Most of your ethical system and idealogy runs concurrent to postmodernism. You could look at someone like Foucault or Derrida and find similar concepts running throughout. The idea of good and bad being relative has been around for quite a while. I think Kant and Kierkagard said stuff about it (at least what I can remember, been a while since I've read any), and it's a huge thread in existentialism. You could easily look at Sartre and see it.
Thanks, I'll keep those in mind when I decide to read some books on it.
I'm a little skeptical of post-modernism though, simply because no two people have ever given me the same definition of what it is, and no one person has ever given me much of a coherent one. I can hardly blame them though - I read an entire book titled something like "Introducing Postmodernism" and finished it still not knowing what the hell they were talking about. All of that leads to the suspicion that it's really a null space type of concept. ie, by refusing to define itself it lets individuals put their own value to it, which, if true, really gives it a sort of mock profundity.
Anyway, a friend of mine also recommended the Tao Te Ching when I told him about my ethical system, so I may be checking that out too.
I think that existentialism created a much stronger ethical system. Essentially, it does say that there is a great deal of variance in ethics and good or bad are subjective. The main thing I like is that it places emphasis on personal will and responsibility. Removing God or spirituality from the equation doesn't equal a lack of morality. In fact, it means you have to focus more on the world at hand. That was the jist of what I got reading Sartre, who is probably one of the most readable French philosophers I've read
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I just copied that entire reply to my "Books I want to Read" text file, so thanks. :)
"If you just read a bit of sociology and psychology, you'll figure out the same stuff. Overall, it's just a loose collection of ideas that connects to culture and language determining our reality."
I couldn't agree more. It's like a hodgepodge of ideas of other fields strung together. Far as I can tell, it even has some eastern religion in it, in the sense that it will often devalue something and then say, "Here, experience it."
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The idea of good and bad being relative has been around for quite a while. I think Kant and Kierkagard said stuff about it (at least what I can remember, been a while since I've read any), and it's a huge thread in existentialism. You could easily look at Sartre and see it.
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I'm a little skeptical of post-modernism though, simply because no two people have ever given me the same definition of what it is, and no one person has ever given me much of a coherent one. I can hardly blame them though - I read an entire book titled something like "Introducing Postmodernism" and finished it still not knowing what the hell they were talking about. All of that leads to the suspicion that it's really a null space type of concept. ie, by refusing to define itself it lets individuals put their own value to it, which, if true, really gives it a sort of mock profundity.
Anyway, a friend of mine also recommended the Tao Te Ching when I told him about my ethical system, so I may be checking that out too.
Reply
Reply
"If you just read a bit of sociology and psychology, you'll figure out the same stuff. Overall, it's just a loose collection of ideas that connects to culture and language determining our reality."
I couldn't agree more. It's like a hodgepodge of ideas of other fields strung together. Far as I can tell, it even has some eastern religion in it, in the sense that it will often devalue something and then say, "Here, experience it."
"...language determining our reality."
Amen to that.
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