The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

Anticipated by Friedrich Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century, postmodernism emerged in full force in the latter part of the 20th century. Sire claims that, although thinkers argue constantly about how best to define it, postmodernism is essentially a worldview that questions all absolutes, narratives, and values—an expression of “incredulity toward metanarratives” (205). In part because it emerged within sociology rather than philosophy, postmodernism is more concerned with how we construct meaning than with what is objectively true. According to Sire, this fundamental shift in perspective is due to the gradual evolution of Western thought traced throughout the book, which can be seen as a three-stage evolution from premodern to modern to postmodern.

In premodern thought (represented by theism), the emphasis was on the metaphysical foundations of being. “Being is prior to knowing” (207), and being has its origin in God, the supreme being. Our ability to know God and all reality follows from this prime reality. From this knowledge of what is true follows ethics, or rules for how we live our lives. Finally, we can draw conclusions about the overall purpose of human life and the direction of history.

Modern thought (naturalism), beginning with Descartes, reversed this order, emphasizing the autonomy of human reason instead of the initial fact of God as the source of being. From the fact of his thinking Descartes inferred that God exists, instead of the other way around. Human knowledge thus meant the power to control the world around us. But due to Descartes’s assumption of radical doubt, confidence in the human mind’s ability to know things as they really are increasingly weakened—a progression that can be traced in Western philosophy from Hume to Kant to Nietzsche.

Sire states that, because of these increasing doubts, modern thought’s emphasis on knowing was replaced with an emphasis on meaning, or how we construct our sense of what is true. This change marks the arrival of postmodernism. With postmodernism, the modern confidence in the power of human reason has been destroyed. Now even the reality of the self is doubted: “What if it is the thinking that creates or causes the I rather than the I that creates or causes the thinking?” (210).

For Sire, this radical doubt leads to the “death of truth”: While we can create meaning for ourselves, truth as such is forever hidden from us. According to postmodernism, truth is a function of language, and language is “a human construct” whose only value is its usefulness in getting us what we want. This means that, for postmodernism, what we call truth is simply an instrument of power: “[W]e create truth” to “serve our purposes” (213).

Postmodernism, claims Sire, ends by denying the reality of the self; instead, our self, like truth itself, is a “floating construct” created by the language we use. Likewise, ethics becomes relative, because there are no stable values beyond human beings’ desires. Pleasure and power are thus the only moral standards that exist.

Postmodernism has become “pervasive” in the academic world, spawning various reactions and a considerable backlash. In the Christian community, some are strongly opposed to postmodernism while others want to integrate some of postmodernism’s positive insights with Christian thought, thus arriving at “post-postmodernism.” Non-Christians have suggested a “way beyond postmodernism” in the form of basic humanism, or moral decency, regardless of religious belief. However, Sire sees such hopes as shaky if founded on “scientific rationalism” alone.

Sire offers his own critique of postmodernism at the end of the chapter. He says that postmodernism is right to point out the link between language and power and to draw attention to how we are molded by our society and culture. We do well to scrutinize our reasons for believing what we do and apply suspicion to our motives. Still, extreme suspicion only leads to “contradiction” and “anarchy.” Perhaps the most damning critique of postmodernism is that its argument that truth claims are merely power plays can be turned around on itself. From this perspective, postmodernism proves itself false because, in denying truth, it denies itself to be true.