# Do my informal research for me re: Liberalism, Post-modernism, Conservatism, and which likes which **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 25, 2009, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047 "2009-10-25T14:11:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/21 "2009-10-29T02:20:17Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I never met a deconstructionist who wasn’t a liberal. I have. But they weren’t conservatives either. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/22 "2009-10-29T06:25:27Z")
> [@Dorothea\_Book](#): > > **Nametag** , Can only reply briefly at the moment but in response to this from you > > Really? I’ve never heard of such liberals. Can you give me an example? (I mean opinions on expansion can vary depending on what is expanding and how. But _development_? The term comes right out of liberalism). Taking empty land and building shit on it is NOT liberalism. Liberals tend to be more fond of in-filling (unless it’s MY suburb). ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/23 "2009-10-29T13:43:33Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Conservatives who reject modernity are definitely engaging in post-modernism. Um… no. Postmodernism, as defined by Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault et al. is not some sort of willful rejection of modernism. It is a reaction, or a response to the modern condition; it is an outgrowth of the acceptance of modernist principles. Most conservatives are more accurately called pre-modern. I mean, religion is the ne plus ultra of meta-narrative, so there’s your evangelicals. But that the libertarian/classical liberal/enlightenment thinkers wing also contains many, many premoderns who believe in the ability of rationality to understand the world (I am one). That belief runs directly in contra to 20th century modernism. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/24 "2009-10-29T13:49:00Z")
> [@Nametag](#): > > Taking empty land and building shit on it is NOT liberalism. Liberals tend to be more fond of in-filling (unless it’s MY suburb). I see where you’re coming from but this goes back to the question I posed to you originally–about liberals’ wanting expansion or development to be regulated so as to assure, say, environmental sustainability. Given the environmental challenges this planet faces it makes sense to be against building shit on empty land; and conservatives should be just as concerned as liberals (as in fact some are). But it’s misleading to suggest that liberalism is philosophically opposed to development–no more than it is philosophically opposed to the notion of progress itself. Liberalism is all about development. In this instance its the development from an industrial to a greener more sustainable mode of building and so forth. Still I agree entirely with those, like you, who have said that OP is too non-specific about what’s being asked. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/25 "2009-10-29T15:01:36Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Um… no. Postmodernism, as defined by Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault et al. is not some sort of willful rejection of modernism. It is a reaction, or a response to the modern condition; it is an outgrowth of the acceptance of modernist principles. A rejection of modernity IS a reaction. > [@](#): > > Most conservatives are more accurately called pre-modern. I mean, religion is the ne plus ultra of meta-narrative, so there’s your evangelicals. But that the libertarian/classical liberal/enlightenment thinkers wing also contains many, many premoderns who believe in the ability of rationality to understand the world (I am one). That belief runs directly in contra to 20th century modernism. No, Evangelicalism is a rejection of modernism, it is not pre-modern. You are buying into their primitive authenticity fallacy. There is nothing authentic about Evangelicalism that predates modernity, it’s an outgrowth of modernity. The same for everything else you have mentioned. You do not have a pre-modern viewpoint you have a post-modern viewpoint that you pretend is pre-modern but it’s actually a reaction and a rejection of modernity as you have no authentic traditions that predate modernity. The fact that you mention modernist political philosophy such as libertarianism/classical liberalism, only reinforces this fact. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/26 "2009-10-29T15:38:22Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > No, Evangelicalism is a rejection of modernism, it is not pre-modern. You are buying into their primitive authenticity fallacy. There is nothing authentic about Evangelicalism that predates modernity, it’s an outgrowth of modernity. The same for everything else you have mentioned. > > You do not have a pre-modern viewpoint you have a post-modern viewpoint that you pretend is pre-modern but it’s actually a reaction and a rejection of modernity as you have no authentic traditions that predate modernity. The fact that you mention modernist political philosophy such as libertarianism/classical liberalism, only reinforces this fact. I thing you misunderstand what is meant by “modernism” in the philosophical sense. [ > [@](#): > > Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and also that of the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator.[2][3] This is not to say that all modernists or modernist movements rejected either religion or all aspects of Enlightenment thought, rather that modernism can be viewed as a questioning of the axioms of the previous age. ]([Modernism - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism))Postmodernism accepts and extends that questioning, expanding it in ways the modernists did not. If you believe in either the traditional monotheistic worldview – an omnipotent deity who created and governs the world, and who is rationally undsertandable (at least partly), or in the classical liberal idea of pure human reason being able to apprehend the world, you never jumped on board the modernist train to begin with. Strictly speaking chronologically, Modernism had its roots in the 1800s and reached its greatest influence in the 1900s. Classical liberalism grew out of the Enlightenment and was most dominant in the 1700s; religion, of course, is a wee bit older than that. Both of them predate Modernism, and both rely on axioms that modernism rejected. IMO, premodern is a fair name. As I said, I think you may have misunderstood what “modernism” and “postmodern” mean w/r/t philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/27 "2009-10-29T16:01:32Z")
I have been following this debate somewhat cursorily but I am confused about some terminology. Philosophical “modernism” seems to be defined in this thread as an actual position to be found, in terms of chronology, between the Enlightenment (late 18th c) and postmodernism (c. 1960)–most recently by **furt**. But who would be the example? Important 19th c. philosophers include varieties of liberals like Hegel or JS Mill, socialists like Marx, and figures like Nietzsche who look forward to postmodernism. For someone like Habermas, to believe in the project of modernity (which he does not call modernism) is to hold onto most tenets of the Enlightenment (give or take an important tinker) as distinct from a postmodernist break like Lyotard’s or a poststructuralist break like Foucault’s. When I asked **nametag** if by Modernism he meant the aesthetic modernism of late 19th to mid 20th art and literature (which you might associate with philosophical positions like Walter Benjamin’s or Jean Paul Sartre’s) he said no. So what is meant by Modernism or by modernism in this thread and who is an example of it? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/28 "2009-10-29T16:30:20Z")
The difficulty here is coming up with a definition of postmodernism that can be agreed upon by everyone. And since the concept has been applied to everything from literature to architecture, which are very different expressions of a roughly similar concept, you can fit just about anything into it. For example, in architecture the postmodern aesthetic has to do with a rejection of the modernist school of architecture. In Germany, the Bahaus movement of design and Walter Gropius’s architecture was ‘modern’ in that it sought to find perfection in form through utility and simplicity, using modern materials and stripping away unnecessary ornamentation. In the modernist tradition, a building should reflect its use, and form should follow function. ‘Postmodern’ architecture rejects that and celebrates the building for itself. Ornamentation, aesthetic building shapes (even at the expense of function, such are reducing floor space in the interest of making an interesting artistic statement from the building shape), etc. On the other hand, in literature post-modernism has more to do with self-examination, deconstruction, irony, the tearing down of classical beliefs and re-examination of ideas in a relativistic way. In literature especially, post-modernism has been fully embraced by the left. Deconstructionism is a great tool for people who wish to dismantle traditional orthodoxies and diminish historical figures. Thus, it’s been used extensively by feminists, Marxists, and others who rebel against traditional literature, western Judeo-Christian institutions, etc. Maybe it’s changed somewhat since I was in college, but in the 1980’s deconstructionism and post-modernism were in full flight. Punk and New Wave music were post-modern styles. I found much of it to be almost intolerable - especially literary deconstructionism, which more often than not seemed to be a shortcut for half-assed thinkers to reject centuries of philosophical and cultural knowledge in favor of whatever passed for the cool philosophy of the day. And by ‘half-assed thinkers’, I include many professors of literature. The same was true of history. Deconstruction of history was all the rage when I was in college, and I found most of it to be either incoherent or a fig leaf used by people who wished to ignore the lessons of history because they didn’t match whatever their personal political beliefs were. If you were annoyed that people held up the constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence as great documents, all you had to do was ‘deconstruct’ the era by analyzing the power structure and correcting for the inordinate influence of the class structure of the time, and voila, you could find some obscure screed written by a peasant somewhere and say it was equally important. Said screed being one that aligns with your political beliefs, of course… I found most of it to be dishonest, unfalsifiable, and largely ridiculous. When a history student is graded not on his or her understanding of the major events of history, but on how cleverly they can avoid the lessons of history and construct their own, there’s something seriously wrong, even if the basic idea of revisiting history with an eye towards removal of inherent societal bias is in itself a reasonable goal. Maybe people just took it way too far because it became a political tool. The use of postmodern literature and deconstructionism for political ends is what really associates it with the left. There’s nothing about postmodernism or deconstructionism that has to make it intrinsically a right-wing or left-wing concept. In architecture, for example, there’s really no political overtones to the various schools - they’re seen as merely an expression of an aesthetic (and in fact, architecture is coming full circle - the ‘new modernism’ accepts aesthetics as an important part of function, so form still follows function, but function can be enhanced through form - and you get something like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, which is post-post-modern). ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/29 "2009-10-29T17:24:02Z")
> [@Dorothea\_Book](#): > > I have been following this debate somewhat cursorily but I am confused about some terminology. Philosophical “modernism” seems to be defined in this thread as an actual position to be found, in terms of chronology, between the Enlightenment (late 18th c) and postmodernism (c. 1960)–most recently by **furt**. But who would be the example? Important 19th c. philosophers include varieties of liberals like Hegel or JS Mill, socialists like Marx, and figures like Nietzsche who look forward to postmodernism. For someone like Habermas, to believe in the project of modernity (which he does not call modernism) is to hold onto most tenets of the Enlightenment (give or take an important tinker) as distinct from a postmodernist break like Lyotard’s or a poststructuralist break like Foucault’s. > > When I asked **nametag** if by Modernism he meant the aesthetic modernism of late 19th to mid 20th art and literature (which you might associate with philosophical positions like Walter Benjamin’s or Jean Paul Sartre’s) he said no. > > So what is meant by Modernism or by modernism in this thread and who is an example of it? Given that much of Modernism revolved around questioning of the value of rationality, there aren’t necessarily a lot of big-name philosophers associated with it. You’d recognize more the writers and artists. [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism#History_of_Modernism)is a good place to start. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/30 "2009-10-29T17:31:29Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Given that much of Modernism revolved around questioning of the value of rationality, there aren’t necessarily a lot of big-name philosophers associated with it. You’d recognize more the writers and artists. [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism#History_of_Modernism)is a good place to start. Hmm, you are speaking completely oppositely to everything I’ve heard and read. Modernism generally was very much pro-rationality. Your separation of the Enlightenment and Modernity is something I haven’t seen. The Enlightenment birthed modernity and Modernity is characterized by a reliance on reason as far as I have understood it. I’m going to admit though that we are coming to the limits of my ability to argue these finer distinctions, so I’m kind of just offering my opinions in the, “this is how I always understood this.”, way. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/31 "2009-10-29T18:00:45Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Given that much of Modernism revolved around questioning of the value of rationality, there aren’t necessarily a lot of big-name philosophers associated with it. You’d recognize more the writers and artists. [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism#History_of_Modernism)is a good place to start. **furt** I don’t have time for more than a drive-by right now but what you’re describing is exactly the (aesthetic) Modernism that **nametag** said he _wasn’t_ talking about. So for what it’s worth, you and **nametag** have two very different definitions of modernism at play. Postmodernism is usually (though not always) thought of as a critical philosophical position (a la Lyotard) rather than a direct response to Modernism (an aesthetic movement). However, Modernists were responding to various philosophical and quasi-philosophical positions (e.g., the Marxism of the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, existentialism, structuralism). Still, I don’t think (though I’d have to re-read this thread to be sure), that including Modernism (in the sense you mean it) in this thread is going to help disentangle what the OP wants to know about the relation between liberalism, post-modernism, and conservatism. My very quick 2cents. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/32 "2009-10-29T18:02:39Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Hmm, you are speaking completely oppositely to everything I’ve heard and read. Modernism generally was very much pro-rationality. Your separation of the Enlightenment and Modernity is something I haven’t seen. The Enlightenment birthed modernity and Modernity is characterized by a reliance on reason as far as I have understood it. > > I’m going to admit though that we are coming to the limits of my ability to argue these finer distinctions, so I’m kind of just offering my opinions in the, “this is how I always understood this.”, way. I think that’s because **mswas** what you have in mind is modernity or modernism with a lower case “m” whereas the Modernism **furt** has in mind is, as I described above. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/33 "2009-10-29T18:11:16Z")
The Enlightenment birthed modernity, but in the “I hate my parents” sense. The enlightenment was all about reason, and reached it’s zenith in the age of Newton, when we thought we we had a solid grasp on understanding a rational, clockwork universe, but one that did not necessarily contradict a God-centered cosmos. But by the early 20th century you have Darwin saying we’re just another mammal, Freud saying that we’re just a bundle of competing urges, Physics saying that it’s all relative, and WWI proving that, however advanced we think we are, we can’t escape our penchant for conflict (and that indeed, technology just makes it worse). Modernism was about the anomie that came from all that; T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is its highest, best expression IMO. The relationship between that and postmodernism, as I understand it, is well-explained here[ > [@](#): > > Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn’t lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let’s not pretend that art can make meaning then, let’s just play with nonsense. ]([http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html](http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html)) And here is where I note that I’m citing an English professor, and my study of postmodernism was mostly from a literary-theory background. It may be that my perception is skewed by my discipline. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/34 "2009-10-29T18:26:12Z")
> [@Dorothea\_Book](#): > > Postmodernism is usually (though not always) thought of as a critical philosophical position (a la Lyotard) rather than a direct response to Modernism (an aesthetic movement). However, Modernists were responding to various philosophical and quasi-philosophical positions (e.g., the Marxism of the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, existentialism, structuralism). > > Still, I don’t think (though I’d have to re-read this thread to be sure), that including Modernism (in the sense you mean it) in this thread is going to help disentangle what the OP wants to know about the relation between liberalism, post-modernism, and conservatism. Well, as several people have said … we need the OP to define his terms a bit more to know what he wants discussed. I’m not aware of any variety of postmodernism that doesn’t contain the rejection of an absolutely, objectively understandable world, but I could be wrong. IIRC my Lyotard correctly, he specifically said that postmodernism (his brand at least) was an outgrowth of modernism, a building-on rather than a tearing-down. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047/35 "2009-10-30T04:20:26Z")
**furt** , to be clear, I wasn’t suggested that anything you said wasn’t interesting or relevant–only that the introduction of another term (especially one as difficult as Modernism) might further complicate an already somewhat complicated set of distinctions. > [@furt](#): > > Modernism was about the anomie that came from all that; T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is its highest, best expression IMO. I like _The Wasteland_ too. > [@](#): > > And here is where I note that I’m citing an English professor, and my study of postmodernism was mostly from a literary-theory background. It may be that my perception is skewed by my discipline. An English professor! Yikes, let’s keep them off the Straight Dope 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-my-informal-research-for-me-re-liberalism-post-modernism-conservatism-and-which-likes-which/515047.md?page=1)