Redefining Postmodernism and The Truth of All Things

Ken Schneck has a brief and helpful discussion entitled "Redefining Postmodernism" here.

Ken writes: "The truth of the term 'pre-modern' is the sense that most human cultures have tended to be unreflective toward the reasons underlying what they believe to be true."

There's one little clarification I would make:

It is accurate to say that premoderns take metaphysics to be "first philosophy" rather than epistemology. However, we must be careful not to think that this makes premoderns "unreflective." It's just that the first questions they asked were ones about what is real, rather than how we know what is real.

Ultimately, by middle ages, it was not unusual to speak of "the truth of all things," insofar as all things image God to some degree. Things are both real and true. But by the time we get to Kant, it is an either or: things are either real (noumenal) or they are true (phenomenal). Once again, then, I find the difference between premodern and modern thought to be able to be expressed in terms of both/and and either/or.

Wisdom from Josef Pieper:

"If you study any philosophical treatise of our present era you will with almost absolute certainty not encounter the concept, and much less the expression, "the truth of all things." This is no mere accident. The generally prevailing philsophical thinking of our time has no room at all for this concept; it is, as it were, "not provided for." It makes sense to speak of truth with regard to thoughts, ideas, statements, opinions--but not with regard to things. Our judgements regarding reality may be true (or false); but to label as "true" reality itself, the "things," appears rather meaningless, mere nonsense. Things are real, not "true."

Looking at the historical development of this situation, we find that there is much more to it than the simple fact of a certain concept or expression not being used: we find not merely the "neutral absence, as it were, of a certain way of thinking. No , the nonuse and absence of the concept, "the truth of all things" is rather the result ofa long process of biased discrimination and suspression or, to use a less aggressive term, of elimination."
--Josef Pieper: An Anthology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989).