[extropy-chat] FWD [forteana] David Ray Griffin's Constructive Postmodernism
Terry W. Colvin
fortean1 at mindspring.com
Fri May 21 02:56:12 UTC 2004
Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 16:06:14 -0700
From: "T. Peter Park" <tpeterpark at erols.com>
To: forteana at yahoogroups.com
Subj: FWD (forteana) David Ray Griffin's Constructive Postmodernism
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN'S CONSTRUCTIVE POSTMODERNISM
David Ray Griffin, an American Whiteheadian philosopher and
liberal Protestant theologian, has developed a "constructive
postmodernist" philosophy rather different from the "postmodernism" of
Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Richard Rorty,
Stanley Fish, and their followers. Griffin, a Claremont Graduate
University philosophy professor, is a "process philosopher" and follower
of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) who calls himself a
"postmodernist" and his world-view a form of "postmodernism." A
theologian as well as a philosopher, Griffin is strongly sympathetic to
parapsychology--the scientific study of extra-sensory perception,
ghosts, apparitions, out-of-the-body and near-death experiences, and
seeming communications by the dead--and hopes to rehabilitate a belief
in God, the soul, absolute moral values, free will, miral
responsibility, and life after death for our time through his
"constructive postmodernism" with the aid of parapsychology.
Griffin is the Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the School of
Theology at Claremont, Executive Director of the Center for Process
Studies, and founding president of the Center for a Postmodern World in
Santa Barbara. He is also the Editor of the "SUNY Series in Constructive
Postmodern Thought.." Griffin's books on philosophy, theology, and
science & religion include _The Reenchantment of Science: Postmodern
Proposals_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), _God and
Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology_
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), _Parapsychology,
Philosophy, and Spirituality: A Postmodern Exploration_ (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1997), _God, Power, and Evil: A
Process Theodicy_(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976),_A Process
Christology_(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973),_Unsnarling the
World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem_ (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), and _Religion
and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts_ (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2000). _God and Religion in the Postmodern
World_ (1989),_Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality_(1997), and
_Religion and Scientific Naturalism _(2000) are part of Griffin's SUNY
Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought.
In the "Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive
Postmodern Thought" at the beginning of his _God and Religion in the
Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology_ (SUNY Press, 1989),
Griffin distinguishes between "deconstructive" or "eliminative"
postmodernism, which he also calls "ultramodernism," versus
"constructive" or "revisionary" postmodernism. Griffin begins by noting
that "the rapid spread of the term postmodernism in recent years
witnesses to a growing dissatisfaction with modernity," to "an
increasing sense that the modern age not only had a beginning but can
have an end as well,"and to a "growing sense" that "we can and should
leave modernity behind--in fact, that we _must_ if we are to avoid
destroying ourselves and most of the life on our planet" (David Ray
Griffin, "Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern
Thought," in Griffin, _God and Religion in the Postmodern World_, SUNY
Press, 1989, p. ix). He observes that "a new respect for the wisdom of
traditional societies is growing as we realize that they have endured
for thousands of years" while "the existence of modern society for even
another century seems doubtful." Similarly, modernism_ as a worldview is
less and less seen as The Final Truth, in comparison with which all
divergent worldviews are automatically regarded as 'superstitious.'" The
"modern worldview," Griffin observes, is now "increasingly relativized
to the status of one among many, useful for some purposes, inadequate
for others" (Griffin,"Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive
Postmodern Thought,"p. ix).
. Griffin also observes that "there have been antimodern
movements before, beginning perhaps near the onset of the nineteenth
century with the Romantics and the Luddites"(Griffin,"Introduction to
SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought,"p. ix). However, "the
rapidity with which the term _postmodern_ has become widespread in our
time suggests that the antimodern sentiment is more extensive and
intense than before." It also "includes the sense that modernity can be
successfully overcome only by going beyond it, not by attempting to
return to a premodern form of existence." The term _postmodernity_, he
feels, refers to "a diffuse sentiment rather than to any set of
doctrines," to the "sentiment that humanity can and must go beyond the
modern" (Griffin,"Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern
Thought,"pp. ix-x). Beyond "connoting this sentiment," Griffin finds
that "the term postmodern is used in a confusing variety of ways, some
of them contradictory to others." In "artistic and literary circles,"
for instance, "postmodernity" suggests this "general sentiment" but
"also involves a specific reaction against 'modernism' in the narrow
sense of a movement in artistic-literary circles in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries"--in other words, to a reaction against
doing any more imitations and rehashes of Proust, Joyce, Eliot, Pound,
Yeats, Kafka, Pirandello, Beckett, Picasso, Braque, Dalí, Matisse,
Stravinsky, Schönberg, and Hindemith."Postmodern architecture," again,
is "very different from postmodern literary
criticism"(Griffin,"Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive
Postmodern Thought,"p. x).
In "some circles," Griffin continues, "the term_ postmodern_
is used in reference to that potpourri of ideas and systems sometimes
called _new age metaphysics_, although many of these ideas and systems
are more premodern than postmodern." Then, he adds, "even in
philosophical and theological circles" in academia, "the term
_postmodern_ refers to two quite different positions, one of which is
reflected in this series" (Griffin, "Introduction to SUNY Series in
Constructive Postmodern Thought," p. x). Both positions seek to
"transcend both _modernism_ in the sense of the worldview that has
developed out of the seventeenth century
Galilean-Cartesian-Baconian-Newtonian science, and _modernity_ in the
sense of the world order that both conditioned and was conditioned by
this world-view." However, "the two positions seek to transcend the
modern in different ways." (Griffin, "Introduction to SUNY Series in
Constructive Postmodern Thought," p. x).
"Closely related to literary-artistic postmodernism,"
Griffin finds a "philosophical postmodernism inspired variously by
pragmatism, physicalism, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, and
Jacques Derrida and other recent French thinkers." This "can be called
__deconstructive_ or _eliminative postmodernism._ Griffin feels that it
"overcomes the modern worldview through an anti-worldview." It
"deconstructs or eliminates the ingredients necessary for a worldview,
such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth as
correspondence." While it is "motivated in some cases by the ethical
concern to forestall totalitarianism," Griffin feels that "this type of
postmodern thought issues in relativism, even nihilism." It indeed
"could also be called _ultramodernism_, in that its eliminations result
from carrying modern premises to their logical conclusions" (Griffin,
"Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought," p.
x). This "ultramodernism," as Griffin calls it, is of course the
"postmodernism" associated with figures like Michel Foucault, Jacques
Derrida, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, and
Richard Rorty. In a somewhat revised version of this "Introduction" in
his _Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts_ (SUNY
Press, 2000), Griffin derives "deconstructive" or "eliminative"
postmodernism from the thought of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and "a
cluster of French thinkers--including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault,
Gilles Deleuze, and Julie Kristéva" (p. x).
By contrast, the "postmodernism" of Griffin's "SUNY Series
in Constrictive Postmodern Thought" is a "_constructive_ or
_revisionary_" postmodernism. It "seeks to overcome the modern worldview
not by eliminating the possibility of worldviews as such," but rather by
"constructing a postmodern worldview through a revision of modern
premises and traditional concepts." It "involves a new unity of
scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions." It "rejects
not science as such but only that scientism in which the data of the
modern natural sciences are alone allowed to contribute to the
construction of our worldview" (Griffin, "Introduction to SUNY Series in
Constructive Postmodern Thought," p. x).
Such "constructive activity" is "not limited to a revised
worldview," but is "equally concerned with a postmodern world that will
support and be supported by the new worldview" (Griffin, "Introduction
to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought," pp. x-xi). A
"postmodern world,' Griffin feels, will "involve postmodern persons,
with a postmodern spirituality," and also a "postmodern society,
ultimately a postmodern global order." Going beyond the "modern world"
involves "transcending its individualism, anthropocentrism, patriarchy,
mechanization, economism, consumerism, nationalism, and militarism."
Griffin believes that the "constructive postmodern thought" he advocates
"provides support for the ecology, peace, feminist, and other
emancipatory movements of our time," but adds that "the inclusive
emancipation must be from modernity itself." Griffin adds that the "term
_postmodern_, however, by contrast with _premodern_, emphasizes that the
modern world has produced unparalleled advances that must not be lost in
a general revulsion against its negative features" (Griffin,
"Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought," p.
xi). Thus, Griffin does not want to restore the "good old days" of the
feudal Middle Ages, Puritan New England, or the ante-bellum Southern
plantation, to drive women back to the kitchen, Blacks back to the
cotton-fields, or Jews back to the ghetto, to force women to
wear_chadors_ and Jews to wear yellow Stars of David, or to bring back
witch-burning and the Holy Inquisition! Despite his critique of
"modernity," Griffin does not want to do away with democracy,
penicillin, smallpox vaccination, birth control, telephones, and
computers, or return the Bourbon, Habsburg, and Romanov dynasties to
their thrones!
Griffin admits that from the viewpoint of the
"deconstructive postmodernists" like Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard,
Jean-François Lyotard, and Richard Rorty,his "constructive
postmodernism" is "still hopelessly wedded to outdated concepts" like
God, soul, truth, meaning, and purpose, "because it wishes to salvage a
positive meaning not only for the notions of the human self, historical
meaning, and truth as correspondence, which were central to modernity,
but also for premodern notions of a divine reality, cosmic meaning, and
an enchanted nature." From the viewpoint of its "advocates," however,
Griffin sees his "revisionary postmodernism" as "not only more adequate
to our experience" than the deconstructive postmodernism of Derrida,
Baudrillard, and Rorty, "but also more genuinely postmodern." Griffin's
constructive postmodernism "does not simply carry the premises of
modernity through to their logical conclusions" like the followers of
"but criticizes and revises those premises." Through its "return to
organicism" and its "acceptance of nonsensory perception," Griffin's
constructive postmodernism "opens itself to the recovery of truths and
values from various forms of premodern thought and practice that had
been dogmatically rejected by modernity." It "involves a creative
synthesis of modern and premodern truths and values"(Griffin,
"Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought," p. xi).
--
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com >
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