Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 12:57:13 -0700
Sender: pen-l@ecst.csuchico.edu
From: FAC_BROSSER@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU
Subject: postmodernism & idealism
 
6 points, 36 lines:
     I really shouldn't get into this one, but, hey
everybody else has.
     1)  Anybody who reads "Nietsche Contra Wagner" will
know the proper relation between the former, Wagnerian
opera and Hitler.
     2)  Jesuits did not and do not interpret or give a
d--- about scripture.  They obey the Pope and follow his
party line.  It is fundamentalist Protestants, among
Christians, who worry about scripture.
     3)  I have not read Derrida's latest, but it is pretty
obvious to me that the method of, as Steve Cullenberg put it,
analyzing contradictions in hierarchical structures and then
blowing them apart certainly has Hegelian, if not Marxist, roots.
I have always been struck by the continuity in French political
philosophy/sociology/anthropology/psychology from (at least)
Marcel Mauss forward through Levi-Strauss to the post-structuralist/
pomos.  And yes, it is all very very idealistic.  This may all
go back to Descartes (before 'de horse':-)) ,in fact.
     4)  Although Marx rejected idealism (I would contest that
he was the first to "put ideology in its place," try Aristotle),
there certainly have been idealist Marxist movements, especially
in the late nineteenth century.  One can "rule them out," as
insufficiently Marxist, but then that is indeed the "totalitarianism"
that so many object to.
     5)  In general I like the position put forward by Peter Dorman
on all this (Peter, do you forgive me for giving you such a hard time
over AS-AD?).  Pomo carried to extremes becomes nihilism, but pomo
has served a useful purpose in teaching us how to deconstruct.
     6)  I further note that pomo nihilism begins to look a lot like
neo-existentialism ("Everything is meaningless, I shall die alone.
Should I kill May myself?  be I'll create my own meaning!")  that is
now fashionable with "generation bof" in France (their "Generation X")
signaled by the publication of Camus' new (old) novel.  Derrida would
deride Sartre, but they are blood brothers (or ideal brothers, despite
Sartre's "existence before essence" reversed before the US Congress
by Vaclav Havel).  Whew!
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University