Talk:Postmodern philosophy

2019 Overhaul

This page has been linked to on r/badphilosophy on reddit. Particularly people seemed annoyed at the characteristic claims section. Given this and the current surge in discussion about postmodernism (largely prompted by people who know very little about postmodernism,) it seems that the page is due for a major update. Lerlay (talk) 01:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I've cleaned up this talk page as a first step, archiving a lot of the old discussions that made this page really difficult to navigate although given how messy everything was, I wasn't exactly discriminating, however, and will probably move some of those discussions back here at some point. Hopefully a cleaner talkpage will allow for greater collaboration. I'm also adding a TODO section at the top so that if anybody stumbles across this article and wants to know what to fix then they'll be better able to. Lerlay (talk) 21:45, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Random smalltalk

Can we please pay attention to what actual philosophers have written on this topic, instead of just looking at the Britannica and Merriam definitions. Here are good sources https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMbnrD5stPo User:Aesthesia9 —Preceding undated comment added 22:12, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

This is the most important part imo - Pokerplayer513 (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

---

Characteristic Claims section

Terrible first paragraph, all of which is cites only an encyclopedia entry. I don't know what common practices are for references for wikipedia, but I don't think referring to another encyclopedia is good practice personally. Furthermore whoever wrote this section obviously has a very strenuous grasp on postmodernism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eqqsalab (talk • contribs) 23:15, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

History

This section is really difficult to follow and the history of it isn't really explained. Currently it would be better titled 'Influences' and even then it would need expanding. There needs to be at least a discussion of Derrida's deconstruction, Modernism, Structuralism, and Post-Structuralism. All of these are the more specific history of postmodern philosophy rather than simply listing the philosophers who led to it. Lerlay (talk) 21:45, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Identity politics, meatpuppeting

@Simonm223: the revert I made re-added the long-standing material that tied the postmodern philosophy to identity politics. The information has been in the article since April 2016[1]. There was a recent WP:MEATPUPPET campaign in Reddit to rework this article ("editing help needed", Reddit link). Apparently 86.181.178.158 (talk · contribs) heeded that call, but I reverted his deletion.

The Encyclopædia Britannica source[2], by their senior philosophy editor Brian Duignan, states that: In the 1980s and ’90s, academic advocates on behalf of various ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious groups embraced postmodern critiques of contemporary Western society, and postmodernism became the unofficial philosophy of the new movement of “identity politics.”. Is there a reason to exclude this source and information? I think not. Also pinging the editor who added this information in 2016: @Rolf h nelson:. --Pudeo (talk) 18:48, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I challenge that the supposed link between so-called "identity politics" and postmodern philosophy is not WP:DUE or relevant to the topic of this article. People don't come here to find out about the fight for equality against the forces of bigotry, but for information on a philosophical movement. I don't go to reddit and can't speak to what might happen in that awful place but I can assure you that what I'm seeing here is the insertion of irrelevant miscellany into a philosophical article that happens also to be a dog-whistle for extreme-right types and their puerile attempts to discredit the concept of equality.

Furthermore, the fully modernist roots of a lot of equality movements is pretty clear if you review the works of, for instance, Simone De Beauvoir. tl;dr, I challenged your edit. I reverted your edit. Please demonstrate consensus supports the inclusion of this trivia. Simonm223 (talk) 19:34, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Sure, the content dispute can be extracted from the meatpuppeting, but that's how it began. Defining or describing postmodernism is notoriously difficult, but Britannica is a reliable source and checking the history of that article, it's from 2014 - before the alt-right or Jordan B. Peterson phenomenon even existed. And just because some piece of information may be an extreme right "talking point", it's not a reason to remove it if it's backed by a RS. It is understood that identity politics movements use postmodernist tools like deconstructivism to critique power structures of groups higher in hierarchy. Honestly, making a RfC because of one sentence directly sourced to Britannica is ridiculous, but I will do that if you are determined to revert. Or perhaps you want to dispute the source at WP:RSN? --Pudeo (talk) 20:28, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

The issue isn't whether Britannica is a reliable source. It's whether the point merits inclusion in Wikipedia. That's what I dispute. Simonm223 (talk) 20:31, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

OK, I'll probably initiate a RfC after waiting 24 hrs for further comments, and if there aren't any, I'll go ahead and list it at rfc|reli and rfc|pol. --Pudeo (talk) 20:42, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I fail to see how rfc|reli is a relevant place to list this issue. Simonm223 (talk) 21:47, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC about relation to identity politics

Should the "Characteristic claims" section contain a mention of political similarities with the modern identity politics?

Previous discussion: Talk:Postmodern philosophy#Identity politics, meatpuppeting --Pudeo (talk) 12:48, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Poll

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a consensus against including a mention of political similarities with the modern identity politics. (non-admin closure) --DannyS712 (talk) 06:48, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

---

• Yes Per the Encyclopædia Britannica source[3], by their senior philosophy editor Brian Duignan, which states that: In the 1980s and ’90s, academic advocates on behalf of various ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious groups embraced postmodern critiques of contemporary Western society, and postmodernism became the unofficial philosophy of the new movement of “identity politics.” Although defining postmodernism is notoriously difficult and it may be a controversial issue, I don't think it's in any way undue to mention this connection briefly in the section. It's not even the lede. --Pudeo (talk) 12:51, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: Perhaps if identity politics is mentioned in the article it should be given more than a passing mention like it was before. The source does not claim that postmodern philosophy has political similarities with identity politics; it says identity politics utilises postmodern critiques. Therefore, this is what should be stated in the article rather than how it was before (if it is decided that this should be mentioned). Alduin2000 (talk) 03:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
• No Wikipedia is not a random collection of trivia and whether or not people who are engaged in the fight for equal rights use postmodern critique is irrelevant to the subject of this article. It's just a dog whistle, plain and simple. As, frankly, is use of the term, "identity politics," in the first place. Simonm223 (talk) 13:07, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
• No Identity politics is the only mention of anything political in what should be a philosophical article. None of the other versions up until April, 2016 when User:Rolf h nelson added the Encyclopedia entry that includes "identity politics"(in scare quotes) with a dead link[4]. It's not well defined, it doesn't explain how it's connected to postmodernism, it just states it. It just seems like it's thrown in there with no connection to the rest of the article. If a particular philosopher said something about identity politics that would make things clearer especially considering I believe many of them don't support "identity politics." Pokerplayer513 (talk) 00:15, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
• No for the simple reason that the source does not speak of such similarities, it speaks of advocates of various forms of ip embracing pm critiques. Whether a mention is deserved, I am not sure, but endorse what Pokerplayer513 says about the need for greater clarity. The proposed text however is simply factually wrong. Pincrete (talk) 11:02, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Modernist Philosophy

Surprisingly there doesn't appear to be any page on Wikipedia specific to modernist philosophy with most work between the end of Kant's career and the beginning of Lacan's being divided into specific modernist schools such as Existentialism, Dialectical materialism, Structuralism etc.

Modernism is primarily concerned with the artistic movements of modernism rather than the associated philosophical ones, notwithstanding the extent to which they informed each other. That said, Modernism#Origins does make explicit reference to early modernist philosophers, which provides a decent redirect target for now. And then we might want to start thinking about developing a Modernism (philosophy) page. Simonm223 (talk) 13:53, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Scope change in Postmodernism

I recently found out that Postmodernism has been retooled to an article on postmodern philosophy rather than postmodern art. I think a merge with Postmodernism or a redirect to there is in order but I'm curious what others think. Simonm223 (talk) 12:46, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Simonm223. The hatnote at Postmodernism reads, "This page is about the movement" (and doesn't even mention this page). While the opening sentence of this page reads, "Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement". I can't tell much difference in scope. They should either be merged or differentiated somehow. Larataguera (talk) 13:22, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Criticism Section

This section is really vague without citations. This would be much better if it referenced actual prominent critics of postmodern philosophy who have attempted to come up with something that moves beyond it, like those of Strauss, Jameson, Chomsky, or Habermas. Could even reference some of the debates between its proponents and critics, such as the one between Chomsky and Foucault or Habermas and Derrida.

There does seem to be a wiki on this but it's more general than just philosophy and kind of a mess of punditry mixed with more serious criticism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism 24.20.11.200 (talk) 10:37, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

3/18/23 Edit

I just made a fairly major reformatting of the article in order to make it appear more like other articles on philosophical movements, like German idealism. Not much of the actual text was changed, so there is still a lot of reworking this article needs. A lot of it needs to be more fleshed out, but I don't really have the time nor the expertise in Postmodernism to do so. Ryan Gosling0 (talk) 07:28, 18 March 2023 (UTC)