As always, I've done my best to quote any phrasing that isn't my own, but since this is combined from my handwritten notes and highlighting, I may not have gotten it perfect.
“Aversion to the idea of universality”
“refuses to conceive of humanity as a unitary subject”
The Ideal of Consensus
Justification and legitimation are practices – communities “recognize this and not that as a good reason for doing or believing something.”
Postmodernists “question the merit of consensus.”
Postmodern objections to working towards consensus:
1. Marxism is outdated – people no longer buy into the idea of universal emancipation.
2. “the pursuit of ideal consensus is misguided”. (So how would this affect feminist goals of freedom and equality for all women? It’s definitely relevant to ideas of racism, classism, and ethnocentrism within feminism. Postmodernism is pro-innovation, but thinks that you can’t term something new as “better” or “progress” based on some absolute criteria. “since history has no direction” we can’t assume that our new ideas are any better than the old.
Rorty wants conversation to replace enquiry. MacIntyre concludes that “mythology… is ‘at the heart of things’.”.
Neither conversation nor mythology aims “at a single, stable representation of reality” or “truth”.
They seem to want to separate “intellectual activity” from the pursuit of “ideal consensus”. Rorty: a life NOT aiming for actual truth is “better”. Lyotard: a focus on “truth” suppresses difference.
Lyotard says that while it might suck to “place constraints on liberty in the name of social order,” you can’t try to bind all thought “into a single ‘moral organism’ or ‘significant whole’. (I’m not sure how these two ideas connect, especially given his previous one. He thinks that aiming for truth suppresses difference; does aiming for truth mean trying to come up with a singular truth? In that case, it makes sense. Or I guess trying to come up with a singular truth in any one situation).
Enlightenment thought that what exists should justify itself. Postmodernism opposes that, seeing “justification (or legitimation) [as] always local and context-relative”. This is anti Platonism. Plato thought that truth transcends our “criteria of truth”. Postmodernism thinks that idea is obsolete, and that it’s “no longer possible to believe in a transcendent truth”.
Dialectic = of, pertaining to, or of the nature of logical argumentation.
Postmodernism is also skeptical of Plato’s WAY of thinking. Plato’s dialectic method of enquiry was about questioning an idea until you came down to some essential truth that could not be corrected any further. According to his view, at this point the “thought would come to rest”.
The idea of postmodern conversation instead of that kind of dialectic is that “it aims, not at its own closure, but at its own continuation.” It wants agreement and disagreement.
According to Plato, the increasing coherence of the idea corresponds to “coherence in the mind of the enquirer”. Basically you’re supposed to get to a point where “no sudden access of emotion, no previously unconsidered aspect of things, is able to disturb the ordering of my beliefs and values.”
Positive Liberty
Negative liberty (Hume) = no external restraints, spontaneity.
Positive liberty = autonomy (didn’t we discuss autonomy vs. agency the other day?) In positive liberty, any “commands issued by the true subject… cannot be overturned by recalcitrant impulses or ‘passions’.” (To me, that sounds a lot like what Plato’s ideas were in the last section – is this supposed to be the postmodern view?). We’re supposed to be free from anything that we see as irrational.
You can only be free if you’ve fully realized your potential for reason (achieved perfect rationality). Right now we might feel subjectively free, but if we continue to develop intellectually we will later see, in hindsight, now not free we really are in our “current patterns of behavior.”
In the Enlightenment, the “centered subject” “was free because he was no longer at the mercy of unpredictable bouts of passion or appetite.” Now, the modern subject is free by being liberated from “the influence of social forces which s/he does not understand, and so cannot resist.” (So we’re liberated by gaining an understanding of these forces and then being able to resist them). In Marxism, it was learning about “the capitalist economic order;” in feminism, to look at ways we’ve internalized patriarchal views. Head for autonomy by “making ourselves less susceptible to external determination” = transcendence. (Is this related to De Beauvoir’s transcendence?).
Transcendence is connected to the idea of universal reason, and postmodernists don’t like this. Feminists also don’t like it. Western philosophy seems to see man as this “normal or complete” being, associated with the mind and civilization, and woman as body, associated with nature, hanging out in the background. In Plato’s writings, men “emerge from the womb-like Cave,” and Hegel’s men leave the home, therefore the private, where women had dominion. “the passage from nature to freedom, or from ‘heteronomy’ to autonomy, has been represented in terms of an escape by the male from the sheltered, feminine surroundings in which he begins his life.” This seems to signal a “convergence between feminism and postmodernism”.
Tradition and Modernity
Sexual equality as a political goal can be seen as a way that tradition is moving aside to modernity.
“Modern conditions” as “created by technological progress.” (the next few sentences seem to frame modernity as a negative thing). “Sooner or later, arbitrary authority will cease to exist” is a very Enlightenment thought.
Sex and gender-based aspects of the social system are the parts of tradition that seem to be the hardest to change.
Modernism repudiates “unearned privilege”.
Some people claim that we missed our chance to rebuild society “on rational, egalitarian lines”. She’s suspicious – how are we supposed to give up our dreams of emancipation when we’re not emancipated? (Not sure I’m interpreting that correctly). “universal reason”.
The Enlightenment ideas of “emancipation” or “autonomy” are “complicit in a fantasy of escape from the embodied condition” and reinforce harmful hierarchical binaries. Naturalist philosophy has looked at “institutions of knowledge-production… to expose the unequal part played by different social groups in determining standards of judgment.” In doing so, it’s been able to reveal how value systems we’d previously seen as objective aren’t.
She’s going to introduce three distinctly postmodern themes and question “whether postmodernism can be adopted by feminism as a theoretical ally”.
Dynamic pluralism, quiet pluralism, pluralism of inclination.
There’s nothing in the idea that standards of judgment are social constructions that would explain why postmodernists are hostile to the idea of consensus. You can understand that knowledge claims have perspective but also want to use enquiry to bring these perspectives together to create a body of thought that can be accessed from any starting point. (almost like using a bunch of 2-D drawings to create a 3D model).
Kant had talked about an imaginary point, “located beyond the limits of possible experience, upon which all lines of rational activity appear to converge”. The fact that it’s imaginary shows that it’s irrelevant to worry about we’ll ever “reach the goal of enquiry”. Theory itself would be impossible if we didn’t care about its maxims (general truths or principals; rules of conduct). However, theoretical effort is non-contractual – you do it even if you have no guarantee that others will help to achieve the goal. (not sure about that last part).
Dynamic Pluralism
Lyotard’s writing on the “eclipse of ‘grand narratives’” gives suggestions on “postmodern mental health.” Lyotard thinks that people don’t care about the idea of consensus. The desire for legitimation of knowledge is eclipsed by “quest for discursive novelty”.
“The authentically postmodern consciousness is experimental”.
Modernity wants to impose form on to chaos; postmodernity wants to jump into the chaos feet-first.
Nietzsche thought that idealism led to nihilism, which was a sickness.
He thought that godlessness was like innocence, and it’s harder to achieve that than you’d think because positivists “still have faith in truth” and therefore can’t achieve godlessness or freedom.
Nietzsche’s critique was aimed at those who think knowledge rests on the foundation of experience.
Socrates wanted to eliminate conflict by having everyone gradually converge to one point of view. Nietzsche thinks that this goal (of eliminating conflict) will appeal to the weak. You only use dialectics when you “have no other weapon left”.
Rationalism – wants to move conflict from physical to argument, so the underdog has more of a chance of winning (I have to imagine this is more metaphorical?). Nietzsche thinks that social conditions of rank are necessary. They want to get rid of class relationships.
“Truth as a regulative ideal is the creation of a socially inferior type of mind”. It comes from the hostility of the lower class trying to make the upper class feel guilty for being “naturally good” (What??)
Nietzsche doesn’t think that self-contradiction is a fault, but that it’s human beings who came upon “coherence as a criterion of value”.
Nietzsche and the Enlightenment
Nietzsche thought we had to recover from the Enlightenment. He sees feminism as part of the rationalist movement – as trying to “end the war between men and women” and move to communication.
Nietzsche doesn’t agree that being morally repulsed by war is a good thing. He finds rationalism and pacifism repulsive in the category of sexuality.
Nietzsche defines virility as loving war and refusing to compromise.
“In a world without truth…the interpretation of experience is itself a field for invention”.
“The cognitive activity of a …better… humanity will involve not the suppression of individuality… but rather their subordination to a commanding will.” (Not sure I get this).
The more perspectives we consider the more objective we can be (?).
Nietzsche describes himself as hostile to feminism. He sees feminism as part of idealism and wants Europe to be more virile. He saw feminism as the mental impotence in binding the mind “to regulative ideas such as truth.” Looking for the stability of truth emasculates the mind.
“We should be on the watch for signs of indulgence in a certain collective fantasy of masculine agency or identity”.
The attack on universality (theme two – quiet pluralism)
Dynamic pluralisms’ roots lie in distaste for move toward sexual equality.
We’ll be looking at the “postmodern ‘rediscovery’ of the local and customary”.
She thinks there’s a big difference between these two points:
Nietzsche renounced a truth-oriented way of life.
Postmodernists want to scrap ideas of absolute letigimation.
To read this second one as just an update of Nietzsche misses the point, because “postmodernism does not condemn the pursuit of truth or virtue within local, self-contained discursive communities.” “truth” as distinct from “Truth.”
Postmodern theory concedes the ability of groups “to reflect on themselves and to pass judgments of value”. So a scientist can ask “is this a valid contribution to scientific theory”?.
MacIntyre says that “a healthy [moral] tradition is sustained by its own internal arguments and conflicts.”
If groups are capable of self-criticism, how far are they going to take it? Can’t you always make some kind of criticism?
Rorty hopes that the post-enlightenment culture will be “better,” and that nobody will be thought more “rational” than another.
“admiration of exceptional men and women who were very good at doing the quite diverse kinds of things they did”.
“liberal individualist” and “Modern self” are only externally connected to the roles they take on. To be separated from any of these roles would not hurt their integrity – they would not become so wrapped up in them.
MacIntyre thinks we should stop trying to transcend and instead construct local communities to sustain intellectual and moral lives.
Postmodernism – “there is no such thing as a ‘pure reason’ dissociated from” culture or context.
But – feminism wants postmodernism to explain “how we can achieve a thorough-going revision of the range of social scripts, narrative archetypes, ways of life, ways of earning a living, etc. available to individual women and men.” How can we actually revise the scripts, archetypes, and options available to individuals?
If there’s no “systematic political approach” to issues of “wealth, power and labour,” how can we effectively challenge a society that distributes privilege and burdens unequally between the sexes?
How can we achieve sexual equality if we’re not allowed to “address the structural causes of existing sexual inequality”?
MacIntyre’s Moral Epistemology
Discusses mythology. When we picture our lives as “unified chains of events” we’re drawing on mythology. But, when discussing sexual politics, myths aren’t very reassuring. MacIntyre lists “the Bible, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the Greek and Latin classics”. The actual mythology that affects us is more TV or media-based.
Can we reclaim the available roles? According to MacIntyre, modern social roles all draw from the Enlightenment, so are fictions.
Feminism wants to construct a “life worthy of human beings”.
MacIntyre treats “the individual enterprise as a source of insight into the collective one”. You ask “what is good for me,” and the answer to “what is good for man” occurs where all of the previous answers converge.
But this blocks the way to theory and pushes you back to mythology.
Pluralism of Inclination
Feminists as embracing fashion.
Discussion of pleasure – especially (for women) the pleasure we get from making others happy “thereby justifying our own existence.”.
“conventional femininity” can “be pleasurable for women”.
If feminism is accused of racism, there’s a new political agenda, so the movement becomes less unified. This “calls attention to a certain respect in which feminism has fallen short of its own idealized self-image as an occupant of the ‘universal standpoint’.”
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