Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

alternatives for truth or truth-seeking in previous chapters. The reason is that post-modernism is perhaps best described as a means of telling a story or interpreting truth rather than a search for truth in its own right. Post-modernism, roughly speaking, suggests all narratives have an equally valid claim to truth — or, it might be said — all narratives are equally plausible and by the same token potentially all moral and aesthetic standards as well. But oddly enough, there is also a rejection of things that suggest some kind of value — at odds with an apparent acceptance of all values that one might assume should be the post-modern stance. It could be said that post-modernism suggests that there has been an attempt to fathom the mysteries thrown up by truth, beauty and goodness and this is seen to have failed.

Post-modernism also seems to pay lip service to a transcendent truth of science and mathematics and yet at the same time argues for relativity in all other aspects of truth. The problem with post-modernism (similar to pragmatism above) is that it covertly relies on an objective truth to make it work. In other words, post-modernism must be literally true in order for all narratives to be accepted as equally valid. But then this makes post-modernism exempt from its own rule — it is claiming a higher standard of truth. So there is inevitably some contradiction in the post-modern stance. Not all post-modernists would accept this however. They might be quite happy, for instance, to say that statements of post-modernism are themselves only contingent.

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