Merold Westphal has another essay in this book entitled “Laughing at Hegel.” I read the whole thing. “Christmas Humpheys says, ‘There is more honest ‘belly laughter’ in a Zen monastery than surely in any other religious institution on earth’ — and the faithful chant before Maitreya, the Messianic Buddha whose avatar is a clown: When …
If We Had Some Cheese
Westfold argues that Derrida is some kind of a natural law theorist. We can ascertain this from the title of chapter 11, “Derrida As Natural Law Theorist.” Westfold draws a distinction between logical positivists and postmodernists, a distinction that he considers important. The logical positivists said of their own position that it destroyed all ethics …
Fooba Fooba Fooba
In another essay, Westphal is concerned to deal with the ready identification of postmodernism with various political absolutisms, particularly fascism and communism. In “Deconstruction and Christian Cultural Theory,” Westphal argues that such an assimilation is based on a gross misreading of Derrida and Foucault in particular. “So it is that the temptation to lump postmodernism …
Leithart’s Ugly Ditch
Here’s the problem. Merold Westphal wants to stand outside modernity, critiquing it. But he most certainly does not want to replace it. He talks wistfully about how nice it would be if it were to be magically replaced — in a Lennon-like Imagine sort of way, where the schools have all the money they need …
Pray for Christendom
In 1998, I co-wrote a book with Doug Jones entitled Angels in the Architecture. The subtitle was “A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth,” and at the center of that vision was a robust rejection of modernity. The book begins with the question, “Modernity or medievalism?” (p. 17). To wit: “Medieval Protestantism is not a call …
Got My Pomojo Working
And another thing . . . Whenever I write on postmodernism, I usually get one of four basic responses. The first is a popular one these days with folks who have one remaining screw set firmly in the one remaining hinge. It involves setting up witty websites at my expense, with the wit employed showing …
Half an Inch of Ice on the Pond of Hubris
In his chapter “Appropriating Postmodernism,” Westphal says some good things. The devil, as we shall see, is in his applications, but in isolation he says some really good things where I believe we can all agree. “Postmodernism tends to slide in the opposite direction, from ‘We have no absolute insight’ to ‘There is no absolute …
Nothing But High Confusion
Westphal’s book is a collection of related essays, the first one having the same title as the book — Overcoming Onto-theology. That essay is promising, but unhappily it promises all the wrong things, and then does a good job in fulfilling the promises. I have three basic criticisms of his project as set forth here, …
Overcoming the Onto-Polis
Peter Leithart has pointed out the need for another Christendom. I agree with him completely. This is over against the modernity project, which wants to manage everything on secularist assumptions — in science, law, art, politics, academia, custom, and so on. With regard to human society, the structures of modernity run all the way up, …
My Own Personal Hermeneutic of Suspicion
In Overcoming Onto-Theology, Merold Westphal begins by urging a hermeneutic of suspicion. To which I cheerfully reply, “Okay! When can we start?” In this book he is addressing his postmodern friends who don’t share his faith, and his Christian friends who “are allergic or even a bit apoplectic when it comes to postmodern philosophy” (p. …