Postmodern thinking

28 Dec, 2020 at 18:27 | Posted in Theory of Science & Methodology | Comments Off on Postmodern thinking

The compulsive types there correspond to the paranoids here. The wistful opposition to factual research, the legitimate consciousness that scientism forgets what is best, exacerbates through its naïvété the split from which it suffers. Instead of comprehending the facts, behind which others are barricaded, it hurriedly throws together whatever it can grab from them, rushing off to play so uncritically with apochryphal cognitions, with a couple isolated and hypostatized categories, and with itself, that it is easily disposed of by referring to the unyielding facts. It is precisely the critical element which is lost in the apparently independent thought. The insistence on the secret of the world hidden beneath the shell, which dares not explain how it relates to the shell, only reconfirms through such abstemiousness the thought that there must be good reasons for that shell, which one ought to accept without question. Between the pleasure of emptiness and the lie of plenitude, the ruling condition of the spirit [Geistes: mind] permits no third option.

Long before ‘postmodernism’ became fashionable among a certain kind of ‘intellectuals’, Adorno wrote searching critiques of this kind of thinking.

When listening to — or reading — the postmodern mumbo-jumbo​ that surrounds​ us today in social sciences and humanities, I often find myself wishing for that special Annie Hall moment of truth: