Postmodernism Rightly Understood - Return to Realism in American Thought 0847694259, 0847694267

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American Intellectual Culture

Series Editors: Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago, Ted V. McAllister, Hillsdale College, and Wilfred M. McClay, Tulane University The books in the American Intellectual Culture series examine the place, iden­ tity, and public role of intellectuals and cultural elites in the United States, past, present, and future. Written by prominent historians, philosophers, and politi­ cal theorists, these books will examine the influence of intellectuals on Amer­ ican political, social, and cultural life, paying particular attention to the char­ acteristic forms, and evolving possibilities, of democratic intellect. The books will place special, but not exclusive, emphasis on the relationship between in­ tellectuals and American public life. Because the books are intended to shape and contribute to scholarly and public debates about their respective topics, they will be concise, accessible, and provocative. When All the Gods Trembled: Darwinism, Scopes, and American Intellectuals

by Paul K. Conkin, Vanderbilt University

Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism

by Daphne Patai, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought

by Peter Augustine Lawler, Berry College

Forthcoming Titles: Modern Inconvenience: The Social Origins of Antifamily Thought by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Syracuse University Academic Politics: The Colonial Colleges and the Shaping of American Intellectual Culture by J. David Hoeveler, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee History and Public Memory in America by Wilfred M. McClay, Tulane University Integrating the World: Cold War Intellectuals and the Politics of Identity by Chtistopher Shannon, George Eastman House A Pragmatist's Progress? Richard Rorty and American Intellectual Historv by John Pettegrew, Lehigh University Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Problem of Democracy by Peter S. Field, Tennessee Technological University The Murder of Joy: Paul Goodman and the American Battle over Maturity by Robert Oliver, University of Wisconsin, Madison The Public and Protagonist: Tocqueville and American Intellectuals 18352000 by Matthew Mancini, Southwest Missouri State University

Postmodernism Rightly Understood The Return to Realism in American Thought

PETER AUGUSTINE LAWLER

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid's Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England Copyright © 1999 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lawler, Peter Augustine. Postmodemism rightly understood : the return to realism in American thought/ Peter Augustine Lawler. p. cm. - (American intellectual culture) Includes bibliographical reference and index. ISBN 0-8476-9425-9 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-8476-9426-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Postmodemism-United States. 2. Philosophy, American-20th century. 3. United States-Intellectual life-20th century. B944.P67L38 1999 99-13633 149'. 97-dc21 CIP Printed in the United States of America @ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39 .48-1992.

CONTENTS

Introduction

vii J

1 Francis Fukuyama versus the End of History 2 Allan Bloom's Ineffectual Response to Richard Rorty

15 41

3 Walker Percy's Twentieth-Century Thomism

77

Acknowledgments

4 Sex, Drugs, Politics, Love, and Death 5 Moral Realism versus Therapeutic Elitism 6 The Return to Realism

115 157 179

Index

189

About the Author

195

V

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

t is only realistic and common courtesy to acknowledge your debts. But it is equally realistic to realize that you can never get the job done. So all I claim to do is to mention a few. For turning my life to the study of political philosophy, I am grateful to Delba Winthrop. For providing an endless supply of fascinating discussion on the themes of this book and for sharing some of his comprehensive knowledge about philosophers, statesmen, scholars, and books, I owe Dan Mahoney. For listening to and talking with me on those same themes year after year, I must thank the students of Berry College. For reading this book carefully and criti­ cally and convincing me it is worth reading, I am indebted to Paul Seaton. A rather large number of Berry College students helped to improve this book, most notably Darrell Sutton, Lynsey Morris, Carrie Sumner, Robbie Crowe, Ryan Rakness, and Matt Barrett. Alisa Ray whipped the text into its final form. And Steve Wrinn at Rowman & Littlefield once again helped me more than I deserved. Generous funding from the Earhart Foundation gave me much of the time I needed to write this book. For plenty of evidence for the goodness of life, I thank Rita, Catherine, and my parents. Earlier versions of parts of this book were published by Rowman & Lit­ tlefield, Praeger, Perspectives on Political Science, The Political Science Re­ viewer, and the Carolina Academic Press. Thanks to each for the permission to reuse and refine my work here.

vii

INTRODUCTION

T

his book is about signs of a movement from modem to postmodern thought in contemporary American writing. By modem thought I mean the attempt to master or to overcome nature through action directed by thought. Modem thought, roughly speaking, can be called pragmatism. The point of thought, as Karl Marx said, is not to understand the world but to change it. That project of transformation through ma�Q�ed on t�_premise that buroa�L 'Ings cari-mily--understan-d what__ they control and soJhe tmtb is the��_ � trnth," began centuries before Marx with Niccolo Machiavelli. 1 Marx's conclusion that the mystery and misery that is human existence could be completely overcome practically or historically merely radicalizes Machiavelli's beginning. Historical struggle can come to an end with the complete abolition of the human dissatisfaction that brought it into being.-�-, Then human beings also become wise, because they are in position to com­ prehend all they have made, and, strictly speaking, there is nothing else for them to know. _ �ostm_9���n thought rightly understood js b11roao reflectiao on the fail­ ure of the modern project to eradicate buman rnystery and misery and to bring -history to an end. One form of postmodern thinking is found in the writing of the anticommunist dissidents Vaclav Havel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The fall of communism, Havel said, should be understood as a lesson about the resistance of being and human being to human manipulation. And Solzhenit­ syn, of course, told Americans at Harvard that if human beings were born only to be happy, they would not be born to die. I_:'ostJ!!Qd�rQ_ thought begins with_ the.Jl_ews� p�rhapsJmtlq;oo4--ami-bad, abonuhe intractable limits to any mak� h _µ_tnan existence predic_table, tranquil, secure, and p-ragmatic- project- to --· ------carefree. Postmodemism rightly understood is not postmodemism as it is usually understood. All postmodemists rightly reject the systematic or reductionistic

--

2

Introduction

rationalism of modem thought. But, properly understood, postmodernism is not antifoundationalism or a celebration of endless self-creation out of nothing. Antifoundationalism, the assertion of the groundlessness of human existence, is really hypennodemism, or the exaggeration to the point of caricature of the modern impulse to self-creation. Havel and Solzhenitsyn, true postmodemists, write of human beings living in light of the truth, meaning primarily the truth about human purpose and limits. 2 Postmodernism rightly understood rejects the illusion of self-creation in favor of the reality of conscientious responsibility. So postmodemism is not a rejection of Socratic or Thomistic rationalism. Human reason exists primarily . ��l!!J�e��tand and to co me to terms with it. There is some correspondence between human thought and the way things really are. Postmodemism is the return to realism, -But realism is not to beconfused with the possibility of comprehensive human wisdom, which would only be possible if man became God or history came to an end. Postmodemism rightly understood includes a realistic ac­ knowledgment of the limits of human understanding. Being and the human self, or soul, necessarily elude to some extent both human comprehension and human control. We know something, and enough to live well as human beings, but not everything about nature and human nature. So the mystery of being and human being is not really threatened by human reason, as some alleged postmodemists say. The philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, at least as they are often understood, are not postmodemists rightly understood. They write against the coming of a wasteland inhabited by "last men." They dread the possibility that human beings might immerse themselves completely in un­ selfconscious contentment. So Nietzsche and Heidegger reject the whole meta­ physical or Socratic tradition in the name of the greatness of human life or lib­ erty. They lack confidence in the capability of nature or reality to resist manipulation, because they seem to understand human liberty to be a historical manifestation with no natural foundation or direction. At the center of postmodemism rightly understood is such confidence, and so optimism about the beneficence of the modem project's inevitable failure. Human beings are not becoming and cannot become "last men," or wretchedly content. And human reality is never primarily a wasteland, or without goodness and greatness. Postmodemism is the recognition of the indestructibility of the good that is human life or liberty.

Introduction

3

TOCQUEVILLE' S POSTMODERNISM Arguably the first postmodern thinker was Alexis de Tocqueville, the author of Democracy in America. 3 He wrote of Americans restless in the midst of abun­ dance, of human beings who were not becoming apathetically content but pro­ gressively more perverse or deranged and unhappy. Tocqueville observed that Americans act as if they have unsatisfied spiritual needs, and he asserted that they are evidence that the needs of the soul cannot be eradicated and so must be satisfied one way or another. He described the Americans in Pascalian fash­ ion, as miserable in God's absence. And their fundamental experience is one of deprivation, especially being deprived of the language to express their soul­ based experiences. Tocqueville wrote to deny the truth of modern progres­ sivism, or the pragmatic ability of history to transform radically human nature on behalf of wisdom and happiness. But Tocqueville also wrote of the tendency of democracy to culminate in individualism, an apathetic existence without the social or heart-enlarging pas­ sions of love, hate, and so forth. Individualism is the return to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's asocial brutish state of nature. As a doctrine, individualism is based on the judgment that social and political life are misery-producing errors more than anything else. Tocqueville also said he feared the coming of a provident, gentle. administrative despotism that would relieve people of the burden of thinking about and caring for the future, of their humanity, for their own good. Tocqueville predicted the possible coming of history's end. He even ad­ mitted that his resistance to that conclusion is partisan or questionable. His de­ votion to human liberty as an unquestionable human good eludes rational analysis. He suggested that liberty might be overcome in the name of reason. Tocqueville left us uncertain whether human liberty or distinctiveness has a naturai or a historical foundation, and so he gave us reason to be both optimistic and pessimistic about the future of human liberty. We, postmodemists rightly understood. today believe that we should be more confident and consistent than Tocqueville. We note that when Toc­ queville describes actual Americans, he uses the psychological language of Blaise Pascal about the 1).umaUJ;_ondit..iDn or l:mm.an..nature. When he describes the theory of democracy, it� egalitarian leveling of all that is distinctively hu­ man in the direction of homogeneity or pantheism. he uses the language of Rousseau. The practice of American democracy, the real world of human be­ ings, contradicts modem democratic theory, which culminates in unempirical

4

/111n> v. ere horn on] y to be h appy. they would not be born to die, is reali stic. They ..,,, ere b right to say, is for u nconscious beings v., i th