Postmodernism and the death of transcendence
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2001
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Melbourne Authors
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School of Historical and Philosophical Studies
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Masters Research thesis
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Abstract
The aim of the thesis is to uncover the mode of thought that underlies postmodernism and to examine its relation to human existence. It also looks at the consequences of postmodernism viewed as a mode of thought (rather than simply as an historical period). The thought that underlies postmodernism is part of the struggle between the Nietzschean ideas of being and becoming at the heart of which human existence is found. Postmodern thought is underlain by the chaos of becoming which acts against the order of being that underlies modernism. Postmodernism accepts chaos while its opposite, modernism, seeks to transcend to order.
What we tend to understand as postmodernism (in an historical sense) is really postmodernism in its nascent state. The consequences and the end of postmodernism are beyond this. In attacking the systems and order of modernism it attacks the transcendent functions that, in part, define human existence. In particular it attacks the transcendent functions of language and history. This attack brings with it the threat of the dismantling of those functions and with that dismantling the dissolution of our existence as human. Although it is threatening to humanity in this way postmodern thought should not be discarded. As a radical questioning it is in fact what keeps humanity alive by refusing to let it sit still and fall into stagnancy and stasis. Without transcendence we lose our humanity to the chaos of postmodernism, but without postmodernism we lose our humanity to the order of modernism. Our humanity is found in the conflict between these two. Both are essential for the maintenance of our humanity.
Once this thesis has understood postmodernism and transcendence within this context, it then seeks to move beyond that point and gain an ontological understanding of humanity in light of it. Humanity, in this regard, is found in the suffering that ensues from the conflict between being and becoming. We are most human when we are suffering in this particular manner, that is to say in the manner of a suffering that relates to our being as transcendent and the shortcomings in our transcendent endeavours.
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Postmodernism, Transcendence (Philosophy)