Comment by Der_Einzige | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Der_Einzige | Hacker News Reader

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Nietzsche would never have been a fan of post-modernism and it is a great historical irony that post-modern authors cite him so prolifically. I'm convinced that most of the French totally misunderstood the Germans (looking at you, Foucault and Deleuze...)

Nietzsche's crusade against schopenhauerian pessimism and critique of "the last man" (opposite of the ubermensch) looks suspiciously like what his critique of post-modernism might have looked like if he lived long enough...

From the Wikipedia article on "the last man"

"The lives of the last men are pacifist and comfortable. There is no longer a distinction between ruler and ruled, strong over weak or supreme over the mediocre. Social conflict and challenges are minimized. Every individual lives equally and in "superficial" harmony. There are no original or flourishing social trends and ideas"

Hmm, sounds kind of like what the hard left post-modernists want, doesn't it?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man

Edit: How about the people of HN explain why this take is wrong instead of greying it as they seem to do with every other post that has anything to do with post-modernism. I'd sincerly like to hear why this post isn't a good interpretation of Nietzsche.

It's especially suspicious because it fluctuates from not grey to grey rapidly - indicating that there may be a significant amount of brigading going on.

Ironically, Nietzsche is considered (by some) to be one of the fathers of postmodern thought. His criticism of the objectivity of science in "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense", his deconstruction of the Western concept of self in "The Anti-Christ", and to some extents his criticism of 19th-century historiography in “On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life” and other books are touchstones which presage a lot of postmodern discussion of these topics.

Check out https://muse.jhu.edu/article/27340 for the argument against though!

You were mostly okay up until you made it blatantly political. It was both a superficial dismissal of a complex set of political ideas at the same time that it conflates "political left" with "post modernist".

That's because the post-modernist authors that this article critiques have a long history of being extremely far left.

Foucault was an actual communist. Sartre was (for a time) an actual communist. Deleuze and Guattari were both far left and actual communists. Lyotard was a hard leftist. Baudrillard was a hard leftist and for a time an actual communist. Derrida is far left. Rorty is a leftist. Camus (not really pomo) was for a time, an actual communist. Explain to me why it's a mischaracterization to claim that the french post-modernists are generally leftists.

I'm not critiquing the "political left" I'm identifying that the goals of the post-modernist left are very similar to what Nietzsche is critiquing.

Also, I'm not "superficially' dismissing post-modernism. The OP article does a good job of that already with its satirical abstract. I'm making a connection. I personally would strongly prefer the life of "The Last Man" over the Übermensch

To reply to the post under this, because the brigades have me temporarily muzzled:

I think you're projecting what you want me to say on top of what I'm actually saying.

The overwhelming majority of self-styled post-modernist philosophers also just happen to be leftists. As such, they follow an intellectual tradition which usually moves towards fighting hierarchies. I do not know how you construed this to be me claiming that "all leftists are post-modernists" or anything of that sort. I didn't say that and it's not true. Many leftists are the opposite of post-modernist.

At no point do I bring up a single liberal author. I specifically cite french post-modernists and a few other french authors who flirted with leftism and are adjacent to the post-modernist movement. I gave a highly incomplete list of the overlap between leftists and postmodernists. I cannot even fathom how you grew to think that I am conflating liberals and post-modernists.

Oh, and finally, the people who keep flagging posts about Post-Modernism are intellectually lazy and proving that the average HN flagger can't be trusted to talk about an even slightly controversial topic. The flaggers should be embarrassed.

Please stop posting like this to HN. It's tedious ideological boilerplate, not curious conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What specifically about this post is "tedious ideological boilerplate"? That's an extremely insulting way to characterize the work I've done to substantiate my argument. Moreover, I am very curious about what people disagree with in my post. I ask people in my OP to post specific reasons why they disagree with me. That's the definition of curious conversation

And bringing up Nietzsche is extremely relevant since the abstract of the OP specifically cites his reasoning as the source of post-modernism. I'm claiming that had he lived long enough to see what post-modernism was, he would have tried to disavow his work from it. Apparently that's "tedious ideological boilerplate" to you.

At what point am I claiming something which is untrue? If making a connection between the left and french post-modernism is something that you label as "tedious ideological boilerplate" than you're simply mistaken.

At worst, my final addendum about HN flaggers may not be within your guidelines. Outside of that, this post is high quality and something that HN users should aspire to. Compare the work I did to nearly all the other posts in this thread. They are on average far more quippy, far less substantiated, and more ideological than my own.

Your complaint about this post implies that this platform is bankrupt and defunct for talking about anything except a subset of computer related topics.

You are saying post modernists were on the far left. Fine. I'm saying most of the far left are not any sort of self-styled post modernist. To use an analogy, you're saying "all squares are rectangles". I'm saying "Okay, but not all rectangles are squares".

You are equating post modernists with all of a segment of leftist politics. Perhaps this is unintentionally, but that is the implication I get from your comments. This gives me the impression that you are conflating post-modern philosophy with liberal political philosophy. They are distinct branches of thought.

Share your list of post-modern conservative thinkers please

I'm not up to date on an inventory of post-modern conservatives, to which I made no claim if they exist or not. Once again you have ignored my actual claim: I am saying that not all liberals, not even all liberals further to the left, are post-modernists. If you want an example of that, I can give you one: John Rawls, one of the most famous political philosophers of our time, and a very liberal one at that. He was decidedly not a post-modernist, never writing a single paper on post-modernism as an epistemic philosophy he supported. If anything, his work evinces a concrete reality. Certainly there are those who read some post-modern influence into his work. Equally, conservative influence can be read into it as well: For one, he believed in objective truth. For another, he had no illusions of nor advocacy for any type of radical equality. Finally, he was a strong advocate of individualism, though he denied utilitarian thinking as a useful method of expressing individualism.

So, once again, I am simply saying that everyone on the left is not an post-modernist.

You appear to dislike post-modernism. I'm not a huge fan of it either. However, your disdain for that field of thinking seems to have focused your efforts on your area of dislike, on the excesses of those with whom you disagree. It may be a focus that blinds you to the wider field of modern epistemic thought, political philosophy, and nuance within the political spectrum that defies easy liberal-conservative dichotomies.

You cannot read the source works and/or criticisms of post-modernism, the source works and/or criticisms of libertarian/utilitation/objectivism and come away with an accurate picture of modern epistemic or political philosophy.

Land, Dugin, Moldbug, and Rorty is not French.

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