In this third installment of our “Postmodern Epistemology” series. (see Part I and Part II for previous installments), we will briefly summarize the two Modern Precursors that we have surveyed thus far. We will then follow with an extended critique in subsequent posts.

Summary of Modernism

In the two modernistic thinkers that we have surveyed thus far (Descartes and Kant), we encounter elements in the philosophy of each that postmodernism comes to reject in addition to elements that postmodernism whole-heartedly embraces and develops.

Descartes’ strict foundationalism might be called the archenemy of postmodernism. Indeed, the overconfident rationalism that he stood for has been the constant center of attention in postmodern thought and it has received much criticism from even Christian quarters (criticism that must be considered more or less valid in our view). Also, his essentialism and representationalism, which has been taken for granted for so long in the history of philosophy, is no longer taken for granted at all.

Kant’s “Copernican revolution” of situating the autonomous, constructively active mind at the center of the knowledge process leads to the conclusion that there must be a phenomenal/noumenal-distinction (together with the correlative distinction between faith and knowledge). Though Kant claims otherwise, we must agree with the dictum of Van Til:

“Of course Kant says that he starts merely from the facts of experience. He wants no metaphysics. He starts from the fact of science. He starts from the fact of the moral experience. But he finds these facts because he has from the outset placed them where they are in terms of his own autonomy. […] In assuming man’s autonomy Kant virtually takes for granted the essentially legislative character of human thought. […] Kant’s rejection of metaphysics simply leads him to the adoption of a new metaphysics.”¹

The question we must raise is, Has Kant indeed made room for faith as he alleges? Further, we might ask whether it really is a faith worth making room for.

It certainly seems to have a prima facie quality of being a content-less faith because it cannot be (indeed it dare not be) coupled with knowledge.²

Both Kant and Descartes seek to overcome the subject/object-dilemma of epistemology. While Descartes’ strong dichotomy between the two leads to a mind/matter-dualism, Kant never really overcomes this, but rather, reinforces it through his “theoretical/practical”-dichotomy.³

Rather than ask with Descartes, “How can we have access to objective reality ‘out there?’”- the question is framed by postmodernists “Is there any objective reality out there? And if so, can we know it?”

Rather than answer with Kant, “Our mind does not simply discover objective reality, it is constructively active in the knowing process”- postmodernist advocates again call into question the legitimacy (or the use) of this notion of objective reality altogether (although they do pick up on the constructivist aspect of Kant’s thought). To speak somewhat anachronistically then, Kant’s Copernican revolution is actually the revolution that gets Postmodernism off the ground.

If the thesis of this series is correct and postmodernism is only one more instance of an autonomous and essentially rationalistic⁴ epistemology, then we can readily see how Kant’s theories naturally pave the way for the postmodern situation.

In this sense then, the history of epistemology subsequent to Kant (and especially the epistemological impasse of postmodernism) can be considered a series of footnotes to him. Further, each postmodern thinker can, in some important way, be shown to be influenced by and responsive to Kant’s Copernican revolution.

As Allan Megill notes, as “prophets of extremity, all four thinkers [Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida] can be viewed as attempting, in one way or another, to respond to Kant.”⁵

He notes further, “All four can be seen as working against Kant, as trying to respond in an un-Kantian way to a problem that Kant made obvious.”⁶

It is especially in Kant’s description of the noumenal realm that we find the way paved for Kant’s postmodern successors. Kant’s double move in this regard consists, on the one hand, in the elevation of the importance of reason to the degree that it almost becomes a virtual co-creator of reality (imposing, at the very least, true meaning on essentially meaningless and un-interpreted objects). On the other hand, Kant’s move also indirectly “limits” reason and denies it privileged access to the realm of the noumena, the sphere where God himself has been banned.

Thus, reason becomes both prophet and king, but not priest, because God has been confined to oblivion, having become essentially no more than a morally helpful regulative concept.

Though Kant might indeed make room for faith, there is no room in his philosophy for the biblical God or even [biblically informed] faith anymore.

Somewhat Ironically, what initially is Kant’s practical reason for positing God’s noumenal existence, becomes Schleiermacher’s psychological reason for positing the existence of God, which, in turn, becomes Feuerbach’s reason for abandoning belief in God altogether.

1. Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Philippsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1998), 345.↩
2. For Kant, then, Anselm’s epistemological axiom credo ut intelligam must be changed to credo et intelligam, indicating a disjunct (i.e., an either/or situation).↩
3. The sheer monumental architecture of Kant’s three Critiques, divided up as they are into the theoretical and the practical domain contribute much to this development.↩
4. Meaning reason functioning as the highest recognized authority.↩
5. Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 9.↩
6. Ibid., 11 (emphasis added).↩