What is the critique of “postmodernism” as a philosophy from an Orthodox perspective?

ArmyMatt said:

off the bat we'd say Truth isn't contingent on anything. Truth is the eternal Son of God Who necessarily is that He is.

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Pavel Mosko said:

QUOTE (Robert Webber, Ancient Future Faith)
"During my seminary education, I never felt we really addressed the question: “What does it mean to be a member of the church” Later, when I turned to the early Christian tradition and began, for the first time, to understand what it meant to be a member of the body of Christ, it was like removing blinders that had covered my eyes.
I learned from the early Fathers that the church is intrinsically connected with Christ and his victory over the power of evil. The church is therefore to be regarded as a kind of continuation of the presence of Jesus in the world. Jesus is not only seated at the right hand of the Father, but is visibly and tangibly present in and to the world through the church. This is an incarnational understanding of the church. It is a unique community of people in the world, a community like no other community because it is the presence of the divine in and to the world. This concept of the church has specific relevance to the world of postmodernism.
. . . What this means for the church is that Christians must recover the primacy of being a Christian community. . . .
. . . the church is the primary presence of God’s activity in the world. As we pay attention to what it means to be the church we create an alternative community to the society of the world. This new community, the embodied experience of God’s kingdom, will draw people into itself and nurture them in the faith. In this sense the church and its life in the world will become the new apologetic. People come to the faith not because they see the logic of the argument but because they have experienced a welcoming God in a hospitable and loving community. QUOTE
– Ancient-Future Faith, pp. 70-72"

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ArmyMatt said:

if God is Truth, Truth is definitionally not contingent.

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Xenophon said:

Postmodernism is agreeable in it's critiques of modernism. It is also usually very articulate as to what exactly the aims of (any postmodern thinker) are.

However, 'postmodern' is a misnomer - it might be better called 'hyper-modernism.' In finding out the many absurdities in the logic of modern philosophy - exposing it's baselessness (as a result of modernity's godlessness), it does not turn back to God, it does not reject the false premises of modernism, but embraces the absurdities as a medium to create new mythologies (as Nietzsche said, "must we not become gods?") through the destruction of what already is.

Postmodernism is nihilistic and seeks to force a process called 'leveling.' In leveling, all things are to be made flat, 2 dimensional, or equal. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche both spoke of leveling - forecasting postmodernism. A means of which is the inversion of hierarchy by emphasizing the lower over the higher and the exception over the norm. It's all too common, even in 'Orthodox' scholarship (looking at you Fordham) by taking the historical exception as the proposed norm for today.

I will post this video as it is relevant and does provide some background to what I said, at least look at what he quotes from Derrida;

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ArmyMatt said:

I dunno how else to say it. anything that's contingent is not always necessarily true. God is always necessarily true. therefore, God is not contingent.

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Pavel Mosko said:

Well you should also take a look at my Postmodern thread here
Pavel's Postmodern thread


And reading the original Larry Wall talk is also useful.
Perl, the first postmodern computer language


It is easy to get a negative impression of Postmodernism with folks like Derrida going deep into Relativism. From an Orthodox stand point, I think Wall is very useful when he speaks about the limitations of Modernism and the Enlightenment, especially talking about "The Cult of the Isms" like Minimalism, Reductionism, etc. In many ways to be Postmodern is to realize that "not everything that is New is improved."

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rusmeister said:

As a language guy...
What screams at me in the face is the complete lack of philosophical thought in the terms. "Modern" as a term to refer to a specific time is idiotic in general, as all times are modern to themselves. In the 14th century, the 14th century was very modern. So "modernism" as a term objectively means a focus on "what is now", and "postmodernism" means "what is after now", which logically, is the future, making it the same as "futurism" in linguistic terms. The terms and philosophies are made by unphilosophical people who never really learned how to think, but pretend to be philosophers. A good philosopher will ensure that language and terminology will also be philosophical. These things all spring up from the general fall of modern (in the broadest imaginable sense) thought. It's always falling, even Aquinas was falling away, but with Descartes, the fall began to kick into high gear. The nineteenth century was full of lost souls peddling philosophies, some closer to truth, like Kierkegaard, some further away, like Jung and Nietzsche, all grasping at isolated truths in ignorance of the overarching Truth of Christ.

(Starting at 1:20)

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archer75 said:

Don't waste your time even worrying about this.

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