Jordan Peterson understands postmodernism perfectly well (as far as that is possible)

[Anonymous No.10663629]

I've been seeing so many people complain about Dr. Peterson's understanding of postmodern doctrine. I recently took a college class on postmodern philosophy and came to realize that very few people actually understand the philosophy.

I'm not going to write up a comprehensive history of philosophy starting from Hegel and Kant, or delve into the intricacies of individual contemporary postmodern thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, et al., since this is not an intellectual exercise. Instead, I'm going to contrast the most important beliefs of enlightenment and postmodern philosophy, since postmodernism is a direct reaction to the former.

Enlightenment

Knowledge: Objective knowledge is possible.
Truth: Universal truths exist independent of individual minds/societies.
Reason: Reason is used to gain/justify knowledge of the world.
Goal: Progress is made by thinking rationally in relation to objective knowledge.

Postmodernism

Skepticism: It's impossible to have objective knowledge (e.g. our senses are easily fooled).
Relativism: No absolute truths. They (the truths) are only social constructs based on gender, race, etc. created for the purposes of power. Language is a big source of oppression. (Structuralist beliefs are a bit more complicated.)
Rejection of grand narratives/theories/ideologies: Since postmodernists are relativists, they are opposed to single all-encompassing narratives. (This is humorous since all postmodernists are skewed to particular ideologies but are opposed to religion.)
Denial of reason/logocentrism: Reason is used by the powerful to oppress the weak. Emotions/experiences of the oppressed are more valid and grounded in reality than logocentrism.
Goal: Progress is made by fighting oppression through the exposure of meta-narratives that are used by the powerful to oppress the weak. (Postmodernists love the word hegemony.)

[Anonymous No.10663630]

Conclusion

Many people I have encountered online disagree with Dr. Peterson because they don't think that postmodernism is itself a coherent movement (which is true in one sense at least). This is mostly due to postmodernism influencing the thought processes of so many different fields: Literature, architecture, history, feminism, economics, etc. Many think that they are refuting Peterson's understanding of postmodernism by saying "That's not true with regard to postmodern literature, etc." or "X postmodern philosopher didn't think Y so postmodernism does not include Y."

There's also a tendency to conflate nihilism with postmodernism since it rejects grand narratives. So when Peterson says "Postmodernists believe Y" they counteract this by saying "Postmodernists don't believe in anything." But postmodernism is more a symptom of nihilism if anything and is fueled by ingrained nihilism.

The driving force behind many postmodern attacks on Peterson is irony because postmodernism is drenched in the stuff. "Why even take this old white guy seriously? He's just part of the oppressive patriarchy." Most of the hit pieces I have read on him consist wholly of unsubstantial, ironic mocking.

Finally, most people would never consider themselves "postmodern" even though they hold the beliefs of postmodernism in their minds. When they hear Peterson talking about postmodernists, they think he is attacking a phantasm, which in turn makes it easy for him to be criticized. It's really a fish in a fishbowl situation.

What's my opinion on postmodernism? To borrow a phrase from David Foster Wallace: It's all just "postclever metaformal hooey."


TL;DR: Postmodernism is a direct reaction to enlightenment philosophy. There is no objective reality. Everything is a social construct mediated through language. Anti-grand narratives. Overthrow the oppressors.

Bonus

This random postmodern paper generator is proof that postmodern academic work is unintelligible. http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/

Also check out the book Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. It's hilariously frightening what they were able to pull off.

If you want to learn more about postmodernism, pick up some of the philosopher's books. But I have to warn you, it's almost all nearly impossible to read without reference guides. I would have never known what postmodernism is on my own without taking a class on it desu.

[Anonymous No.10663634]

I've made similar threads before. None of the anti peterson posters can defend their position.

[Anonymous No.10663641]

>>10663629
>Postmodernists are opposed to religion
Wrong.

[Anonymous No.10663660]

>STOP READING GRAVITY'S RAINBOW

[Anonymous No.10663665]

>German Idealism is PostModernism

[Anonymous No.10663674]

>>10663665
shhhhh! don't tell him

[Anonymous No.10663677]

Kant was a postmodernist.
Descartes was a postmodernist.

[Anonymous No.10663687]

>>10663629
>are opposed to religion
That's where you're wrong, kiddo

[Anonymous No.10663697]

>>10663677
Plato was a PostModernist

[Anonymous No.10663704]

>>10663677
You Kant prove that.
>Descartes your opinion

[Anonymous No.10663712]

>>10663629
>Enlightenment
>Objective knowledge is possible.

>mfw

[Anonymous No.10664066]

>>10663629
You realize all science since Newton is postmodern under your definition with the exception of leaving out politics and talk of power. Many other anons have also noticed this, pointing out that Plato, Descartes, and Kant are all postmodernists under your defintion

No one believes in a mechanical world anymore, if thats what you mean by objective truth.

You are simplifying doubt, certainty, knowledge, and truth, far too much. I agree that a lot of bad philosophy and thinking occurred between roughly the 1920's to now, and I also have a disdain for German Idealism, but you arent making sense.

Like Jordan Peterson said, you need to be precise with your language.

[Anonymous No.10664089]

>>10663629
by this criteria literally descartes is a postmodernist lol. back to your pram sweetie

[Anonymous No.10664112]

MY DADDY IS NOT WRONG, RIGHT? MY DADDY IS STILL STRONG, RIGHT?

[Anonymous No.10664122]

DERRIDA LITERALLY WROTE ABOUT AND DEFENDED JUSTICE AS "THE UNDENIABLE"

>I'm not going to write up a comprehensive history of philosophy starting from Hegel and Kant, or delve into the intricacies of individual contemporary postmodern thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, et al.,

because you haven't fucking read them

you literally wrote a post attempting to defend peterson's interpretation of works that you haven't even read. how fucking stupid can you be.

this is what peterson does to people: make them feel confident enough to argue shit they have absolutely fucking no idea about whatsoever. you've never read lyotard, you've never read baudrillard, you've never read kant, you've never read hegel, you've never read derrida, you've never read foucault, you've never read agamben, you've never read benjamin, you've never read gadamer, deleuze, you've never read anything you dumb piece of shit. get the fuck off of the internet and open a book you dumb shit. you really don't think any of those fucking people have thought about the enlightenment?

lyotard: has a book on kant
derrida: has a book on kant
benjamin: has a fucking book on kant
gadamer: has a fucking book on the enlightenment
deleuze: has a fucking book on kant
foucault: WROTE ON on kant

you literally cited sokal you fucking hack

[Anonymous No.10664140]

>>10664122
Not OP. Do you know which book speaks about how Fashionable Nonsense is actually postmodern? I found it once on the internet, but can't remember what it's called.

[Anonymous No.10664147]

peterson got demolished by this dude and you all ignore it

[Anonymous No.10664245]

>>10664147
wot? link, please

[Anonymous No.10664298]

>>10664140
Ooh I'd be interested in this too

[Anonymous No.10664322]

>>10663629
Postmodernism is so bunk. Do something new already

[Anonymous No.10664348]

>>10664298
Book is called "After Poststructuralism: Reading, Stories and Theory"

[Anonymous No.10664366]

>>10664298
Book is called "After Poststructuralism: Reading, Stories and Theory"

[Anonymous No.10664369]

>>10664322
Post postmodernism

[Anonymous No.10664446]

>>10664122
>lyotard

lmao

[Anonymous No.10664469]

>postmodern doctrine
your postmodernism definitions are all fucked. start off ok with skepticism but then go full retard. if you take out the political biases you've embedded into the positions (and weird shit out of thin air like "emotions of oppressed are more valid" - how does that fit with the rest of this shit at all) then there's nothing particularly exceptionable about them. also postmodernism is, to put it simply, skeptical of "progress" which is a narratological view of history.

[Anonymous No.10664520]

>>10664469
>postmodernism is, to put it simply, skeptical of "progress" which is a narratological view of history

this is a sweeping generalization and also incorrect. sartre for example rejects progress because he rejects the moral absolutism that would underpin the very concept of progress. not to mention there are plenty of 'postmodern' authors that very ardently defend the notion of progress like jean-luc nancy

[Anonymous No.10664580]

>>10663629
That's one thing, but you (and the brainwashed reactionaries) tend to ignore the fact that we can only operate on absolutes.
For example, in your description you cleverly put 'power' and 'oppression' as absolute. This is, in fact, what political goons do. They don't have two philosophical cells in their bodies. Of course, this also means that they worship their image of satan. Be it 'white man', 'jew', 'representative of the patriarchy' - they are the only people responsible for any events. Now of course, the truth is that both the 'white man' and 'the jew' are in fact, responsible for their actions and play a part in the wild mechanisms of culture - but so do 'victims'.

[Anonymous No.10664588]

Post modernism is the disbelief in grand unifying narratives.

That disbelief in grand unifying narratives has various implications in different practices. For example, in music and architecture, it means sampling and mashing lots of different styles together. Bc there's no one teleological narrative about stylistic progress anymore!

Truth-capital-T could be another of those grand unifying narratives

[Anonymous No.10664604]

>>10663660
lots of post-modern fiction on his reading list:
https://jordanbpeterson.com/2017/10/great-books/

[Anonymous No.10664676]

>>10664604
Yep and he loves the first and most influential post-modernist philosopher ever in Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.10664689]

>>10663634
That's because the alt-right likes him so he's a Nazi. AND NAZIS GET PUNCHED.

[Anonymous No.10664697]

>>10663665
The two are not unrelated but arguably someone like Nietzsche would be more relevant. Post modernism is a result of the death of god, rather than some desire to examine reality.

[Anonymous No.10664711]

>>10664676
>Nietzsche
>post-modern
>while predating WW1 let alone modernity
Anon, I...

[Anonymous No.10664718]

>>10664711
>Nietzsche
>predating modernity

[Anonymous No.10664734]

You didn't take a class. You're so goddamn off base it's hilarious.
You're namedropping and giving an analysis that's lower than Sparknotes-tier.
You do realize your definition of postmodernism shares most, if not all to a degree, of the characteristics of existential philosophy?
You haven't read any of the names you've dropped.
You contradict your Peterson fanaticism by including this DFW "postclever metaformal hooey." If it's all just metaformal crap, then why is Peterson basing so much of his philosophy of life upon it? How is it that it's actually destroying western civilization?
How is taking a moral panic, which have happened before, very regularly, unfolding exactly as they did with this new SJW-craze, and attaching a broad cultural monolith to describe the ways society is affected by technological growth?

[Anonymous No.10664739]

>>10663629
>>10663630
>https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/7vy9h4/jordan_peterson_understands_postmodernism/

[Anonymous No.10664746]

>>10664739
>OP is getting BTFO even by the peterson subreddit

[Anonymous No.10664765]

>>10664366
>All in all, when a parody is taken seriously and the serious work reads like a parody, the situation is highly postmodern.
Does this make The Prince postmodern?

[Anonymous No.10664782]

>>10664718
>Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.[2][3]

[Anonymous No.10664812]

>>10664782
>late 19th
hmm... also modernism and modernity are not exact correlates.

[Anonymous No.10664817]

>>10664711
You're so off base desu, would have been more accurate to say first continental philosopher but it was a jab towards peterson who confuses the two

[Anonymous No.10664821]

>>10664739
Jesus christ the state of this board

[Anonymous No.10664846]

>>10664739
sorry... i don't google retarded shit when I see retarded shit.

OP got us! Trolled!

[Anonymous No.10664894]

>>10664782
>excerpt mentions time nietzsche lived/wrote
>>doesnt matter bc anon thinks modernity and modernism are synonymous
truly pathetic how stupid and ignorant you are

[Anonymous No.10664980]

>>10663704
Underrated

[Anonymous No.10665004]

>>10663704
I shouldn't have laughed at that.

[Anonymous No.10665014]

>>10664739
>all these fucking pseuds stroking one another off while doing their best to posture and paraphrase wikipedia for upboats
holy fucking hell

why is it ok to have a thread where we are literally posting from reddit

the state of /lit/ these days, jesus

[Anonymous No.10665060]

>>10664697
>>10664676
>Yep and he loves the first and most influential post-modernist philosopher ever in Nietzsche
Why do people who have clearly never read or at least understood Nietzsche feel the need to invoke his name? Nietzsche would have nothing but overwhelming disgust for post-modernists, he literally warns against them 100 years before they came to exist.
>the strong must be protected from the weak

OP hits a few points on post modernism, but certainly he misses some as well. There's a chronology to it, it's evolved since the 60s, and really who could ever fully define a hydra, or even want to, considering the type of people who it concerns.

[Anonymous No.10665119]

>>10663629
> skepticism is a product of the postmodern era

begone forever

[Anonymous No.10665131]

>>10665060
partisan dilletante
>the strong must be protected from the weak
whats the relevance of this paraphrasing to postmodernism

[Anonymous No.10665134]

>I understand pomo because I took a college class

No wonder your a Beterman fanboy, brainlet

[Anonymous No.10665149]

I'm a philosophy PhD and Peterson is right about everything. There it's settled then. Finally.

[Anonymous No.10665152]

>>10665060
I'm the one who needs to read Nietzsche?! You fucking people I swear to god. Nietzsche undertook the first major effort of deconstruction (geneology) and transvaluation of morals, and also interpreted social dynamics through power. He was incredibly influential on Foucault and Derrida for reasons that should be fucking obvious if you understood either

[Anonymous No.10665170]

>>10663629
eat a dick frog fucker

[Anonymous No.10665195]

>ITT: OP is three weeks into his Philosophy 101 unit and he thinks he has solved postmodernism.

[Anonymous No.10665287]

>>10665131
>whats the relevance of this paraphrasing to postmodernism
Ugh. Really? Ok...Ok...

Ressentiment fueled Marxists failures co-opted the idea of post modernism in the 60s after witnessing the West flourish rather than fail while the USSR was recognized for the atrocity it was. Realizing their own tenets untenable, they went on to develop the idea of subjectivity and relativism to attack the dominant narratives, if you couldn't have equality of capital, you would at least have equality of ideas. This was the new Marxist frontier, they couldn't construct something greater than the West, so they sought to deconstruct the West. This line of thinking evolved heavily over time in academia where it amassed dominance, people grew up with this sort of thinking and began to demand "more", resulting in today's idea that not only are classic western authors and ideas built upon exploitation and other narratives require representation, the western narrative, the white male narrative, in fact owes a sort of debt for that exploitation, that equality isn't enough, it needs to be silenced to better allow other groups and ideas. This is the weak, encroaching upon the strong, very much in line with what Nietzche describes. I can't believe I have to explain this in a discussion about Nietzsche and post modernism, ressentiment literally built the post modern school as we know it.

>>10665152
Look dumbass, the fact that post-modernists think Nietzsche was one of them and borrow from his style and his idea of (dis)guises calling it deconstruction doesn't fucking make it so. He is deeply antithetical to basically all of their conclusions. Foucault and Derrida are obscurantist con-men, their claiming Nietzsche is a better discredit than anything else.

[Anonymous No.10665296]

>>10665195
>implying there is something left to solve
Alan Sokal completely dismantled it in the fucking 90s dude.

[Anonymous No.10665306]

>>10663704
Nice dude

[Anonymous No.10665312]

>peterson

[Anonymous No.10665317]

>>10665312
>soyboys
>liking peterson
god I hate neo marxists

>hahaha it doesn't care if it's remotely true the accusation alone is hurtful hahaha I do this for freeeeeeeeee

[Anonymous No.10665330]

>>10665317
>soyboy denies he's a soyboy for some reason

most metal fags i know would be soyboys desu

[Anonymous No.10665337]

>>10665287
Confusing a lot of intellectual developments - understandably - but in a way that compromises your ability to view them as a whole and critique them.
I think it is a mistake to view Marxism and Marxist thought as the genesis of postmodernism. Rather, Marxism, springing from Enlightenment and modernist philosophy, sustained by it, develops alongside it. It is true that Marx's predictions that the workers in the industrialised West would be receptive to Communism proved false, and that radical intellectuals became disillusioned with the Communist project. But this is one current in the whole of Western thought among many, not the decisive one. In the 20th century we see people become disillusioned with both nationalism and internationalism following the first world war, that sort of shit, a whole host of back-and-forth intellectual developments in response to and alongside historical events. The structuralist debate in France. The failure of liberal democracy. The growing realisation (that had begun ever since the French Revolution, and 1848 and so on) that the aim of human perfectability in accordance with "rationality" and state control could not make heaven on Earth etc. Nazism, world war as a result of this and industrialisation, etc. Mass communication, information, special relativity, quantum physics.
Postmodernism is not fun for Marxists...

Nietzsche was terrifyingly prescient. Perhaps Germany in the latter half of 19th century Europe could be considered the "eye of the storm", giving rise to a flurry of stunningly insightful philosophers and artists.

stop posting anime and (((scott pilgrim))) pics

[Anonymous No.10665351]

>>10665312
I don't get why this photo keeps getting posted when it gets shut down every single time it's posted here.
An entire generation of boys was raised in a feminised society, many are the children of single mothers. Most didn't have a single male teacher until the age of 13, and even upon entering secondary school, the ratio of male to female, still favoured females.
With an epidemic of participation awards and cultivation of feelings rather than skills, boys have grown up without strong male role models and a lack of discipline from an authority figure which is be feared and admired in equal parts.

[Anonymous No.10665354]

>>10664147
bullshit

[Anonymous No.10665357]

>>10665317
>>10665351
>I don't have a daddy pls be patient :(

[Anonymous No.10665359]

>>10665337
>Postmodernism is not fun for Marxists...
It is in so far as it hurts the West/capitalists too, no-one claimed more than that. Marxists are sore losers, that's about it.

[Anonymous No.10665361]

>>10665351
yeah seriously, every generation since ww2 have been raised as huge posies.

Have you by chance read that mark manson book, models?

[Anonymous No.10665363]

The midwit zone is real holy shit

[Anonymous No.10665374]

>>10665337
>I think it is a mistake to view Marxism and Marxist thought as the genesis of postmodernism.
and who suggested that? no-ones sincerely a communist anymore but the collateral damage is ever present in leftist thought

this whole thread is trying to explain what Peterson means when he says "bloody post modernists" which I think it's done a decent job of

[Anonymous No.10665397]

>>10665374
>no-ones sincerely a communist anymore
says you

[Anonymous No.10665418]

>>10665351
So basically agreed with the comic? Okay

[Anonymous No.10665426]

>>10665418
No, because there are males who are against said masculinity represented by Peterson, and that's what a soyboy is. It doesn't make any sense on any level.

[Anonymous No.10665440]

>>10665374
I think today's neo-Marxists have appropriated the postmodern memes of social constructs, hegemony, and oppression without even realizing it's postmodernism after being taught these terms by their bourgeois professors. Hence, the unholy, unthinkable, and impossible fusion of Marxism and Postmodernism.

[Anonymous No.10665442]

>>10665426
>It doesn't make any sense on any level.
lol it happened to you didn't it
you screamed at mommy when she asked you to throw out the trash but when kermit said "clean your room bucko" you started working that broom didn't you

[Anonymous No.10665451]

>>10665440
It's purely a question of convenience, you can be as Marxist as you want despite all the evidence, because what is evidence anyway?
https://youtu.be/WwTfHv5dpPw
Postmodernism is such a fucking blight on intellectualism, not because of something fundamentally wrong with t, but because of how it's been understood and propagated within institutions of learning by leftists who occupy them.

It's truly bizarre that Marxists of all people appeal to this shit when Marxism is basically a religion all its own.

[Anonymous No.10665455]

>>10665442
>soyboys
>liking peterson
god I hate neo marxists

>hahaha it doesn't care if it's remotely true the accusation alone is hurtful hahaha I do this for freeeeeeeeee

[Anonymous No.10665457]

>marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists marxists

[Anonymous No.10665464]

>>10665455
your own assertions are empty claims without any proof, retard, I'm just doing as you've done

[Anonymous No.10665478]

>>10665464
nou

[Anonymous No.10665511]

>>10663629
I’d say you missed the single biggest difference, arguably the one from which all the others derive, which is the view of the self.

The enlightenment view is the Cogito, the unified, self-transparent, thinking thing, capable of reason, knowledge and the attainment of truth.

The postmodern self is fragmented, decentred, illusory etc, things like commodity fetishism (Marx), Christian resentment (Nietzsche), and the Unconscious (Freud) all act as forces which drive our behaviour and understanding of the world, yet are not transparent to our conscious mind. Whatever it is that thinks is structured not aprori, but as a result of contact with the world.


Also there is a big difference with the view of language. For the enlightenment language is a straightforward tool with which we represent things in the world, and upon which we can apply reason. Actually that view is only really true for the rationalists.


After the modernist period both continental and English thought comes to recognize that there is nothing transparent about how language works to represent concepts, and that language itself needs to be interrogated if we are to better understand our basic philosophical problem. You are reading 10 steps ahead to political implications, things that actually wouldn’t be advocated for by the major French theorists we are referring to.


For Lacan, for example, language isn’t oppressive per se, but it is traumatic. Language is an alien thing that is forced on to us from others, and which comes to symbolically structure our whole understanding of the world. This doesn’t mean we can get ‘outside language’, there really isn’t any meaninful outside for Lacan, instead coming to reconcile that alienated lack is what Psychoanalysis is for.

The rejection in the power of pure reason has nothing to do with it being ‘inherently oppressive’, I dare you to actually cite a text on that claim, it’s that our minds themselves are not self-transparent and we do not actually represent the world in our linguistic concepts. Thus, what we can do with pure reason is limited by this.

And in postmodernism there is no “goal”, the very notion of a goal, or telos is the sort of thing that is rejected when we reject metanarratives. Postmoderns don’t believe in the concept of progress, and anybody that does is stepping significantly outside postmodernism.

[Anonymous No.10665543]

>>10663629
This is pretty unnecessary. Post modernism can be summed up far easier: it's a lack of understanding of science. Everything about the natural world refutes it.

[Anonymous No.10665550]

>>10665511
Good post.

[Anonymous No.10665691]

i propose that we ban americans from using the term 'marxism' and from making any reference no matter how indirect to the man, his writings or what they inspired

[Anonymous No.10665753]

>>10663629
>>10663629
while you and Peterson are right in pointing out the flaws in what you call "post-modernism," I think you're both confusing it with Critical Racial Theory, Queer Theory and SJW-tier pseudo theory in general. I think they are the modernists in that they do have a metanarrative they are pushing and they heavily rely on structural analysis (which they do very little of in actuality, they just cite structures of power as matter of fact). I simply don't understand how skepticism of objective knowledge and metanarratives is a bad thing, and how the denial of reason and retarded shit like "Progress is made by fighting oppression through the exposure of meta-narratives that are used by the powerful to oppress the weak" follows from that. Post-modernism in that sense is the ultimate radical centrist approach. However(!), if you are you looking at post-modernism in the sense of a cultural epoch and were to argue that SJW leftism and its academic concurrents are a product of that epoch I would agree with you.

[Anonymous No.10665825]

>>10665363
>yfw half the people are dumber than that

[Anonymous No.10665845]

>>10663629
Yeah, but I don't like how postmodernism makes me feel, so how can it be real?

[Anonymous No.10665871]

What a shit show. Go away reddit.

[Anonymous No.10665880]

>>10665287
>Ressentiment fueled Marxists failures co-opted the idea of post modernism in the 60s after witnessing the West flourish rather than fail while the USSR was recognized for the atrocity it was. Realizing their own tenets untenable, they went on to develop the idea of subjectivity and relativism to attack the dominant narratives, if you couldn't have equality of capital, you would at least have equality of ideas. This was the new Marxist frontier, they couldn't construct something greater than the West, so they sought to deconstruct the West. This line of thinking evolved heavily over time in academia where it amassed dominance, people grew up with this sort of thinking and began to demand "more", resulting in today's idea that not only are classic western authors and ideas built upon exploitation and other narratives require representation, the western narrative, the white male narrative, in fact owes a sort of debt for that exploitation, that equality isn't enough, it needs to be silenced to better allow other groups and ideas. This is the weak, encroaching upon the strong, very much in line with what Nietzche describes. I can't believe I have to explain this in a discussion about Nietzsche and post modernism, ressentiment literally built the post modern school as we know it.

You literally got your entire idea of what postmodernism is from that Stephen Hicks book that Peterson shills all the time and related nonsense. This is a narrative which you have had fed to you by people you idolize and not one which you have at all researched or conceived of yourself. Stop being a mouthpiece for other people's ideas.

[Anonymous No.10665882]

>>10665287
>He is deeply antithetical to basically all of their conclusions.

Can you talk for a a bit about their conclusions, and refer to when and where they argued for said conclusions? Or do you just not have a clue what you're talking about?

[Anonymous No.10665891]

>>10665511
Nice try, but don't even bother. The Peterson posters won't even begin to understand the essential differences you have just pointed out. I don't think they are capable of engaging in serious philosophical discussion. They argue ideologically and seek attention so they never reflect their own premises. Epistemology is a foreign word to them.

[Anonymous No.10665900]

>>10665511
>>10665543

the contrast in quality, intellect, and education of these two posts is telling

[Anonymous No.10665913]

I think the Postmodernists are on the right track on recognizing the illusions and the false nature of reality, and their explanations are the closest we have to a Phenomenology of Maya, however. They flat out reject the Logos, and lack a transcendent metaphysic. If they accepted the transcendent, we would have had a spiritual rejuvenation in the West.

[Anonymous No.10665933]

>>10665900
I'm just being efficient, those who understand understand. Those who don't can't be convinced, they are ideologues. I'm not here to convince anyone.

[Anonymous No.10665944]

>>10665933
>I am here not to discuss but to virtue signal

[Anonymous No.10666004]

>>10664765
All philosophy is postmodern. Everyone is both Socrates and a sophist.

[Anonymous No.10666161]

>>10665511
Underrated. I don't understand postmodernism haven't had read anything of it, but it seems to me it is almost by definition non-redpillable in that you can't construct a representative formula describing it without either breaking its rules or dumbing it down. Do you think post-modernism can have a broader and justifiable presence in the society if shaken off of its popular image? Is po-mo just an invitation to consider things in a multifaceted manner while being aware of your toolset's limitations, primarily propensity to bias. If we accept this, nothing stops someone else coming and refuting it through ridicule as inapplicable in practical terms thus breaking the one rule you shouldn't. Humanity is too brainlet en masse for much straighter things than postmodernism.

[Anonymous No.10666168]

>>10665351
people who complain about crap like this don't seem to understand how completely disposable males have been through the course of human history
no one has ever cared about men being feminized if they're just going to get their legs blown off by an artillery shell at the age of 18.
feminized men are easier to control, and you should be happy that you recognize that you aren't one (well if you aren't one, but you're on /lit/ so you're probably more soy than the gay buzzfeed bloggers)

[Anonymous No.10666173]

>>10665753
This here describes the mistake that many even on this board are making in linking neo-Marxism with leftism, postmodernism, and whatever else they fucking happen to dislike.

[Anonymous No.10666199]

>>10665933
Liked your previous post, but this is fedora-tier.

[Anonymous No.10666219]

>>10664739
>The absolute state of /lit/

[Anonymous No.10666227]

>>10665287
>Marxists were fueled by ressentiment in 60s
Holy shit americans are fucking brainwanshed lmao

[Anonymous No.10666233]

>>10665317
really makes one ponder

[Anonymous No.10666386]

>>10664739

[Anonymous No.10666413]

>>10663634
Of course they can. Peterson is a man with simple ideas, he doesn't write very convincing arguments. He's a sophist.

He will be remembered as an articulate self-help guru. Nothing really wrong with that either.

[Anonymous No.10666436]

>>10666413
not an argument though

[Anonymous No.10666445]

>>10665312
Surprise, children need fathers.

[Anonymous No.10666458]

>>10665511
So in other words, postmodernism is essentially metaphysical, ethical and cognitive nihilism.

[Anonymous No.10666478]

>>10666458
skepticism is not nihilism

[Anonymous No.10666506]

>>10663704
I hope you drown in your own blood

[Anonymous No.10666512]

>>10666478
It is if you refuse to accept any narrative because you are skeptical. Then it becomes indistinguishable from nihilism.

[Anonymous No.10666538]

FFS KIDS Y CANT EVEN UNDERSTAND DECONSTRUCTION AND YOU THINK YOUR WHORES UNDERSTAND POSTMODERNISM
NO THE NARRATIVES AND INTEPRETANTION YOU HAVE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND POSTMODERNISM ARE JUST THE MOST OBVIOUS AS FOR JORDAN PERSON GET WHATEVER HE WANTS TO PREACH ABOUT HIS HIDDEN JESUS HOWEVER HE STRUCTURES IT<AS HE MAKES IT INTO THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLSHIT WHICH RATHER MEANS HE IS AWARE OF HOW PEOPLE WILL SHOW TO PEOPLE>
WHAT EXIST OUTSIDE OF THE TEXT IS THE THING POSTMODERNISM CARES FOR
VIEWS OF HISTORY AND LITERATURE AND THIS BULLSHIT VIEWS ARE MERELY A SELLOUT OUT NORMIE LINGUISTIC

[Anonymous No.10666560]

>>10665511

>And in postmodernism there is no “goal”, the very notion of a goal, or telos is the sort of thing that is rejected when we reject metanarratives. Postmoderns don’t believe in the concept of progress, and anybody that does is stepping significantly outside postmodernism.

This seems to be at odds with the fact that many major postmodernist thinkers were involved with far left movements and groups.

[Anonymous No.10666581]

>>10666560
Which simply makes people hypocrites and doesn't say much about the ideas themselves.

[Anonymous No.10666758]

>>10666560
like

[Anonymous No.10666763]

>>10666560
"Marxism exists in continental thought as a fish in a barrel"
"We can never escape power"
"I'm a classic liberal"
t. Foucault

[Anonymous No.10666882]

Postmodernism = the continuation of modernism, the nihilistic dialectical endeavor to reform society by challenging language and the faculty of meaning. It's an abortion of the speculative mind that did not read enough of its predecessors to understand why we think the way we do, and why we ought to be aware of that, and rather simply opts to discard it all.

[Anonymous No.10666909]

>>10663629
>postmodernism is a direct reaction to the enlightenment
>postmodernism is
>post-modernism
get out of my FUCKING board

[Anonymous No.10666928]

dialectical phenomenology = postmodern fileo-sophia

[Anonymous No.10667007]

>>10664446
nice argument

[Anonymous No.10667127]

>>10665287
this can't be real

[Anonymous No.10667196]

>>10664782
I know it's a bit confusing but the 19th century is from 1800-1900, Nietzsche being born in 1844

[Anonymous No.10667208]

>>10665543
Is that so? I’d say the discovery of evolution, as well as all the various mental heuristics cognitive psychology has found all point in favour of the postmodern view of the self, lacking in self-transparency about ones own motivations, fundementally irrational, and with a perception of the world which is more structured by our brains, rather than a straightforward apprehension of the world as is.

My background is in cognitive psychology, and one perennial theme is just how bad our visual sense is, or at least how much it is subject to illusions and trickery. A huge portion of our visual perception is our brain ‘filling in the gaps’ so to speak, and anticipating things based on our expectations.

Also various pathologies point towards the essential function of emotion in all sorts of cognitive functions. When you recognize anything, there are small emotional signals being sent, and if they aren’t, or are miswired, your ‘recognition’ of a common object is impaired. Déjà Vu is basically your brain having a small seizure over things not lining up properly in this regard. On certain drugs the emotional reference can be misdirected, and instead of a positive sense of familiarity, a common object connects with fear, or a sense of being menacing or threatening. In cases where this connection is altogether broken, depending on exactly where you can end up with any number of delusional disorders. In Capgras delusion, for example, you visually recognize people you know, but that very small emotional sense is not triggered, and thus your brain doesn’t *feel* like it’s really recognizing them, most often people conclude that the person is an imposter, an identical replica, but not the *real* person. Often this neural connection isn’t broken in the auditory tract, and simply listening to them, without seeing, makes the sensation go away.


With all sorts of things like that, I struggle to see why anybody could think the Cartesian conception of the self seems at all accurate.

[Anonymous No.10667234]

>>10663665
>the absolute state of /lit/
determinately negate yourself.

[Anonymous No.10667255]

>>10664147
What a fucking twit you must be

[Anonymous No.10667257]

>>10664711
>>10664782
>being this much of a brainlet

[Anonymous No.10667320]

>>10666560
Therein lies the contraction, and that’s why postmodernism died out very quickly as a trend proper. In the postmodern mode of thought politics is not possible. This is why Derrida was basically a moderate SocDem reformist, Foucault capitulated to neoliberalism, Althusser cared far more about his role as a party functionary than about actually doing politics, and overall many of them focused on micro-political fights, rather than macro political struggle. You can improve a situation, but there is no bigger ‘movement’ towards anything.

>>10666458
Pretty much yeah, well I don’t think I’d totally agree, but the long and sort of it is that postmodernism is fundementally skeptical, insofar as it can be characterized at all.

So it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that postmodernism is Marxism’s favourite whipping boy, and has been for three decades. While Marxism has come to incorporate some of the insights on the nature of power and language, it’s fundamental skepticism is rejected, because to accept that is to reject political struggle itself.

Another Frenchie, Badiou never capitulated to postmodernism, and has passionately defending the reality of Truth. Today he is a very hot topic in academic reaserch for his books Being and Event, and Logic of Worlds.

>>10665880
The astonishing this about this is that there are literal mountains of books discussing postmodernism, and anybody who is at a university can presumable go to the campus library and read any of them.
That whole paragraph, (and by extension Hicks and Peterson) just don’t have the very basics of understanding the left in that period. After people realized the USSR was shit, everybody became a fan of China and Mao.


>>10666161
A big part of the motivation behind those thinkers was to resist ‘reduction’, one of the reasons people like Derrida and Lacan wrote so obscurely was that they feared being turned into simple slogans, with the richness of their thought washed out. The formulas they did produce are intentionally cryptic, Derrida says ‘There is no out-side the text’ or Lacan ‘The unconscious is the language of the Other’, they are things you have to see in a context to really understand.

I’d agree that postmodernism did indeed produce important insights and criticisms in philosophy, politics, and about culture in general, at least as far as we are talking about high French Theory.

But in general I see it’s rise as part of a sort of ‘cultural logic’, where an increasingly consumerist society gives up the hope of alternative futures and struggles to deal with the question of meaning. Postmodernism correctly identities the fragmentary, decentred Subject, but then I think does not resolve the problem. Foucault fascination was with how people on the margins construct their sense of self-worth and how they construct meaning, this is why he focuses on prisoners, lgbt communities, mental patients and so on.

[Anonymous No.10667345]

The term postmodernism has been so abused by conservatives and Marxists that it is barely any meaningful.

The term used should be post-structuralism which refers to a very specific historical period of French philosophy that has Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard and Lyotard.

[Anonymous No.10667357]

>>10664689
>the alt-right likes him
Very wrong actually, the alt-right despises Peterson and sees him as a gatekeeper that's preventing people from joining their movement or deradicalizing them

[Anonymous No.10667388]

>>10667320

>After people realized the USSR was shit, everybody became a fan of China and Mao.
But those were even shittier.

[Anonymous No.10667391]

>>10667320
>>10666161
So if some insight into the construction of community and meaning could be found on the margins, then it might be an avenue for meaning for everybody in a fragmented world after the end of history.


The biggest problem with all of that is that postmodernisms rejection of historical narratives means that finding place-hood in society is impossible. To them seeing yourself as having a common history with your class or your nation is meaningless, and I think that is one of the principle ways people construct meaning. I think that way of thinking is conducive to a extreme individualism which leaves people lonely, isolated, and unable to truly feel connected with anybody they don’t personally know, which id say precludes things like having a Democratic Nation.

We all live in a sort of postmodern condition, to the extent that everybody can learn to understand and articulate that, I don’t know.


>>10666168
There is a huge contradiction in how you understand gender. You are rightfully critical of the disposable male problem, but then you seem to be critiquing the ‘feminization of men’. The source of the disposable men belief is exactly the same patriarchal gender roles which feminist theory is critical of. Partiarchy treats people not as individuals, but as bodies to fill social roles and functions. The masculine function is as the expendable protector, contra the necessary nurturing feminine. This system of socially determining of it ‘means’ to be a man, separate from your own hopes and dreams is oppressive, it absolutely limits your freedom, and even structures your desire.

Yet despite that insight that you seem to have, you sound like you want to double down on the masculine identity and are upset by it breaking down. Why?

Greater freedom will come from the destruction of that structure of gender, and yet you want to enforce it, rather than aid its decline.

[Anonymous No.10667395]

>>10667388
The success of the Chinese revolution were apparent very quickly, it took a lot longer for all the crimes to be realized,

[Anonymous No.10667409]

>>10667395
Things like the cultural revolution and the famine all took place in less than 5 years. You had tens of millions of deaths in less than a decade, and such things were obvious to all people.

[Anonymous No.10667415]

>>10667391
>Greater freedom will come from the destruction of that structure of gender, and yet you want to enforce it, rather than aid its decline.

Such freedom is not desirable.

[Anonymous No.10667443]

>>10667391
>2010+8
>Still thinking that furthering the destruction of bourgeois morality is going to free anyone instead of precipitate everyone in an abyss of meaningless consumer identities

[Anonymous No.10667457]

>>10667443
>precipitate everyone in an abyss of meaningless consumer identities
>implying this isn't already happening with bourgeois morality

[Anonymous No.10667469]

Can me (someone with an understanding of Plato, pre-Socratics, Neoplatonists, Kierkegaard) begin comprehending POMO?

[Anonymous No.10667476]

>>10667409
The speed with which news travels from rural China to Europe is not nearly as quick as you’d think. Especially in the context of the war in Vietnam, and the sense that bad news about China was the US lying.

[Anonymous No.10667483]

>>10667469
You need at least Hegel and Kant

[Anonymous No.10667489]

>>10667483
damn, can I just read the books Kant wrote to make his philosophy accessible?

[Anonymous No.10667494]

>>10667469
Not really. Understanding postmodernism really realies on having a fair cultural and economic history of the last 200 years, then at least some vague notion of what the main problems of modern philosophy are. Postmodernism isn’t a break from the philosophical tradition, it’s a continuation of it. Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Saussure, Levi-Strauss, and so on, all are Important precursors which inform the problems and methods of post-war French thought

[Anonymous No.10667503]

>>10667391
Lol fucking idiot. WOMEN are the ones who construct this so called patriarchy, and by deconstructing 'gender roles' you're just helping to create the gynocratic dystopia. The only way to save the masculine identity is by re-enslaving women again and turning them into property like the Ancient Greeks

[Anonymous No.10667504]

>>10667457
>implying this isn't already happening with bourgeois morality
That's what I'm saying retard. Where do you think our current morality comes from?

[Anonymous No.10667510]

I've been thinking of post-modernism as a mind-hack. A practical, perceptual trick to allow one's-self to have flow) across a field of diametrically-opposed beliefs. By not privileging one side over another, or making value judgments, an individual can transcend the ontological barriers across different systems of belief. In short, post-modernism is about perceptions over concepts. It's a living thing, which is then recorded in the poetic writings of the post-modernist. That's why post-modernists are so wordy and obscure.... they are trying to capture the state of mind which they've reached by stepping partly into chaos.

That's the crazy thing. I think /lit/ would agree that modern-day social justice activism is producing a lot of closed-minded dogmatists.... which is the exact opposite of post-modernism. Conversely, by encouraging people to bravely confront the chaos and find new order, Peterson is directing people to open their mind, consider things strange and foreign to them, and thus do what the post-modernists did in their day decades ago.

Post modernists don't preach nihilism or moral-relativism for everyone. Rather they take in upon themselves, as probes or canaries in the coal-mine or just plan far-out thinkers to get into strange states of mind which require suspension of judgement so as to produce post-modern works. If people treated Derrida or Foucault as artists who made books designed to hurt your brain on purpose, then things would be more clear

[Anonymous No.10667526]

>>10667391
The destruction of archetypes is impossible, they simply manifest in other forms then. What the "destruction of that structure of gender" will lead to is just a greater clusterfuck for the social elite to have to wade through in order to understand the social order.

[Anonymous No.10667545]

>>10667504
Oh my bad, I thought you meant that accelerating the destruction of bourgeois morality will lead to an abyss of meaningless consumer identities

[Anonymous No.10667608]

>>10667357
B-but he's a nazi! He disagreed with a tranny once, nazi!

[Anonymous No.10667672]

>>10663629
>disliking memerson means you like postmodernism

[Anonymous No.10667737]

>>10667510
I’d say, far more than Foucault or Derrida, the person who I would completely agree this applies to is Gilles Deleuze, mainly his work with Guattari.

A book like A Thousand Plateaus is a loose winding, collection of insights and concepts, all linked back onto each other in a web, such that there is no start and there is no end. The point of the book is to help people think in terms of ‘rhizomes’ rather than in terms of trees. There is no main trunk which you branch off from, there is just twists and turns of ideas reconnecting in different locations, at different times, and where Meaning comes from the gradual building of a density, rather than linear structure. Contra Peterson, who is trying to give an “antidote to chaos”, Deleuze says ‘embrace it’. An Antidote implies being about to master, or control the complexity, by sorting it, filing it into a system, and ultimately dominate it. Deleuze thinks this is nothing more than our will to power, and since it is impossibe to completely control the world in the form of representations in knowledge, instead we need to try to reconcile ourselfs to this lack. We can only find something approaching peace if we follow the ‘non-fascist life’, in which domination is not the goal, there is no final totality, there is always flux, Difference, beginning and ending.

For Deleuze Difference is not a product of identity, there is not first identity, which we subtract to find difference. Rather we start off in Difference, and it’s from there that we construct different and changing sorts of identity. This is a ontological view for Deleuze, not a social/political one.

[Anonymous No.10667761]

I mean, you should've found yourself a stronger father... This is just pathetic.

[Anonymous No.10668044]

Oh, yet another Memerson thread. Not even sure if his emergence isn't beneficial to this board seeing how active these threads are with an occasional post of quality. It's hysterical. Any Petersonite who'd actually read and understand the books he recommends, like the existentialists, would instantly understand how redundant their Daddy is. But the won't and he knows it. Hahaha.
It's confounding how they spend hours watching him on Youtube and spiralling their already sub-human attention spans further down, if they could just literally read one of Hesse's books and BTFO Peterson's Jungian fetishism and also see its deficiencies. He created a brainlet consumerism of self-help plateaus and and horrendous interpretations of literature and philosophy. Can't wait for the conclusion of Kermitogenics to see what happens next to all those false-positive patricians. This board will have benefitted from this thing more than Peterson's Jungian crypto-atheist Christians.

[Anonymous No.10668059]

>>10663629
Fact: both the enlightenment and post modernism were mistakes

[Anonymous No.10668068]

>>10667672
you either like peterson, or you're a leftie who perpetuates anything that him and his fans are "against"
viewing the world in terms of black and white is much easier

[Anonymous No.10669014]

>>10663629
He's a good guy, and what he says is more or less true. Objective truth exists, but that kills the liberal.

[Anonymous No.10669127]

>>10663697
Jesus was a postmodernist

[Anonymous No.10669280]

>>10665913
But metaphysics are grand narratives and those are evil!!!!!!11

[Anonymous No.10669372]

>>10669014
>Objective truth exists
I never actually see anyone -proving- this. All the attacks on postmodernism are appeals to consequences (postmodernism is the end of western civilization!!!111!!1!), not actually disproving it. Which is ironic, since if objective truth exists you'd think it would be pretty easy to demonstrate that fact.

[Anonymous No.10669444]

>>10669372
Turns out objectivity is pretty difficult to prove philosophically, even though it's something you are faced with every moment of your waking existence. I think Hegel did a good job though.

[Anonymous No.10669460]

>>10669444
What are some pan-psychic varieties of philosophy that state that objectivity and truth and such are knowable because all reality is made up of consciousness, and we are already intimately aware of consciousness and therefore of the nature of reality

because that's how i feel about things

[Anonymous No.10669478]

>>10669460
Zizek
Also, we think we're aware of shit, but we ain't aware of nuffin. Basically, Zizek

[Anonymous No.10669505]

>>10669460
I mean, Hegel's slogan is literally 'die Welt ist Geist'. Existence in its entirety is a just one big process which brings about consciousness as a direct correlate and consequence of its structure.
Otherwise there's always Schopenhauer. You should at least get a general understanding of what Will means for him if you want to understand early Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.10669586]

>>10667391
Abandoning the heterosexual bourgeois "reality", my big project will be the creation of a homoerotic slave-state where straight men and women are subservient to the faggot upper class. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.10669801]

Peterson loves to rag on Derrida and Foucault but I guarantee he won't say anything about Baudrillard, why? JB is right. Literally writes about the excessive of media and lack of meaning and information (with conflicting information) animalistic tendencies of grouping based on materials consumed, nihilism seeping into everything. The implosion of University and students needs to revolt against non-entities.

READ BAUDRILLARD

[Anonymous No.10670024]

>>10664739
How far this board has fallen...

[Anonymous No.10670073]

>>10663629
There's just something about Jordan Peterson that smells like grassroots. He looks like he should be making videos in his car talking to police officers about how he doesn't need a licence because he's traveling rather than driving.