Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.
The author or concept searched is found in the following 4 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facts | Postmodernism | Gaus I 26 Truth/facts/Postmodernism/Ball: Various criticisms can be levelled against a postmodernist perspective on interpretation. One is that we do sometimes wish, and legitimately so, to know whether something Marx or Mill said was true. We will not be helped by being told that true/false is a specious ‘binary’. More perniciously, with its emphasis on diverse, divergent and conflicting ‘readings’ or interpretations – there are allegedly no facts, only interpretation ‘all the way down’ – postmodernism is constitutionally unable to distinguish truth from falsehood and propaganda from fact. >Postmodernism/Ball, >History/Postmodernism, >False information, >Facts, >Truth, >Correctness, VsPostmodernism: But, as critics of postmodernism note, some ‘representations’ are misrepresentations – or, more bluntly, lies – that serve to conceal and/or legitimate abuses of some human beings by others. A perspective that professes to be unable to tell fact from fiction or true statements from lies is surely unsatisfactory not only from an epistemological but from a moral point of view. >Fiction. Ball, Terence. 2004. „History and the Interpretation of Texts“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Postmodernism | Bennett | Gaus I 46 Postmodernism/Bennett: The term postmodernism has currency in political theory, but also in literary studies, philosophy, anthropology, the arts, and popular discourse, in each case functioning somewhat differently. Its usages can be summarized under three headings: (1) as a sociological designation for an epochal shift in the way collective life is organized (from centralized and hierarchical control towards a network structure); (2) as an aesthetic genre (literature that experiments with non-linear narration, a playful architecture of mixed styles, an appreciation of popular culture that complicates the distinction between high and low); (3) as a set of philosophical critiques of teleological and/or rationalist conceptions of nature, history, power, freedom, and subjectivity. Postmodernism in political theory participates in all three, but perhaps most intensively in the third (...). >Postmodernism/Butler. Postmodernism/political theory/Bennett: Within political theory, critics from both the right and the left have tended to see postmodernism as a rejection of the quest for an objective truth behind subjective experiences (Cheney, 1996(1); Dumm and Norton, 1998(2)). Because this quest is thought to set the condition of possibility for any affirmative claim, postmodern political theory is charged with being anti-political and unable to take an ethical stand, except that of resistance, disobedience, refusal, or deconstruction for deconstruction’s sake. WhiteVsPostmodernism: Stephen White offers a subtle version of this criticism: while ‘poststructuralist and postmodern thought … carries a persistent utopian hope of a “not yet”’, it too often ‘remains blithely unspecific about normative orientation in the here and now’ (White 2000(3): 90). PostmodernismVsVs: In response, some postmodernists contend that a positive ethic need not require a universal Gaus I 47 God, Reason or some such surrogate, but can be grounded on the cultivation of existential attachment to life rather than on an internal or external authority (Bennett, 2001(4); Coles, 1997(5); Foucault, 1988(6); Kateb, 2000(7)). The complex of epistemological and ontological claims that constitute the distinctive style of thinking called postmodern cannot with justice be reduced to negativism. Postmodernism/Bennett: Postmodernism in political theory emerged, and continues to develop, in close relation to other theoretical approaches, including feminism, liberalism, psychoanalytic theory, critical theory, and utopianism. Postmodern theory often takes the form of genealogical studies which reveal how discursive practices and conceptual schemata are embedded with power relations, and how these cultural forms constitute what is experienced as natural or real (Butler, 1993(8); Brown, 1995(9); Ferguson, 1991(10)). One of the political insights of postmodern theory is that ‘the stakes of a democratic politics … are as much about the modern crisis of representation as they are about the distribution of other goods’ (Dumm, 1999(11): 60). Deconstructions of madness and criminality, feminist and queer studies of gender and sexuality, postcolonial studies of race and nation – these all seek to uncover the human-madeness of entities formerly considered either natural, universal, or innevitable. >Political Theory/Postmodernism, >Identity/Postmodernism. 1. Cheney, Lynne (1996) Telling the Truth: Why Our Culture and Our Country Have Stopped Making Sense and What We Can Do About It. New York: Touchstone. 2. Dumm, Thomas and Anne Norton, eds (1998) ‘On left conservatism I’ and ‘On left conservatism II’. Theory & Event, 2 (2) and 2 (3). 3. White, Stephen K. (2000) Affirmation in Political Theory: The Strengths of Weak Ontology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 4. Bennett, Jane (2001) The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 5. Coles, Romand (1997) Rethinking Generosity: Critical Theory and the Politics of Caritas. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 6. Foucault, Michel (1988) Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Volume III. New York: Random House. 7. Kateb, George (2000) ‘Aestheticism and morality: their cooperation and hostility’. Political Theory, 28 (1): 5–37. 8. Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge. 9. Brown, Wendy (1995) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 10. Ferguson, Kathy E. (1991) The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity in Feminist Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 11. Dumm, Thomas (1999) ‘The problem of the We’. boundary 2, 26 (3): 55–61. Jane Bennett, 2004. „Postmodern Approaches to Political Theory“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Bennett I Jonathan Bennett "The Meaning-Nominalist Strategy" in: Foundations of Language, 10, 1973, pp. 141-168 In Handlung, Kommunikation, Bedeutung, Georg Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1979 Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Science | Sokal | I 10 Science/Sokal/Bricmont: our book(1) is directed against the notion that modern science is only a "myth", a "narrative" or "social construction". I 11 1. SokalVsRelativism: against an "epistemic relativism". 2. SokalVsPostmodernism/SokalVsPostmodernism. >Relativism, >Postmodernism. I 12 Our book(1) does not criticize the humanities as a whole. Those who claim this are showing their own disdain for these areas of expertise. I 17 Sokal's Hoax/Sokal's Joke: in 1996, Sokal submitted a non-serious text to the journal "Social Text" for publication, which absurdly linked scientific terms in a completely meaningless context. Surprisingly, the text was accepted for publication by this journal. It is the text "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"(2). - Subsequently, Sokal made public in the magazine Lingua Franca that it was a parody. I 18 Contents of the parody: he derides the outdated "dogma" that there is "an outer world whose properties are independent of the individual and even of the entire human race" and then categorically claims that the "physical 'reality'[would be] no less than the social, basically a social and linguistic construct." - ..."the pi by Euclid and the G by Newton, which were once considered constant and universal, are seen today in their inevitable historicality". I 19 The quotes from authors appearing in the text are authentic. Sokal's parody consisted of linking them together in an absurd way. The authors parodied by Sokal are Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Serres and Paul Virilio. >G. Deleuze, >J. Derrida, >F. Guattari, >J. Lacan, >B. Latour, >J.-F. Lyotard, >M. Serres, >P. Virilio. The completion of the parody consisted in the surprising fact that the absurd text was actually accepted for publication by the magazine "Social Text". I 21 Examples of the pointless use of scientific terms by some authors who call themselves postmodern authors: Subject/psychology/Jacques Lacan: Lacan claims that the structure of the neurotic subject corresponds exactly to the torus. Poetry/Mathematics/Julia Kristeva: claims that the poetic language can be theoretically grasped by the powerfulness of the continuum. >Continuum, >Set theory, >Power. War/topology/Jean Baudrillard: claims that modern warfare takes place in a non-euclidean space. I 22 Footnote VsSokal/VsBricmont: some critics compared Sokal and Bricmont with teachers who give their students poor grades in mathematics and physics. SokalVsVVS/BricmontVsVs: in school, children have to learn these subjects - but no one has forced these authors to use scientific terms they have no idea about. I 23 Sokal/Bricmont: our doing was not concerned with accusing authors of "minor mistakes" in quotations, but this is about a deep indifference, if not contempt for facts and logic. What needs to be defended is a canon of rationality and intellectual honesty that should be inherent in all disciplines. >Rationality, >Logic, >Truthfulness. 1. A. Sokal und J. Bricmont. (1999) Eleganter Unsinn. München. 2. A. Sokal. (1996) „Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“ – Deutsch:“ Die Grenzen überschreiten: Auf dem Weg zu einer transformativen Hermeneutik der Quantengravitation“. In: Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996). |
Sokal I Alan Sokal Jean Bricmont Fashionabel Nonsense. Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science, New York 1998 German Edition: Eleganter Unsinn. Wie die Denker der Postmoderne die Wissenschaften missbrauchen München 1999 Sokal II Alan Sokal Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science New York 1999 |
| Truth | Postmodernism | Gaus I 26 Truth/facts/Postmodernism/Ball: Various criticisms can be levelled against a postmodernist perspective on interpretation. One is that we do sometimes wish, and legitimately so, to know whether something Marx or Mill said was true. We will not be helped by being told that true/false is a specious ‘binary’. More perniciously, with its emphasis on diverse, divergent and conflicting ‘readings’ or interpretations – there are allegedly no facts, only interpretation ‘all the way down’– postmodernism is constitutionally unable to distinguish truth from falsehood and propaganda from fact. >Interpretation/Postmodernism, >Postmodernism/Ball, >History/Postmodernism, >False information, >Facts, >Correctness. VsPostmodernism: But, as critics of postmodernism note, some ‘representations’ are misrepresentations – or, more bluntly, lies – that serve to conceal and/or legitimate abuses of some human beings by others. A perspective that professes to be unable to tell fact from fiction or true statements from lies is surely unsatisfactory not only from an epistemological but from a moral point of view. >Fictions. Ball, Terence. 2004. „History and the Interpretation of Texts“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| |||
No results. Please choose an author or concept or try a different keyword-search.