And for me any philosophy that fails to give an account of mind, ethics, cause and self is quite simply failed
philosophy. And a philosophy that denies that any of those things are real is therefore fit only to be ignored. As
it happens, however, there are lots of failed philosophers about and they have somehow conned the taxpayers into
paying them a lot of money. They call themselves "postmoderninsts" and, as far as one can make any sense at all of
what they say, their essential credo seems to be "nothing is real". When I come across such garbage I tend to be
overcome by the wish that I could hit the so-called philosophers over the head with a baseball bat and then say to
them: "Don't worry. Nothing is real so I didn't really hit you over the head with a baseball bat. Just carry on as
before while I get ready to hit you again". I think reality would be rapidly rediscovered under those
circumstances.
— JR
To paraphrase Barth: as Christian theologians, we must speak of truth; as denizens of the twenty-first century
post-Enlightenment west, we cannot speak of truth.
— Taken from JETS, but link is dead
And, of course, let us not forget Britain's great comic figure, Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, QC, who
thinks that it's too easy to go on about 'Islamic fundamentalists'. "What I think happens very readily," she said,
"is that we as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves. We don't look at our own fundamentalisms."
And what exactly does Lady Kennedy mean by Western liberal fundamentalism? "One of the things that we are too ready
to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other
countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true."
If I follow correctly, Lady Kennedy is suggesting that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us
intolerant of other people's intolerance. To complain about Islamic fundamentalism is to ignore how offensive others
must find our own Western fundamentalisms - votes, drivers' licences for women, no incentives to mass murder from
the pulpit of Westminster Cathedral.
— Found here,
but a dead link
But the important thing to remember here is that Orientalism is simply postmodernism served with Middle Eastern
spices.
—Jonah
Goldberg
How do most people use the truth? They spray it on like perfume, experience the temporary effect, feel transformed
by it, then let it fade away.
— Farsam Shadab