Contemporary Philosophical Orientation

The rise of social theory, in particular the critique of social and political structures that developed over the course of the 19th century, represented a significant break with preceding strands of philosophical thought. It is possible to locate the origins of social theory with Hegel and the strength of the dialectic. In that regard, Marcuse says that what is "essential" about Hegel's view of modern [i.e., Enlightenment] philosophy is that he takes it to be self-dissol

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at is Western. Postmodern commentary, which sometimes reflects Marxist ideas, "interrogates" the very social and cultural structures--including the economic and power relationships--that they express. The major implication of such critique is not that, as Yeats trenchantly and possibly truthfully says, the center will not hold. Rather, the implication of the postmodernist standpoint is that there is no center. There is skepticism toward the content of the found totality, especially though not exclusively as it bespeaks the culture, ideologies, and artifacts of bourgeois capitalist Judeo-Christian rationalism. The postmodern standpoint expresses skepticism not just toward knowledge but toward any possibility of knowledge--and still less of knowledge systematically or socially or hierarchically organized. Thus for Jacques Lacan "language constructs the subject as a decentered focus of consciousness in dialogue with the unconscious as the voice of the Other" (Richter 1022). Thus too one arrives at Michel Foucault's declaration that truth is an artificial construction, a creature of culture, " produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. . . . Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is,
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Approximate Word count = 4925
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)

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