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An article examining the Christian's response to the postmodern world.

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A Christian Response To Postmodernity by Rev. Bryn MacPhail How should the Church respond to postmodernism? Should we embrace it? Or should we run and hide from it? This essay will argue that the first option of "embracing" postmodernity would be extremely dangerous, but at the same time, "running and hiding" is not an option for the Church either.

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In additional effort to explore how postmodern thought has infiltrated society, here is an article about how postmodern thought is affecting science (specifically the scientific method).

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The scientific method has been the guiding principle for investigating natural phenomena, but postmodernist thought is starting to threaten the foundations of the scientific approach. The rational, scientific view of the world has been painstakingly built over millennia to guarantee that research can have access to objective reality: the world, for science, contains real objects and is governed by physical laws that existed before our knowledge of these objects and laws. Science attempts to describe the world independently of belief by seeking universal truths, on the basis of observation, measurement and experimentation. The postmodernist school of thought arose to question these assumptions, postulating that claims about the existence of a real world-the knowledge of which is attainable as an objective truth-have only been relevant in Western civilization since the Enlightenment. In recent decades, the movement has begun to question the validity of claims of scientific truth, whether on the basis of their belonging to larger cultural frames or through heavy criticism of the scientific method.

However, postmodernist thought has mostly gone unnoticed by scientists, despite its growing importance in the twentieth century. The origins of this 'deconstruction' of the 'Enlightenment project' can be traced back to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was among the first to question our ability to discern objective truth: "In so far as the word 'knowledge' has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings" ( The Will to Power, 1883-1888; [ 1]). During the late twentieth century, postmodern philosophy picked up where Nietzsche left off. In his book, Against Method (1975; [ 2]), philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend argued that the progress of acquiring scientific knowledge is not governed by any useful and universal methodological rules, and summarized this "epistemological anarchy" as "anything goes". The concept of paradigm shift proposed by Thomas Kuhn in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962; [ 3]), has also given weight to the critics of science and of its pretension to understand reality. If science is not a gradual process of accumulation of knowledge, but rather subject to sudden "revolutions" that overwhelm outdated theories, they argue, how can one trust scientific knowledge? If, as according to Kuhn, scientific revolutions are also political upheavals in scientific policy, it is easy to understand why Kuhn's theory has attracted so much attention in a period that calls into question the established political order in the Western world.

The rational, scientific view of the world has been painstakingly built over millennia to guarantee that research can have access to objective reality

This 'deconstruction' gained momentum when it was also adopted in the realm of the sociology of science, particularly in the so-called 'strong programme' belonging to a school of thought known as 'science studies' [ 4]. The 'strong programme' or 'strong sociology' was a reaction to previous sociologies of science that had only been applied to failed or false theories. 'Strong sociology' claims that the existence of a scientific community, bound together by allegiance to a shared paradigm, is a prerequisite for scientific activity, and that as such, both 'true' and 'false' scientific theories should be treated equally, as both are the result of social factors or conditions. Several deconstructionist thinkers, such as Bruno Latour and Ian Hacking, have rejected the idea that the concepts of science can be derived from a direct interaction with natural phenomena independently of the social environment in which we think about them. The central goal of science, defining what is true and what is false, becomes meaningless they argue, as its objectivity is reduced to 'claims' that are simply the expression of one culture-one community-among many. Thus, all systems of thought are different "constructs" of reality and all additionally have political connotations and agendas.

As Simon Shackley and Brian Wynne have written with regard to defining uncertainty in climate change science policy from the perspective of science studies: "...the mere occurrence of uncertainty talk is not interesting unless we can document and interpret its construction, representation, and/or translation. According to constructivist accounts, representations of uncertainty do not reflect an underlying 'reality' or a given 'state of objective knowledge' but are constructed in particular situations with certain effects" [ 5]. The inverted commas around 'reality' and 'objective knowledge' are there to shed doubt on what is expressed. Thus, science being in constant dispute, controversy becomes the essence of science.

As Shawn Lawrence Otto discussed in his book, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America (2011; [ 6]), in conjunction with the emergence of multiculturalism and the civil rights movement, 'relativism'-and its direct attacks on the validity and the authority of science, and not only that of scientists-gained a strong moral influence, first in post-Second World War America and then in Europe. If there is no universal truth, as postmodern philosophy claims, then each social or political group should have the right to the reality that best suits them. What, then, are the consequences of applying postmodernist thinking when it comes to science? Risk assessment provides illuminating examples of how it corrupts the role of science in the public sphere, especially if one considers the dispute over genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The idea that GMOs are harmful to the environment and humans arose mainly from opposition to biotechnology from some agricultural groups and environmentalists. These farmers in particular felt disempowered by globalization and feared that technology and scientific research might increase global corporate power to their detriment. Whilst environmental groups initially raised sensible concerns about potential environmental damage, they soon shifted to an ideological position of opposition, as science demonstrated that such risks are often small, sometimes hypothetical and generally not specific to GMOs. Given the lack of scientific evidence to support the purported health or environmental effects of GMOs, opponents have moved on to attack the risk assessment of GM crops. Scientific authorities are not only questioned on the quality and honesty of their experts-which is unpleasant for them but a matter of legitimate debate-but also attacked, by postmodernism, on the scientific method and its universality.

Scientific authorities are not only questioned on the quality and honesty of their experts [...] but also attacked, by postmodernism, on the scientific method and its universality

In such a postmodern framing, these politically constructed claims about the dangers of GMOs bear as much 'truth' as science-based risk assessment. Scientists who object to these claims on the grounds of a lack of scientific merit often find themselves accused of being intellectually stuck in the old paradigm of 'scientism', or are told that scientists cannot be trusted, as illustrated by examples of past health scandals or scientific errors unrelated to GMOs. At the extreme, such thinking can lead to violence against research and researchers, such as the destruction of field trials designed to assess the safety of GM crops [ 7]. In this way, not only do anti-GM groups assert their own 'truth' in justifying their actions-such attacks are rarely condemned-but they also deny scientists the opportunity to discover and demonstrate the objective truth about the safety of GMOs. Has a postmodern framing given more power to the people or more control over the use of biotechnology? Has it enhanced the public understanding of scientific processes? Apparently not, as opinion polls still indicate that after 15 years of 'debate', most people-74% in a March 2012 poll in France-think "it is difficult to form an opinion about GMOs" ( http://www.ipsos.fr/sites/default/files/attachments/rapport_quanti_ogm.pdf).

As part of their campaign against GM crops, activists have tried repeatedly to undermine the credibility of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which performs risk assessments for GM crop varieties ( http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/news/efsaanswersback.htm). The reason that the EFSA and its scientists have become targets is that individual EU member states cannot reach consensus on whether to allow the cultivation of GM crops [ 8]. As such, the decision falls to the European Commission, which usually follows the EFSA's advice. Given the political paralysis, the EFSA has become the de facto reference for risk management and, consequently, the target of political groups seeking a complete and indefinite ban on GM crops. Thus, anti-GMO activists are following Arthur Schopenhauer's (1788-1860) 'ultimate stratagem' for a dispute that your opponent is winning: you move on from the subject of the dispute to the disputant himself, attacking his person and, in this case, his independence ( Eristic Dialectics: The Art Of Being Right, 1831).

...if science is not objective [...] then risk assessment by the EFSA is merely a 'framing of truth' [...] which can be countered by any other group of people with their own [...] 'truths'

In this context, some postmodern discourses have sought to undermine the EFSA's science-based risk assessment, by accusing it of wearing "a false mantle of objective, singular and uncontestable science" [ 9]. From this it follows that if science is not objective and that if its truths are heavily influenced by the opinions of scientists-and the EFSA does call its scientific conclusions 'opinions', rather than facts, for example-then risk assessment by the EFSA is merely a 'framing of truth' by a panel of people with shared presuppositions, which can be countered by any other group of people with their own frame or set of 'truths'. More insidiously, such thinking can convince political authorities to abandon the "rigid division" [ 9] between scientific and non-scientific knowledge, and thereby open the door wide for what are called 'participative' policies. However, if these 'participative' policies and the involvement of stakeholders can be considered as relevant and legitimate where decision-making is concerned, they cannot and ought not to interfere with what are ultimately scientific questions.

For example, the French Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) and several other laboratories have developed transgenic grapevine rootstocks that are potentially resistant to the grapevine fanleaf virus (GFLV). Non-GM plants were grafted onto these GM rootstocks and a first field trial was set up in the Champagne region of France in 1996. This trial was terminated in 1999 due to pressure from a retail chain on the Champagne producer involved. INRA resumed its interest in these trials in 2001, officially to "deal with the challenges" that field trials are essential for research but might face public opposition [ 10]. A participative approach was chosen and a working group was set up in 2001. This initial consultation step provided support to restart the trial under certain conditions. However, even these conditions did not satisfy radical anti-GMO activists, who criticized the INRA initiative as being a "programme of opinion manipulation" [ 11]. In the spring of 2003, a Local Monitoring Committee (LMC) was set up for the new field trial at the INRA Centre in Colmar in France. The LMC had 'broad stakeholder representation', which is to say that a large number of representatives from 'green' organizations were involved. As a result, INRA congratulated itself for having developed "a research-action method based on the principle of both acknowledging the learning of all parties and also the validity of other modes of reasoning" [ 10]. In truth, under the influence of the 'green' organizations, the LMC had actually redesigned the transgenic grapevine research trial to push for new research "on the environmental impact of GMO rootstocks as well as on the alternatives for controlling GFLV using organic viticulture". Ultimately, the field trial was vandalized by an individual in September 2009, restarted with unanimous support from the LMC and then uprooted by 65 activists in August 2010 (INRA press statement, 2010: http://www.international.inra.fr/press/destruction_of_a_gmo_trial).

...the danger of a postmodern approach to science, that seeks to include all points of view as equally valid, is that it slows down or prevents much needed scientific research

In May 2009, the French High Council of Biotechnologies (HCB; www.hautconseildesbiotechnologies.fr) was founded to advise French politicians on biotechnology. It is composed of two separate entities: the Scientific Committee (CS), which has 39 members, and the Social, Ethical and Economic Committee (CEES), which has 26 members who represent a range of stakeholders from 'green' organizations, farmers' unions and workers' unions, to representatives of state institutions, political parties and a few 'qualified' personalities. The scientific points of view of the CS are examined by the CEES, which then makes recommendations to deal with the economic and social impacts of GM crop imports and cultivation. In line with its anti-GMO policy [ 4], the government of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave most positions on the CEES to members of organizations known to oppose GMOs. As a result, and as explained by representatives of the workers union, the CFDT: "instead of analysing the pros and cons of each innovation, a diffuse majority favours description of methods allegedly to avoid the use of the examined biotech crops. Ideological assertions are mixed with agronomic arguments" ( http://alternatives-economiques.fr/blogs/bompard/archives/150; translated here from French by M. Kuntz).

The French government has repeatedly cited the CEES as a model for 'improved' GMO evaluation in Europe, but the CEES has never produced a consensus, which was its alleged mission. For example, after the destruction of the Colmar field trial, several organizations represented in the CEES endorsed the criminal act through statements in the press and during a plenary CEES meeting ( http://alternatives-economiques.fr/blogs/bompard/archives/150). This shocked members of the CEES, and the ongoing disagreements between environmental groups and organic farming unions on the one hand, and other stakeholders on the other, eventually led to the resignations of several members of the CEES, including the representative of the CFDT, on 17 January 2012. The latter, Jeanne Grosclaude, has written of the problems: "The reason was the radical refusal of any rule or agreement for coexistence claimed by a small number of environmental associations and organic farmers organizations. Their attitude forbids the CEES in the future to analyse any demand for growing genetically modified plants with an open-minded view and to provide decision-making authorities with a balanced proposal. Any further participation to the debate would be useless" ( http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/1/39/38/37/Comments-from-J_Grosclaude.pdf).

...implicit in the idea of an EFSA scientist and a non-EFSA scientist is the idea of 'EFSA science'-which cannot be trusted-and 'non-EFSA science'-which presumably can

Thus, the danger of a postmodern approach to science, that seeks to include all points of view as equally valid, is that it slows down or prevents much needed scientific research, even denying that science should have a role in such decisions. Of course, such a postmodern approach, which raises the value of 'independent' views to the same level as scientific ones, is usually justified by the apparently reasonable political and democratic need for the pluralistic expression of opinions. Indeed, some politicians openly support anti-technology activists in the name of democracy and freedom of speech. For example, in January 2011, members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE; www.alde.eu), a group of politicians within the European Parliament, organized a seminar on the risk evaluation of GMOs. The invited speakers were a Senior Scientific Officer from the EFSA, who faced representatives from both the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) and the Committee of Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN); two openly anti-GMO organizations.

The announcement of the seminar was steeped in thinly veiled accusations against the EFSA and the independence of its scientists. Member of the European Parliament (MEP)-and founder of CRIIGEN-Corine Lepage, who co-organized the ALDE seminar, asserted that "it is crucial for policy-makers to have access to unbiased expertise and to consider all sides of an argument. Fact-finding processes should be systematically organized to hear all sides, as in a court room." MEP George Lyon, co-organizer, found similarly that "it is vital for farmers, consumers and the environment that the impasse between the two opposing sides be broken". ALDE itself announced the seminar on its website by stating that the EFSA "has been criticized by independent scientists, NGOs [and] farmers' unions" ( http://www.alde.eu/event-seminar/events-details/article/seminar-gmo-risk-evaluation-a-contradictory-debate-35941/). The whole event implied that EFSA scientists are not independent and that trustworthy views from outside the EFSA should be sought. Moreover, implicit in the idea of an EFSA scientist and a non-EFSA scientist is the idea of 'EFSA science'-which cannot be trusted-and 'non-EFSA science'-which presumably can. In reality, however, there is only one science, as defined by the application of the scientific method in an objective and unbiased manner.

Given the foregoing, with the respectable aim to 'break' an impasse, it becomes clear that politicians hoist to the rank of major interlocutor a kind of 'parallel science'. Unlike regular science, 'parallel science' serves political goals and describes itself with positive-sounding terms such as 'science in society', 'concerned', 'responsible', 'independent' and 'citizen' science, which the 'other' science is not. It aims to substitute apolitical scientists, especially for risk assessment, with 'experts' sympathetic to the cause; they can be from official institutions, universities or self-proclaimed, irrespective of whether their opinion is accepted by other scientists or whether their research methods and conclusions are trustworthy.

'Parallel science' emulates normal scientific research: it is published in scholarly journals, it is the subject of international meetings, seminars and congresses, and it is supported by both public and private funding. What distinguishes parallel scientists from 'normal' scientists, however, is that their conclusions are invariably predictable-that GM crops are a danger to human health and the environment for instance-and that criticisms or rebuttals of their results or conclusions will neither change their views nor the conclusion of their next publication.

...environmental organizations at large have a vested interest in teaming up with a postmodernism view of science [...] the aim is to attack the science that stands against their agenda

Since anti-GMO organizations have based their communication strategy on claims of risk that are by and large rejected by the scientific community, it is logical that these organizations, in their non-compromising political strategy, try to deconstruct science. Thus, anti-GMO groups and environmental organizations at large have a vested interest in teaming up with a postmodernism view of science as a social construct; the aim is to attack the science that stands against their agenda. Thus, postmodernist sociologists-mostly in the discipline called 'science studies'-have recognized this opposition to innovation as an opportunity to increase their influence and funding possibilities: "not only must existing controversies be welcomed and recognized as participating in democratization of democracy, but in addition they should be encouraged, stimulated, and organized" [ 12].

In the face of alleged uncertainties, many politicians and citizens find it reassuring to examine several 'truths' and shifting paradigms in risk assessment. However, doing so with no reference to indisputable scientific knowledge [ 13] renders risk assessment unscientific, increases uncertainty and paves the way for arbitrary decisions. This form of postmodernist assault on science has been difficult to grasp for many scientists, because it comes disguised in the clothes of democracy, freedom of speech and tolerance of opinion. However, as the GMO dispute has shown, scientists will never be able to win in postmodern courtroom-style debates: all "social constructs" of science are equal, but some are more equal than others.

​

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The postmodern assault on science: If all truths are equal, who cares what science has to say?

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The scientific method has been the guiding principle for investigating natural phenomena, but postmodernist thought is starting to threaten the foundations of the scientific approach. The rational, scientific view of the world has been painstakingly built over millennia to guarantee that research can have access to objective reality: the world, for science, contains real objects and is governed by physical laws that existed before our knowledge of these objects and laws.

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This is a chart examining the differences between modern and postmodern thought and the influences they have on the education system. After many conversations about postmodern thought influencing more of our culture than we are aware of, I wanted to explore more about different aspects of society that are infiltrated by postmodern thought.

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Comparing Modernist and Postmodern Educational Theory | Xenos Christian Fellowship

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Modernist Theory Postmodernist Theory Knowledge Educators ideally should be authoritative transmitters of unbiased knowledge Educators are biased facilitators and co-"constructors" of knowledge. Culture

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You may have to download this, but it is a scholarly article analyzing the argument that was made in Jensen's essay. It has very interesting points, claiming that his argument is among one of the most important for the Christians living in a post modern world.

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This is an interesting article exploring how postmodernism has been integrated into therapeutic settings

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Postmodern Psychology – Introduction
Postmodern psychology is summed-up well by Walter Truett Anderson, "All ideas about human reality are social constructions." ¹

Psychology, understood as the study of the psyche, or soul, has fallen on hard times. Traditionally, we understood our personal identity as what we are born with—a stable, unified soul including mind, heart, will, and conscience. Yet, in recent years, our Postmodern condition has made the concept of a "soul" obsolete. Now, instead of being a soul, we are confronted with a multiplicity of "selves." ²

Hazel Rose Markus, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, calls this "the most exciting time in psychology in decades and decades." We have begun to realize, she says, that "there isn't just one answer to the 'Who am I?' question." Mitchell Stephens, a journalism professor at New York University explains that "mutating lifestyles and changing intellectual currents have led a group of increasingly influential psychologists—Postmodern psychologists seems to be the name that is sticking—to the conclusion that we have no single, separate, unified self. They maintain that we contain many selves and that the proper response to the suggestion 'Get in touch with yourself' or 'Be yourself' is 'Which one?'" ³

Stephens offers the following example to clarify this point. "Consider...Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones' lead singer was and, if the tabloids are to be believed, remains a classic libertine, but he is also a father and, until recently at least, a family man. Jagger is a rock'n'roller, a bohemian, whose songs and lifestyle challenge traditional standards of behavior; yet he travels in upper-class British circles, hobnobbing with dukes and princesses. Jagger can be coarse and crude, yet he knows his nonfiction and his vintages. Which is the real Mick? His answer: all of the above. 'People find it very hard to accept that you can be all these things at almost the same time,' Jagger has complained." ⁴

Postmodern Psychology – The Socially-Constructed Self
According to philosopher Allan Bloom, "The self is the modern substitute for the soul." ⁵ In other words, the traditional idea of an immaterial soul as being the seat of our personal identity has been replaced with the Postmodern notion of socially constructed "selves." Reflecting historically on how this shift came about, Bloom suggests that society's earlier preoccupation with the soul "inevitably led to neglect of this world in favor of the other world," ⁶ giving the priest, as the guardian of the soul, increased influence and power. This, in turn corrupted kings. "Princes were rendered ineffective by their own or their subjects' opinions about the salvation of their soul, while men slaughtered each other wholesale because of differences of such opinion. The care of the soul crippled men in the conduct of their lives." ⁷

As a result, there developed a backlash against the soul. This shift was set in motion by Machiavelli (1460) and Thomas Hobbes (1651), who replaced the idea of the soul with "a feeling self." As Bloom comments, Machiavelli and Hobbes "blazed the trail to the self, which has grown into the highway of a ubiquitous psychology without the psyche (soul)." ⁸

But the transformation did not stop there. By the time the French political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau came on the scene in the early 1700s, the self had degenerated into individual self-interest. Rousseau observed that self-interest was not a sufficient base for establishing "the common good," a necessary foundation for political life.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Postmodern psychology had taken the emphasis on self-interest to its logical extreme. If there is no God's-eye-view of what constitutes the individual, we are left to the changing whims of our social condition telling us who and what we are. And, as it turns out, the answers are as varied as there are people to express them.

Postmodern Psychology – The Denial of Human Nature
Elaborating on the condition of Postmodern psychology, Bloom explains, "Man is a culture being, not a natural being. What man has from nature [biology] is nothing compared to what he has acquired from culture. A culture, like the language that accompanies and expresses it, is a set of mere accidents that add up to a coherent meaning constitutive of man." ⁹

Traditionally people sensed that both nature and culture are important for human development. But once the move was set in motion to negate nature and accent culture, Postmodernists jumped to banish nature altogether. This left only culture to shape the human psyche.

For Foucault, each of us is "a being which is at least partially subjected to socially produced constraints and divisions." ¹⁰ He sees "the modern-day notion of the self [as] bound up with, and inseparable from, the workings of social structures and institutions." ¹¹ There is, therefore, no distinction "between public and private selves implied by the concept of human nature nor can the individual be reduced to individual consciousness." ¹²

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is an important Postmodern text. Deleuze and Guattari reject the idea that the soul is naturally whole, unified, or coherent; rather it is a harmful illusion. Instead, they see the self as a flux of desires and intensities caught up in an ongoing process of change.

With the denial of human nature complete, the stage was set for the Postmodern definition of the socially constructed self. Ward explains, "There are many sides to the unfolding story of Postmodern identity, but the starting point is that the self is fundamentally social." ¹³

Postmodern Psychology – The Denial of Human Nature
Compared to Postmodern psychology, Christian psychology is founded on the concept of soul (mind, heart), self-identity, and self-awareness (1 Thessalonians 5:23). In Genesis 2:7, we learn that God breathed and mankind became a living soul. In Matthew 10:28, Jesus warns us not to fear those who can kill the body, but rather fear the one who can kill the body (soma) and soul (psyche) in hell (gehenna).

J.P. Moreland summarizes the biblical concept of our identity when he says, "Human beings are composed of an immaterial entity—a soul, a life principle, a ground of sentience—and a body. More specifically, a human being is a unity of two distinct entities—body and soul." ¹⁴

Originally "psychology" meant the study of the psyche (soul). Now that we have entered into a post-Christian culture, maybe psychologists need to search for another name to describe their profession. Perhaps this is what Christian psychologist Paul C. Vitz had in mind when he wrote the article, "Psychology in Recovery." Vitz offers the following suggestion at the end of his article, "I close on a guardedly optimistic note. On the horizon I see the potential for a psychology that I call 'transmodern.' By this term I mean a new mentality that both transcends and transforms modernity. Thus, it will leave both modern and Postmodern psychology behind. It will bring in transcendent understanding that may be idealistic and philosophical (e.g., the virtues), as well as spiritual and religious. It will transform modernity by bringing in an intelligent understanding of much of premodern wisdom....In such a transmodern world, psychology would be the handmaid of philosophy and theology, as from the beginning it was meant to be." ¹⁵

Learn More!

Notes:

Rendered with permission from the book,Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today's Competing Worldviews (Rev. 2nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.

¹ Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used To Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 3.
² Quoted in Mitchell Stephens, "To Thine Own Selves be True," Los Angeles Times Magazine (August 23, 1992). Online article accessed August 10, 2005: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Postmodern%20psych%20page.htm.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 173.
⁶ Ibid., 174.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid., 175.
⁹ Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 190.
¹⁰ Glen Ward, Postmodernism (Chicago, IL: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2003), 142.
¹¹ Ibid., 141.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Ibid., 118.
¹⁴ J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body & Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in Ethics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 17. Students are directed to Moreland and Rae's work along with editor William Dembski's work on materialism to be released in 2007. Its working title is The End of Materialism.
¹⁵ Paul C. Vitz, "Psychology in Recover," First Things (March 2005), http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0503/articles/vitz.html.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

- We have all sinned and deserve God's judgment. God, the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus, the creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried, and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior, declaring, " Jesus is Lord," you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in heaven.

What is your response?

Yes, today I am deciding to follow Jesus

Yes, I am already a follower of Jesus

I still have questions

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Postmodern Psychology - Introduction Postmodern psychology is summed-up well by Walter Truett Anderson, "All ideas about human reality are social constructions." 1 Psychology, understood as the study of the psyche, or soul, has fallen on hard times. Traditionally, we understood our personal identity as what we are born with-a stable, unified soul including mind, heart, will, and conscience.

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Ted Talk about Why small narratives matter too

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Ted Talk about Why small narratives matter too

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The Minifesto - Why Small Ideas Matter in a World of Grand Narratives | Magnus Lindkvist | TEDxSSE

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Everyone seems to have some grand theory - a grand narrative - about where the world is heading. Yet the world changes when a single individual does something new, different. Small ideas are not big stories - in fact, they often sound strange and unrealistic before they become a reality.

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Here is a doodle video with an audio recording of the first chapter of abolition of man. It really helps it to see it drawn out!

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'Men without Chests' by C.S. Lewis Doodle (Chapter 1 of 'The Abolition of Man')

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C.S. Lewis takes a look at the heartless, frigid philosophy contained in modern elementary textbooks on English Literature. This is an illustration of the first chapter of 'The Abolition of Man' as it can be particularity hard to digest with its more than fifty literary references.

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While rewatching the office for the millionth time, I came across this interesting conversation between two characters on the office, Jim and his boss, Robert California. Surprisingly, it made Darwin's theory a little clearer because in the conversation, it appears that morality does not exist in the workplace. Here is the transcript:

Jim: Um... are you aware that Nellie is giving out raises?
Robert: I am not. Huh.
Jim: Yeah. She gave one to Dwight, Phyllis.
Robert: Let me guess, you want one too? Take the family to Disneytown?
Jim: Land. World. Uh, it's not that I don't want a-- well, yes, I guess I'd take a raise. That's not what I'm saying. That's not-- sorry.
Robert: Jim, I told Andy to come in, and yet he is still not in. By contrast, Nellie Bertram saw a vacuum and filled it. To make no mention of her business experience or her relationship with Jo Bennett, my boss.
Jim: Yes.
Robert: Jim, would you prefer a nature metaphor or a sexual metaphor?
Jim: Oh, god, nature, please.
Robert: When two animals are having sex, one of them...
Jim: [exhales sharply]
Robert: … is communicating a message to the other. Nothing is mutua-- this isn't very helpful. You're gonna want to hear the sexual metaphor.
Jim: Was that not the--
Robert: All life is sex. And all sex is competition.
Jim: Mm-hm.
Robert: And there are no rules to that game. That wasn't so perverted, now was it?
Jim: Was that it? No, that wasn't bad.
Robert: My point is, there is one person in charge of every office in America, and that person is Charles Darwin. In the end, doesn't he decide who the manager is?
Jim: No. I would've said no.

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Continuing discussion from class today on the existence of contextual truths, this group of educators in the podcast debate whether truth exists, and if so to what extent. Based on the Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (1873), this podcast offers some interesting perspectives.

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The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

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by Mark Linsenmayer

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:06 - 28.5MB)

On Friedrich Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (1873).

What is truth? This essay, written early in Nietzsche's career but unpublished during his lifetime, is taken by many to make the extreme claim that there is no truth, that all of the "truths" we tell each other are just agreements by social convention.

The regular foursome are joined by a U. Texas grad school classmate, Jessica Berry from Georgia State University. She argues that Nietzsche is really just being a skeptic here: our "truths" don't correspond with the thing-in-itself, i.e. the world beyond our human conceptions. He wants us to understand that all knowledge is laden with human interests. Taken this way, the essay won't undermine itself; if he isn't saying "there is no truth," then that claim won't apply to itself.

What Nietzsche for sure does say is that the "will to truth" that philosophers so prize is puzzling, given how beneficial to our survival many mutually held illusions are: we're safe, things are stable, we understand our environment. When philosophers declare truth to be the most valuable thing, they're going beyond the mundane purposes for which the will to truth developed (e.g. communicating in a consistent way to our mutual benefit) and massively overestimating our capability to know the world as it "really" is.

Read more on the topic and buy the book. Wes has also created a guide to this episode that you can purchase here. You can also purchase a transcription of this episode (and read a big chunk of it for free).

End song: "Stupidly Normal," from Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio (1998). Download the album for free.
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Filed Under: Tagged With: Podcast Episodes epistemology, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jessica Berry, philosophy podcast, pragmatism, skepticism, truth, will to truth

The interesting question here (heart of the matter if you will) is that when we locate nature in ourselves as the grounding of our cultural fabrications (illusions or elaborations), why does it so often seem to be a culturally specific nature, a reflection of our own cozy cosmology. Which begs the question that when we naturalize man are we actually anthropomorphizing nature? And since there are many forms of man, are there also many natures? Or do we keep imposing our own natures on the natures of others?
Of course it was in the study and self-image of a historically specific society that Darwin found inspiration for analyzing natural processes (strictly speaking social Darwinism is a misnomer, it's the other way around).

It is the origins of truth that I find most disappointing in Nietzsche's text, a speculative pseudo-history on par with Hobbes' social contract or the musings of 19th century cultural evolutionists.

Certain naturalized presuppositions are hard to shake, so blatantly ethnocentric generalization about agency, truth, and lies crop up with regularity:
http://philosophybites.com/2012/08/daniel-dennett-on-free-will-worth-wanting.html

"is that when we locate nature in ourselves as the grounding of our cultural fabrications"
where does Nietzsche do this?

Indeed Nietzsche does not (though this doesn't make his historical account any more convincing). But when we turn to mischievous capuchin monkeys competing for food, I assumed that this was the turn the discussion was going to take. I'm sorry if I assumed too much (perhaps having just listened to Dennett my mind was on the issue).

Now that I think of it there is a certain naturalism to N's theory:

"Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation."

"What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth."

Though its not like we get a hierarchy of needs or anything of the sort...

gotcha, this would be perhaps the "philosophical" part of philosophical anthropology (and may tie in to the question of fiction and philo in the upcoming podcast, the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy, and the discussion around the Foucault episode on whether his genealogical project is best understood as straight history or as a kind of gestalt switch, intuition-pump), perhaps this fragment of "Homer's Contest"
might prove useful as we see that Nietzsche is not (and so really is unlike many contemporary evolutionary psychologists) really interested in making us feel at home in the world but rather is trying to dis-lodge us, give us the existential shock-treatment of recognition that we call the uncanny.
"If we speak of humanity, it is on the basic assumption that it should be that which
separates man from nature and is his mark of distinction. But in reality there is no such separation: 'natural' characteristics and those called speciﬁcally 'human' have grown together inextricably. Man, in his highest, ﬁnest powers, is all nature and carries nature's uncanny dual character in himself."

Yes, its that anti-utilitarian dislodging that I was expecting, not a neat functionalist account, which is why I was disappointed. Though it served as a basis of a critique of intellectual arrogance, I thought it lacked philosophical imagination. I suppose genealogical accounts are usually self-aware games, rather than naive attempts at historical reconstruction (something that Foucault is not particularly strong at, but he makes his point).
Though I quite like Foucault in a limited reading, a similar problem looms: the diversity of social life is dissolved into generalized power.

yes very good, I think that's an open question and why above I was suggesting my inclination which is to entertain something along the lines of the difference between trieb and instinkt, which has echoes of discussions of phusis and techne and or phusis and nomos.
The temptation of course is to read Freud and or Heidegger back into Nietzsche but I think that the error of treating Nietzsche as only a misinformed precursor to Dennett and co. is more like translating Freud's "seele" into technical jargon like "ego", not sure if they are going to do De Anima here or not but that would be an interesting addition to the mix.

Great podcast, thank you. Jessica was actually a fantastic guest who added much to the conversation, and drove you all to perform at a higher level. It think I detected actual sparks, there.

The main question is interesting: why does our culture assert the primacy of truth when illusions have worked so well? But the illusions only work well when the fact that they are illusions remains illusory - i.e., they are taken as truth. Is this BECAUSE we assert the primacy of truth, or are the two things coincident?

An interesting episode as I am currently reading Kathryn Schultz's, "Being Wrong," which explores this very topic.
http://www.amazon.com/Being-Wrong-Adventures-Margin-Error/dp/0061176052/ref=la_B0032DEMD8_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346029577&sr=1-1

That second paragraph is very insightful, I think. There's a tug between illusion and truth.

There's also known illusion that's promulgated by those who know it's an illusion: Quoting St. Augustine: The pontifex maximus Scævola thought it expedient that the people should be deceived in religion; and the learned Varro said plainly, that there are many truths, which it is useless for the vulgar to know; and many falsities which it is fit the people should not suppose are falsities. Hence comes the adage "Mundus vult decipi, decipiatur ergo."

Hi Mark and friends, I've been listening to your podcast for many months now, but this is the first time I visit your site. So, thanks for the entertaining and thought provoking listen.
I must say, your latest episode on Nietzsche was a little to provocative for my liking. There's this rule 'no name dropping, or if only you had just read...' The four of you seem to be doing something like that at nearly every podcast: you make a reference to 'relativism' as if this were something bad, and as if we all really know what you mean by it. I thought I did; I thought relativism meant that truth is relative to the perspective, context, subjectivity or what have you of the individual. So far, every philosopher you discuss turns out to be not relativist in your book. Not Husserl, Heidegger, Foucault, James. And now, to my amazement, you try to suggest that Nietzsche himself is not a relativist, and even get a doctor to defend this claim. 'The relativist' seems to figure merely as a strawman. I suggest that this too ought to be taken as a kind of name-dropping: you mention a term, but never give a proper explanation of it. And no, 'truth does not exist' does not qualify as an explanation.
In this podcast, there was another name dropped: 'postmodernists'. Your doctor Jessica (or is it Jessa?) suggests there is some group of people who are known and know themselves to be postmodernists. They have all written something about this little essay on Nietzsche, but they just write down whatever they like, because there is no meaning to a text. Who are these people, and where did they write this? And what is this gratuitous referring to il n'y pas de hors-texte all about? This does not do any justice to Derrida (although he did write the worst book on Nietzsche I ever read - Eperons, The Styles of Nietzsche).
And seriously, however you want to nail down the meaning of truth, Nietzsche surely gives us no argument to believe he is more right than others about his view of the world, and dr.Jessica has not presented any argument to make us think otherwise.

Glad to have got this off my chest. Keep up the good work.

Yes, I think you're right that thoroughgoing relativism, "this is true for me, but that is true for you," is a straw man. It's a lazy position that we have made fun of going back to our first episodes that I don't know if any philosopher actually buys, but which is I think very common for undergraduates who don't know any philosophy. What it would imply is that there is no fact of the matter regarding the truth of any proposition, which is to say that there is no truth, which as we said is a self-defeating view.

This is exactly how people like Ayn Rand who don't know much philosophy dismiss virtually any post-Kantian view, so it's worth our continually reacting to.

You're also right that postmodernism has been to us so far on the 'cast merely a bugaboo which we've not read much of any of or tried to give a positive account of. Pretty much, we just read that one Derrida essay in Ep 51 and couldn't make a lot of sense of it and got irritated. So, we know we owe more on that score and will deal with it in a future episode. The focus of it in this discussion was its characterization in the Maudemarie Clark book, which mostly used Paul de Man as her whipping boy in this respect. I don't know much about him at all and didn't read that part of her book too carefully and so just couldn't comment.

I think you can ignore the labels and get the point re. Nietzsche at this stage. If relativism means that the way we cut up the world and make judgments is dependent upon human interests, then he's a relativist. If it means that there's a meaningful sense in which the law of non-contradiction is not true, or true only for creatures with intellects like ours or from our culture, then he's not a relativist.

Well, the fact that no one will cop to the charge doesn't make relativism a myth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism#Postmodernism_and_relativism
It may be more a perjorative term used as a weapon by some academics against others, but that doesn't make it an illegitimate charge. We can debate whether or not the "relativism" accusation is fair as applied to a particular writer. But I don't think we must be so sympathetic in our interpretation of the works of others that we must pretend the word makes no sense.

Robert Solomon was also willing to levy this accusation against certain unnamed "French postmodernists," so I don't know that we should be so quick to call the term a strawman/canard.

Also, this "relativist" concept/charge tends to be more prevalent in other "crit theory"-oriented humanities/social science departments, that seek to co-opt philosophical texts for their own agendas. So, this may also lead to some of the confusion on who or who isn't legitimately to be called a "relativist."

Finally, there are different uses of the term "relativism," (Wikipedia lists 4: moral, cultural, factual, aesthetic), so whether and when it's an appropriate term may depend upon which definition we're adopting, and the context.

Of course anything can be used pejoratively (and as a strawman): positivist, realist, analytic, continental, functionalist, particularist, and so on depending on your particular perspective.

I am happy to describe myself as a cultural relativist, and also as one of the interdisciplinary tourists who read philosophical texts through their own impure parochial interests.

I think I shared this quote before, but here's one punchy definition of cultural (not moral) relativism:

"Cultural relativism is first and last an interpretive anthropological-that is to say, methodological-procedure. It is not the moral argument that any culture or custom is as good as any other, if not better. Relativism is the simple prescription that, in order to be intelligible, other people's practices and ideals must be placed in their own historical context, understood as positional values in the field of their own cultural relationships rather than appreciated by categorical and moral judgments of our making. Relativity is the provisional suspension of one's own judgments in order to situate the practices at issue in the historical and cultural order that made them possible. It is in no other way a matter of advocacy."

Thanks for your reply, Mark.I did do an MA in Continental Philosophy and another one in what Daniel Horne calls crit theory. This is not to say that I feel you're 'all wrong' about post-modernists, but to even speak of 'French postmodernists' without qualification sounds like a facile dismissal of a complex, sophisticated branch of philosophy. It would be interesting to get a Derrida scholar who has no problem admitting to some kind of relativism on your podcast and discuss one of his key texts, like The Differance or Signature, Event, Context, or some bits from Of Grammatology.Thank you, also for giving the reference to Clark's mention of Paul de Man.
As for the positioning of Nietzsche in the context of relativism; ff we reduce the paradox in Nietzsche to 'all men are liars' or 'there is no truth', then this clearly is a problem for Nietzsche. I interpret Nietzsche (not this text per se, but look at The Will to Power, which contains some of the last and most explicit articulations of his views) to say that we have to create our own truths, and there is no truth that is not also partially a creation. So then the crucial idea becomes creation. Perhaps we shoud distinguish, e.g. adopting the creations of others, creating inauthentically and authenic creation, If you step away from the truth / falsehood dichotomy, a problem remains, but it is no longer the blatant paradox of 'all men are liars'. The view that there is no metapostion that anyone can lay claim to regarding 'truth' does not sound as offensive as 'this is true for me, that is true for you'.The problem is that it is not so clear how we can affirm the first claim without biting the bullet on the second. I don't think Nietzsche tried to show how such a division could be defended, and that gives credence to very relativist interpretations of him.
Finally, I want to make two points on the problem of contradiction. First, it is not a blatant contradiction to admit to your perspective falling prey to the criticism you put to others. This is largely a matter of clearing up the semantics of truth and illusion. In order to be entirely self-effacing, you would need to allow that no truth / illusion is in any way better than the one you advocate. One may leave room for criticism of your perspective, whilst maintaining that it is a superior truth, compared to some others. This might work for Nietzsche. Second, it is unfair for a non-relatvist to dismiss the relativist for its problematic conclusion (which is problematic only for the non-relativist, for if the truth of relativism would not be problematic, that would of itself be problematic for the relativist). A non-relativist would need to show that the argument leading up to the contradictory conclusion is unwarranted. A conclusion must be defeated by its premisses, not by merely stating that the conclusion is problematic.

I'm only halfway through the podcast, so forgive me if you get to this. But it strikes me that Nietzsche's conception of the "origins" of "truth" (in the misuse of language as a correspondence to aspects of practical existence - someone said "utilitarian") could also be applied to the origins of "moral" (in the misuse of codes of behaviour established to enable aspects of practical existence). Could we not think of morals equally as simply "normative truths" that we have forgotten were once illusions (i.e. only ever supposed to apply to a particular concrete form of activity). Surely we see evidence of this is the various religious beliefs about forbidden foodstuffs that, on historical analysis, seem to have their roots in various political or practical reasons for avoiding - say - shellfish?

I guess my question is: is there an aspect of the moral that Nietzsche's conception of the truth does not correspond to?

I see your opinion is representative of a serious mis-reading of the whole field of continental philosophy

Are you sure that is just her opinion or is it a fact? To be sure this entire response is founded on an amusingly inflated distinction being made between what is and what is not. I do wonder if somebody will ever come along to rail against truth without an accompanying theory of truth that itself extends far beyond what they had first sought to deny. It does not seem as though it would have mattered to Nietzsche for the same reason that it does not matter how many more times petulant children come along to parrot very self-importantly that God must be dead, if the deed were done it was already long done before anything had ever merely been spoken about it. Let me see you live as though there were no truth, that would make for the kind of stylish argument you so far attempt to meticulously piece together as a mental construction to bring down the unicorn-like figure of truth that plagues your own mind. Beyond all comprehension you have written here purely about truth that we should not be in the least concerned with truth, well let's allow this essay to go first.

Is your truth will to power, objectivity, democracy, justice, faith, skepticism, etc.?

I can tell you that this difference is not primarily one of freely adopted attitude but rather is of material and now more precisely sociopolitical circumstance. For example, no amount of of a wealthy person's personal belief will affect the value invested in his wealth, that is almost entirely decided by the rest of the market economy. So the wealthy do not depend on a theory of truth in the way that the poor should as a function of the will to power.

There are two opposing sides of the ditch to fall into in the pursuit of truth: idealization/reification/objectification on one side, and (in my opinion) pure skepticism/nihilism/relativism.

That this alleged fundamental distinction should arise from nothing more than a kind of horoscopic personal opinion could not be more absurd, and moreover that Descartes, Kant, or Hegel would ever fall on the wrong side of such a critical attitude - they are its inventors. That the truth is idealized, reified, objectified, does not matter to the idealist, to the reificationist, to the objectivist. Have you worked here to cut down more of the hydra's many heads for good? Maybe we can throw even more quotes around the word truth until it has been bracketed by the most absolute theory of truth. What is pure about nihilism but that it absolutely refuses to reveal its always conceptual and therefore self-negating presuppositions?

The difference between the superior man and the superman still for now is that most of the world can not drink clean water readily. Mitt Romney being in a heat race for the US presidency and Dancing With the Stars being the most popular show on television each receive honorable mention.

I enjoyed the podcast but literally laughed out loud when one of you referred to the sounds in the word 'tree' as a 'phoneme'. I know it's silly to expect everyone to be well-versed in every field, but it was surprising. For the record, a phoneme is a minimal unit of sound and 'tree' is composed of 3 of them.

Like I said, otherwise I enjoyed the podcast!

That part about the leaf is just wrong. Does FN really not know the difference between generalization and lie, or is there a fatal mistranslation from German to English?

Hey mark I am writing a paper on Nietzsche and have to answer some questions, wondering if you can help me out please
A. who is the creator of language and how is language created?
B. What is the "thing-in-itself" this pure truth without consequences and how is it created in adn through language?
C. what is this cloud-cuckoo-land Nietzsche mentions?
Please if someone can help me find these answers it'll help on my final paper.

I didn't think n. Bought into any version of the thing in itself.

Would have to do research re your A and C questions... Don't have good answers off-hand.

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PREVIEW-Episode 61: Nietzsche on Truth and Skepticism

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by Mark Linsenmayer Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:06 - 28.5MB) On Friedrich Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (1873). What is truth? This essay, written early in Nietzsche's career but unpublished during his lifetime, is taken by many to make the extreme claim that there is no truth, that all of the "truths" we tell each other are just agreements by social convention.

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Touche

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Marx Part 1: Labour & Class Conflict | Philosophy Tube

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An examination of existentialist thinkers clarifies their philosophy and its influence...

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AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFÉ
Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
By Sarah Bakewell
Illustrated. 439 pp. Other Press. $25.

Sarah Bakewell's book is a joint portrait of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger and a half-dozen other European writers and philosophers who embodied the movements in 20th-century thought known as existentialism and phenomenology. The apricot cocktails in her subtitle and her sometimes breezy tone - "I like to imagine them in a big, busy cafe of the mind, probably a Parisian one" - seem to promise an undemanding, gossipy romp. Instead, she judges and explains the ways in which each writer responded to the moral and political crises of the 1930s and after, and her book asks demanding questions about the ways in which people think about themselves and their relations with others. She shapes her answers in the form of biographical narratives, because her central theme is that the large impersonal ideas pursued by much modern philosophy are less profound and illuminating than the varied and conflicting truths found in stories of individual lives.

Those stories, in this book, include impressively lucid descriptions of what these thinkers thought and what they said in their writings and cafe arguments. Bakewell is often annoyed but never defeated by Heidegger's obscurity, and some of her most exciting pages are the engaged, unsimplifying accounts she offers of complex philosophies, even ones that finally repel her.

In her first chapter she summarizes the kinds of things that existentialists do. This is not the same as saying what existentialism is, because to say what it is would present it as something static and definable, whereas it exists only in the form of actions, what happens when someone thinks existentially. Briefly, she explains, "existentialists concern themselves with individual, concrete human existence," and individual existence is "whatever I choose to make of myself at every moment." An existentialist's driving concern is human freedom and the responsibilities and anxieties that are inseparable from it.

The stories she tells begin in medias res, around 1932, in a real Parisian cafe where Sartre is intrigued by his school friend Raymond Aron's report of a new philosophical movement, phenomenology. It concerned itself, Aron explained, not with the theoretical or moral meaning of things, but with the things themselves and the immediate experience we have of those things. The apricot cocktails are in Bakewell's subtitle because, as Beauvoir recalled, they were drinking them in the cafe when Aron said you could "make philosophy" out of them.

After this, "At the Existentialist Café" leaves France for Germany and goes backward in time to the early-20th-century origins of phenomenology in the work of Edmund Husserl and the stirrings of reaction against it in Husserl's early acolyte Heidegger. From phenomenology, with its emphasis on the experience of things, it was a short step - for, among others, Sartre, Beauvoir and their friend Merleau-Ponty - to existentialism, with its emphasis on the experience of making choices, and on the wider question of what it means to be in the world at all.

At this point, around the early 1930s, the story divides, like a novel by George Eliot or Tolstoy, between the characters who, despite missteps and delusions, eventually, like Beauvoir, come out more or less right, and the ones who come out wrong, like Heidegger and his followers. What divides these two sets of characters are their attitudes toward power and toward other people. Those who got things right were the ones who cared most about equal relations among people and cultures and about everyone's personal uniqueness, and who had little or no appetite for power. They also saw the importance of childhood as the source of the adult self, as a time of powerlessness, irrationality and imagination. Merleau-Ponty "thought child psychology was essential to philosophy. . . . Childhood looms large in Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' and in Sartre's biographies."

Heidegger got things wrong by turning away from individual human lives to statements about something invisible: being itself and the many varieties of being that he identified, including "Being-in-the-world" and "Being-with":

"He set no store by the individuality and detail of anyone's life, least of all his own. It is no coincidence that, of all the philosophers in this book, Heidegger is the one who refused to see the point of biography."

Heidegger wrote about the urgency of resisting "the they," what Bakewell explains as "an impersonal entity that robs us of the freedom to think for ourselves." As she observes, this sounds like a call to resist Nazi tyranny, "but that was not what Heidegger meant." Appointed by the Nazis in 1933 to "the post of rector of Freiburg University, a job that required him to enforce the new Nazi laws," Heidegger easily convinced himself, perhaps from reserves of power-worship hidden within, that obedience to Nazism was a form of obedience not to "the they" but to the deepest demands of being itself.

Heidegger devoted much of his philosophy to objects rather than people - objects as instruments for use, things (in his phrase) "to hand." In his willingness to serve as an instrument of Nazi power, "he seemed to be attracted less by Nazi ideology than by the idea of Hitler dexterously and firmly molding the country into a new form." He told the appalled psychologist turned philosopher Karl Jaspers, "One must get in step."

One of many persuasive surprises in Bakewell's book is her suggestion that Heidegger's prose sometimes resembles Gertrude Stein's in its deliberate linguistic strangeness, a resemblance that goes deeper than style. Bakewell mentions Heidegger's concept of the "ontological difference," the distinction between (in her words) an "individual entity" and "the Being that such particular beings have." (Ontology is the study of being in itself.) She then quotes a passage from Stein's "The Making of Americans" that "foreshadows . . . the ontological difference" by making a distinction between what Stein calls "the being in" characters and the characters as people.

Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are the only two thinkers who get chapters to themselves in Bakewell's book. She portrays Merleau-Ponty as both intellectually admirable and personally appealing. Like all the philosophers in the book, Merleau-Ponty was concerned with the ways in which human beings are shaped by structures and forces outside themselves, but while many other philosophers thought of those outside forces as forms of imprisonment or compulsion, Merleau-Ponty saw them as the means of choosing freedom. "The aspects of our existence that limit us, Merleau-Ponty says, are the very same ones that bind us to the world and give us scope for action and perception." Bakewell describes Merleau-Ponty's kindness and his self-sacrificing sense of obligation and responsibility, and, despite her admiration for Beauvoir, refuses to endorse Beauvoir's dismissal of these traits as bourgeois hypocrisy.

In contrast with Merleau-Ponty's generosity - and Sartre's extravagant generosity in the midst of his pugnaciousness - Bakewell records "the single documented example I have come across of Heidegger actually doing something nice." Even in this example, however, Heidegger did something nice only by proxy, having asked a book-dealer friend, shortly before the poet Paul Celan gave a reading in Freiburg, to arrange for the city's bookshops to display Celan's poems in their windows.

One episode sums up the philosophical differences at the center of Bakewell's narrative. After World War II, Heidegger sent some of his recent writings to Karl Jaspers: "Jaspers was repelled. Picking out Heidegger's pet phrase describing language as the 'house of Being,' he wrote back, 'I bristle, because all language seems to be only a bridge to me' - a bridge between people, not a shelter or home."

Similarly, Emmanuel Levinas, an early follower of Heidegger, rejected his teachings by creating "a philosophy that was essentially ethical," concerned with our relations with each other, not our being in ourselves. "For Levinas, we literally face each other, one individual at a time, and that relationship becomes one of communication and moral expectation. We do not merge; we respond to one another."

Bakewell acknowledges Heidegger's appeal to readers who are susceptible to seduction by obscure displays of power. When she first read him in her early 20s, she fell under his "magician's spell." Reading him today, she says, half of herself is "re-enchanted," but only half. "I feel the same gravitational pull," but "I find myself struggling to get free."

"Heidegger once wrote that 'to think is to confine yourself to a single thought,' " Bakewell concludes, "but I now feel that this is the very opposite of what thinking ought to be. Thinking should be generous and have a good appetite."

An unspoken theme of Bakewell's book is the variety of ways in which academic philosophy can be distorted by power relations. Some of her characters, notably Merleau-Ponty, were immune to the temptations that came with the status of a European professorship. Others, like Husserl and Heidegger, demanded obeisance. Even Levinas, late in life, became impatient with disagreement: "He still had something in common with his former mentor," Heidegger. In the European academic hierarchy, the philosopher who was most inhuman was the one honored with the deepest adulation. An American visitor to Heidelberg University in the 1950s was surprised to find no courses on Heidegger, presumably as a result of his Nazi past. But the intellectual reality differed from the official list of courses. "I quickly learned," he wrote, "that all courses were on Heidegger."

Bakewell has a special affection for philosophers who stayed free of the academy, especially Sartre and Beauvoir. She writes of Sartre, "Of course, he was monstrous," but she forgives him, convincingly, for having been "full of character. He bursts out on all sides with energy, peculiarity, generosity and communicativeness." (On Heidegger she endorses what Sartre said about him: "Heidegger has no character.") She treasures the Beauvoir of "The Second Sex" and her later philosophical autobiographies, books that focus on Beauvoir's individual story, always with a rich sense of herself in the midst of what existentialists called their "situation," an outer and inner reality that included the social reality of being perceived as a woman and the physical reality of living in a woman's body.

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'At the Existentialist Café,' by Sarah Bakewell

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AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFÉ Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails By Sarah BakewellIllustrated. 439 pp. Other Press. $25. Sarah Bakewell's book is a joint portrait of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heideg­ger and a half-dozen other European writers and philosophers who embodied the movements in 20th-century thought known as existentialism and phenomenology.

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A visual representation of Sartre's "Existentialism is Humanism."