is structured through language, through sign/signifier. There is a real, concrete world “out there,” but since we interpret that world through a medium we call consciousness, we cannot experience it outside of a medium, or express it outside of a sub-medium.
As far as really old thinkers having come up with this stuff, that’s more a function of the vagaries of homonym; the use of modern to refer to a contemporary age and the use of modern to refer to a set of ideas are really not connected to one another.
— Freddie · Jul 1, 03:12 AM · #
A discussion of the ancients and moderns calls for a close reading of Leo Strauss, which would help to focus and clarify the debate.
For an introduction to Strauss’ thought, I recommend Thomas Pangle’s Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy.
— J.B. · Jul 1, 06:29 PM · #
I, for one, am extremely skeptical of the strong truth claim that “our expressions of the mind are trapped in language, and the mind itself trapped in dualism, and that this disconnect between sign and signifier should create skepticism about any kind of strong truth claims.”
— The Deuce · Jul 1, 10:36 PM · #
The Modernism that has teeth was begun by Karl Marx. As you no doubt recall, Marx was a brilliant poet and theologian, though not religious, who invented the really cool idea that mankind is unique because his essence is his work and, thus, mankind can reinvent himself through reinventing his work. Consequently, we have seen everything from the New Socialist Man to the New Radical Feminist. All of them have one thing in commom, an unwillingness to share power with God. Sad to say, but this dribble is the only thing the Humanities have done for us since Marx’s day.
— John Marshall · Jul 2, 01:27 AM · #
I, for one, am extremely skeptical of the strong truth claim that “our expressions of the mind are trapped in language, and the mind itself trapped in dualism, and that this disconnect between sign and signifier should create skepticism about any kind of strong truth claims.”
That’s only a strong truth claim if you begin from the default position of strong truth claims. Cute try, though.
— Freddie · Jul 2, 01:59 AM · #
To me, postmodernism is simply the BS claim that reality is unreal and meaning is meaningless. It’s simply a way to void and mock any reasonable argument by denying reason itself. In short, it is juvenile BS and anyone who espouses it is full of ..it. I urge anyone who is drawn to this through the looking glass thinking to realize that their brain is a real physical thing, their thoughts are real, and their perceptions of reality and scientific perceptions that spring therefrom are as close to reality as anything, and therefore are for all practical purposes the reality in which all humans live.
And God too, but that’s another argument.
— beaglescout · Jul 2, 02:04 AM · #
To me, postmodernism is simply the BS claim that reality is unreal and meaning is meaningless.
No. It is the suggestion that reality is filtered through consciousness and sensory processes, and that this filter prevents perfect access to reality. It is further the suggestion that all of our truth claims are therefore the product of social consensus about the meaning of what we’ve interpreted through perhaps unreliable consciousness. No serious postmodern writers or thinkers suggests that there is “no reality”.
I urge anyone who is drawn to this through the looking glass thinking to realize that their brain is a real physical thing,
Yes.
their thoughts are real,
Define “real.”
and their perceptions of reality and scientific perceptions that spring therefrom are as close to reality as anything,
Define “as close as anything”. If you mean “as close as we’re going to get,” I agree completely. You have to account for our consciousness mechanism. If science is correct, then we encounter the world through a series of biological mechanisms that evolved to satisfy a select criteria of purposes. Evolution doesn’t produce perfectly fit systems, it only eliminates those systems so unfit as to prevent the perpetuation of DNA. Since that’s the case, it’s unlikely that our consciousness is a perfect mechanism for understanding the world “out there,” and more to the point, any attempts we make to try to understand the extent to which consciousness succeeds or fails are themselves filtered through consciousness. It’s not just that we don’t know whether our sensory and logical processes are accurate, it’s that any attempt to figure it out is itself subject to whatever discrepancies do exist. This is what I mean by saying that we are trapped in dualism. There is no escaping the box of the mind. Sorry.
and therefore are for all practical purposes the reality in which all humans live.
One interesting thing that I find about criticisms of postmodernism is how often they arise from points of view that are themselves postmodern. This “for all practical purposes” is close to a perfect postmodern statement. It’s hard to think in a pre-modern way, which is why so many people assume that they do when in fact they are postmodern.
— Freddie · Jul 2, 02:45 AM · #
If science is correct, then we encounter the world through a series of biological mechanisms that evolved to satisfy a select criteria of purposes.
Terrible way to put that. Rather, these processes evolved because they increased the survivability of the animals that had these traits. There wasn’t any “design” other than the design of natural selection. The point is that the process which produced them was not a quest by some intelligence to produce an accurate mirror on reality but instead a bit of evolutionary chance.
— Freddie · Jul 2, 02:58 AM · #
Prof. Jacobs writes: “So when people tell me that they want to recover the wisdom of the pre-modern, I just want to know what in particular they are talking about. At least tell me whether you’re talking economics, politics, moral philosophy, epistemology, theology, or what.”
I suppose that your conversation partner could reply that the ‘pre-modern’ masters—e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Augustine—would have found the compartmentalization perplexing. How can a person try recovering Augustine’s epistemology without his theology or Aristotle’s politics without his moral philosophy? Accepting the premise of your challenge arguably vitiates the wisdom on offer. For those masters teach that behind the diversity a unity exists; and to the extent that particulars matter, things that are complex and particular are ordered to that which is simple and universal.
Inquirers can still learn from Augustine by approaching him piecemeal (otherwise, introductory courses and term papers would be useless), and they may even achieve something interesting by grafting that idea of Augustine onto this apparatus of Kant. If a piecemeal approach is what your interlocutor intended, perhaps the problem is as much the conceptual haze of the phrase ‘wisdom of the pre-modern’ as it is a lack of nerve.
Using pre-modern, modern, etc., as placeholders for patterns of reasoning with particular, interesting conclusions is unhelpful. For among other reasons, there are material disagreements between pre-modern thinkers such as Plato and Augustine about God and the world. However, ‘modern’ and related terms as socio-historical pointers does some work. Social histories are valuable to inquiries in the humanities, and at times it is useful to sketch more broadly than talking about movements and people from the 400s and 1700s. The confusions this practice introduces are no more than those introduced by talking about ‘Augustinian’ or ‘beauty’, and I’m in no hurry to discard those terms.
— Jay Chandra · Jul 2, 06:16 AM · #
<blockquote>That’s only a strong truth claim if you begin from the default position of strong truth claims.</blockquote>
Ah, I see. So I can make all the strong truth claims I want, and don’t even need to support them, as long as I pretend that my strong truth claims are not really strong truth claims like everyone else’s. No wonder post-modernism has done so much good for society!
— The Deuce · Jul 2, 01:57 PM · #
beaglescout:
“To me, postmodernism is simply the BS claim that reality is unreal and meaning is meaningless.”
Yep, and don’t let post-modernists try to tell you otherwise. Most, like our friend Freddie here, will try to tell you that no self-respecting post-modernist really believes that there is no objective reality beyond our interpretations, since anybody with pulse and half a brain would laugh them off the stage immediately without that disclaimer. But it’s BS, like everything else they say.
If all of a post-modernist’s truth claims are simply interpretation and social construction, then it is meaningless for them to even refer to an objective reality beyond their interpretations and social constructions, since when they refer to “objective reality” (such as in the sentence “No post-modernist denies that there is an objective reality”), they are really just referring to another social construction, not objective reality. If their theory were true, then they couldn’t even think about such a thing.
It can be a little hard to tell sometimes, because whenever post-modernists try to argue for something that really matters to them (rather than scribbling BS for term papers and academic journals of BS-istry), like scientific facts or the underpinnings of their own worldview, they stop talking about their “interpretations” and start making strong, objective-sounding assertions about reality. That’s because, when you get right down to it, even post-modernists realize that post-modernism is bullshit.
— The Deuce · Jul 2, 02:47 PM · #
I sometimes wonder if this post-modern stuff doesn’t have something to do with science getting too complicated for people like JP and Freddie and me to have any real expertise. Once upon a time a fellow could be a political philosopher, theologian, and natural philosopher all rolled into one and even make significant contributions in all fields.
But science is now mostly closed too the merely clever, leaving them to have arguments about things that can never be proven: academic art, politics, god.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 2, 03:00 PM · #
To me, postmodernism is simply…
Could there be a more succinct illustration of the problem Alan is describing?
Instead of debating actual ideas, you guys are arguing over the meaning of the word “postmodern,” which clearly means something different to each person using the word (even among those who seem to be agreeing with each other). Instead of arguing with some specific statement that a post-modernist has made, you’re ascribing statements to imaginary post-modernists, making assertions about what post-modernists “really” believe.
— Michael Straight · Jul 2, 09:11 PM · #
Any of you ever read “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” by Oliver Sacks? Excellent book, one of my favorites.
One lesson from there is that the brain is a complicated and peculiar thing indeed. I’m thinking in particular of the chapter where the guy temporarily gets an incredible sense of smell. It completely changes his outlook on reality. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Kant claimed, I think, that any “universal” truth would have to hold not just for humans but for all intelligent beings. If it wasn’t him it was someone else. This kind of claim reflects a failure of imagination. There are innumerable ways for a being to be intelligent, most of which we can’t come close to envisioning. A statement that we all agree is “strongly true” might seem meaningless or incomprehensible to one of these aliens, or maybe just beside the point.
If you don’t want to think about aliens, consider what the world would be like if everyone had mild autism or Williams syndrome or aphasia or whatever. It’s not that science would suddenly be false. Rather, much of it would be irrelevant. Any agreed-upon structure of morality would be quite different from what we’re used to.
If you want to defend the existence of “strong truth claims,” you have a few options.
1. Deny that my argument is true. All right, if you want to, but something like “The statement that there are no strong truth claims is itself a strong truth claim! GOTCHA!!!!” won’t do.
2. Accept my argument, but insist that there are strong truth claims that apply to all humans without mental disorders/superpowers. You then have to draw the distinction between a mental disorder/superpower and a culturally ingrained mode of thought. Next, and here’s the difficulty, you have to explain how a claim can be “strongly true” across cultures but not across different forms of intelligence. (I’m not saying this is impossible! Just difficult.)
3. Put your fingers in your ears and shout “LALALALA I can’t hear you.” This appears to be The Deuce’s strategy.
— dj · Jul 3, 06:01 AM · #
Tony: I sometimes wonder if this post-modern stuff doesn’t have something to do with science getting too complicated for people like JP and Freddie and me to have any real expertise.
That’s why I quit the Ph.D program in philosophy. It was a sideshow, full of tribal instincts and outdated terminology. Now I’m in the business of making money, which is nice.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 3, 04:33 PM · #
Kristoffer V. Sargent = Sargent = JA ???
RE: Making money
Last Fall, when I started reading and commenting at Culture11 (which is what led me here) it was part of a deliberate effort to bring myself in contact with new people and new ideas, and I count it mostly as a successful initiative.
But one startling discover is that the suspicion of profit motive and commerce runs at least as deep on the conservative side of the isle. It’s expressed differently of course, but there none the less. If I’m not careful I’m going to end up in Mogadishu or Karachi.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 3, 05:03 PM · #
Kristoffer V. Sargent = Sargent = JA
Yeah. Wish I had a really cool reason for it, but every time I typed out this sentence it sounded dreadfully solipsistic. Which I am! Basically I was trying out personalities until I felt I was ready to own one.
Re: profit motive. No frickin’ kidding. That plus sordid credentialism — academic philosophy’s terrible, terminal disease — is what drove me away from the university. Now I’m working as a lawyer to save enough to, in your phrase, merge my avocation and vocation into one juicy slice of life.
When I’m done, my product will carry the wild stench of the entrepreneur. It’ll be right up your alley, come to think of it: cinematic essays.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 3, 10:56 PM · #
“That plus sordid credentialism — academic philosophy’s terrible, terminal disease — is what drove me away from the university.”
I’m making my academic debut this September at NYU, with hoped for excursions to UCLA and USC and maybe a few other Hallowed Halls. Not only does Tony Comstock not have any credentials, he doesn’t even have a birth certificate. One juicy slice indeed!
RE: Cinematic Essays
Pay no attention to Michael Mann. 35mm is the way to go.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 4, 12:18 AM · #
Post- when used as a prefix it means to come after
Modern- of or pertaining to present and recent time; not ancient or remote
So then Post-Modern is essentially an oxymoron with no meaning, or is it simply a fancy word for the future?
If it is referring to the future then shouldn’t the debate be about what ought to make up the modern conservative, and how to regain the trust and acceptance of the American people not about some silly oxymoron (let the liberals do that).
— Thomas Hamilton · Jul 4, 12:40 AM · #
re: 35mm
Speaking of, I want to be able to film at night using light from a campfire or candles. My benchmark is obviously Alcott’s work in Barry Lyndon, which means I need a huge 50mm, which costs a fortune, or HD digital. Of course, I can’t afford the huge NASA lenses, and I don’t want to have my actors’ movement restricted, which means I’m looking at Mann and Fincher and Tarantino-wannabe cameras. Thomson Viper Filmstream etc.
Chiaroscuro is my deep theme, and I need to have it infect every frame. HD Digital seems to be my best bet. Or am I wrong about that?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 4, 06:31 AM · #
“Chiaroscuro is my deep theme, and I need to have it infect every frame. HD Digital seems to be my best bet. Or am I wrong about that?”
The biggest advantage film has over video (whatever flavor of HD) is latitude. Film can hold detail further into shadows and (especially) further into highlights. This is why even 8mm film has a certain look that even the Aychest HD can’t match.
It also means you can have a much smaller production foot-print shooting film that you can shooting HD. Mot of the lighting effort shooting video (HD or whatever) is devoted to controlling contrast — coming up with ways to pump light into the shadows and control highlights. If you have a big scene this means lots and lots of lights and/or scrims.
You also end up doing tricks to fool the eye into thinking there’s more contrast in a scene than there really is. Both Marie and Jack and Xana and Dax, which were shot on handicams have subtle amounts of CTB added to the low side, and CTO to the hot side, but more importantly, the lighting in both love scenes are compressed into about 3.5 stops. It’s that compression (or alternately the way is looks if you don’t compress your lightign scheme) that gives video its distinctive “videoy” look.
Personally, I think HD looks especially shitty in the blacks. Look at the skies night scenes in Collateral — all kinds of weird beige/orange noise instead of clean black.
OTOH, film lets you shoot 10 stops or more and still hold both shadow and highlight detail. If Chiaroscuro is your deep theme, you can see why working with a medium that gives you maximum latitiude might be a better choice.
There are other issues with HD; back-focus being a biggie. Controlling depth of field being another. Accounting for these things costs money that can easily eat up the saving on filmstock.
Here’s the other thing. You can rent a filmmo for $100/day and start shooting short ends. Or go on eBay and buy a 35mm camera for a couple K and shoot short ends, or even a K3 for $150 and shoot 16mm daylight spools. For $1000-$10,000 you can do a lot of experimenting using the same filmstock that’s being used to shoot real movies. Maybe you won’t teach yourself to be a DP (or maybe you will) but you’ll have real first hand knowledge of how the medium works, and have some real information for what you’re going to need to pull together in terms of talent and equipment to make what you want to make.
Now price out taking a Viper or other HD out for a day. Then add in the grip truck and all the other shit you’ll need. It’s no bargain. You’ll be out a lot of cash and you won’t know jack shit.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 4, 08:33 AM · #
Also, going by what was done in Barry Linden is sort like going by what people were doing on computers 30 years ago. An f.07 lens is still a specialty item, but Zeiss T1.3s are common place. Hell, the zoom on the K3 is 1.9. That’s 1/4th and 1/4 the light gathering ability of an 0.7, but they didn’t have 500 ASA filmstock back then either.
A few years ago we were in a mud-hut school room with way to get the shot I wanted except with a Pelang 8mm, an f3.5 lens. There was no light, save what trickled in from the small door. According to the meter there wasn’t enough light to shoot; we’re 3 or 4 stops under. But what the hell, we’re never going to be here again, might as well run a few feet through the camera and see what comes out the other end.
A month later we’re in telecine. The colorist fiddles with a couple of knobs and the thinnest negative I’ve ever produced ends up looking like National Geographic. He’s pulling out of the details I didn’t remember seeing with my naked eye are evident in the image.
Alternately, we’re shooting very black Africans at high noon, going through a line in the shade of a patio and then emerging into full sunlit courtyard with a white sand floor. It’s like f5.6 in the deep shade of the patio and f22 in the sun over the sand.
There’s too much contrast is simple no way we can hold skin, eyes and teeth as our subject move from the shadows to bright light. Can’t be done. But again, what the hell, we’ll never be here again, so split it at f11 and lets see what we get.
A month later we’re in telecine and we’ve got good skin tone, holding teeth and eyes and the bright colors of the batigued fabric, an that’s just the one light. Once the colorist does a little adjustment between the two extremes, it looks like a feature film.
Or you can do it Micheal Mann style. HD and ten trucks and the shot’s out of focus half the time.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 4, 09:17 AM · #
Freddie: I think this “box of the mind” you are pushing is so pre late Wittgenstein, J. L. Austen, or Quine, that is can hardly qualify as postmodern. The thing-in-itself versus logical (or social) construction opposition is really just old style empiricism. But I know what you are getting at, just questioning you way of putting it. I think you would do better to look to James, Dewey, Quine, and Tarski for postmodern sources (a la Rorty) than push this empiricist line.
— Jack · Jul 4, 08:06 PM · #