Web 2.0 is a slippery term. For our purposes, I will use it to refer to the recent trends in the “social” Internet arising circa 2004. Sites such as Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, MySpace, Facebook, and Digg are all part of the Web 2.0 trend. While much of what makes up Web 2.0 has been around prior to 2004, the Internet has exploded into a plethora of “social” features such as voting, linking up with friends, recommendations based on user ratings and collaboration. Even “old media” sites such as the New York Times and CNN now include links with their stories that integrate features from popular Web 2.0 sites. It is now easier to incorporate their content into your own “reality.”

Many of us have taken these developments in stride without thinking about the potential consequences. We have come to accept personalization and the democratization of information as progress. A new book has raised a number of questions regarding this movement. Scott Lamb at Discerning Reader recently reviewed Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateurs. In it Keen claims the Web 2.0 phenomenon is seductively destroying our culture.

What the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than considered judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of 100 million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves[...] In the cult of the amateur, those who know the most can be persecuted by those who know the least[...] The most popular blogs are those that offer the seductive conspiracy theories and sensationalist antiestablishment platitudes that readers crave.

Although the questions he raises are good, Keen comes across as overly biased - something he has openly admitted¹. His book is designed to open a discussion of the issues. Given the nature of his intended audience, I can understand why he has chosen to present his argument in this fashion. As I’m sure he anticipated, much of the Web 2.0 world has labeled him as the digital antichrist and discredited the book without thinking about its critique².

As much as I’m a technophile and even a “Web 2.0″ programmer³, I must agree with most of what I’ve read in his book⁴. I suggest at least reading Lamb’s review. As Christians, we must think about these topics critically. We do not need to throw all of Web 2.0 out, however, we must discern with redeemed minds what should be used for the advancement of the Kingdom and what should be discarded.

1. I can’t cite the direct source - having [ironically] heard the audio clip on a podcast.↩
2. Needless to say, perhaps the most vocal opponents will not even read the book.↩
3. I created and maintain castlechurch.org↩
4. As a matter of full disclosure, I have not completed the book.↩

This seventh installment of our “Postmodern epistemology series” will quickly summarize the main features the so-called transitional period between modernity and postmodernity.

Summary of Transition Period

In summary, even in the transitional figures we have chosen to survey we can see how highly indebted and concessive they are to Kant’s basic epistemological framework. Either in appropriating it or in trying to overcome it they show themselves to be his disciples, willingly or unwillingly. But in contradistinction to the modern figures we surveyed, we also recognize new developments in the transitional period eventually leading to postmodernism.

For example, there is a renewed interest in Hegelian dialectic and Hegelian historicism seems to have been a commonly shared philosophy of history. According to Hegel (1770-1831), there is no objective way to determine which of many theories and views of truth on any given question is right. What we have is not absolute truth but in any discipline we may find the facts about who has held what “truth” when and why. For Hegel, philosophy is the history of philosophy. This view of truth as historically determined has of course been willingly appropriated by postmodern thinkers. It mainly surfaces in the so-called “New Historicism.”
Kierkegaard’s turn to the subject (subjectivism or existentialism), Nietzsche’s nihilism, aestheticism and relativism (or perspectivism), and Heidegger’s existentialist Dasein (which marked the opposition to abstract being and a renewed antimetaphysical philosophy) are all motifs that we will meet again and again in postmodern thought.

This sixth installment of our Postmodern epistemology series will provide a quick (and all too superficial) survey of the last of the so-called transitional figures who have been influential in the development of “Postmodern Epistemology” - Martin Heidegger.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (who in his own words attempts to take Nietzsche especially seriously as a thinker) is deeply concerned with overcoming the subject/object-dichotomy which (although extant even in ancient Greek philosophy) has been brought to particular prominence in the philosophy of Enlightenment figures such as Descartes and later Kant.

In order to surmount this dichotomy, Heidegger brushes aside any abstract notion of being and replaces it with Dasein (Being-there). Over and against the Cartesian-Kantian understanding of the self which stands squarely opposite external objects, Heidegger wants to know of the self only in terms of a Dasein.
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Our fifth installment in the “Postmodern Epistemology” series will briefly survey a few features in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche that have helped shape postmodern thinking.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas (himself a proponent of modernity) refers to Nietzsche’s thought as the “entry into postmodernity.” According to Habermas, Nietzsche refuses to furnish a new definition of reason in his writing and work of philosophy and rather he “bids farewell to the dialectic of enlightenment”¹ altogether, and he consequently introduces a kind of irrationalism instead.

Nietzsche has been labeled a nihilist, an aestheticist and a relativist/perspectivist. In point of fact, his thought probably contains elements of all of these.
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1. Habermas in Erickson, Truth, 85.↩

Transitional Figures

In this fourth installment of our “Postmodern Epistemology” series, we now turn from the Modern Precursors (René Descartes and Immanuel Kant) to three “Transitional Figures:” Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

These transitional figures are thinkers who are most often viewed as neither modern (in any true sense) nor postmodern.¹ The most important of this group for our purposes are Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.
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1. Since postmodernism is often considered to have begun sometime after WW II (some say perhaps in the 1970s) it would be anachronistic to consider these figures postmodern, even though they might have done more to ultimately shape postmodernism than anyone else.↩

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.
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In this second installment of our Postmodern Epistemology series, we will turn to the other significant modern precursor to postmodern thought: Immanuel Kant.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Admittedly, Kant’s inclusion among the figures that we identify as historical precursors to postmodernism may indeed raise some eyebrows. After all, was not Kant still very modern with his idealist attempt to save knowledge and make room for faith?

It is true that in many respects Kant is very much the modern figure (and from merely a historical standpoint he certainly is). Nevertheless, there are features of his philosophy (especially as it pertains to epistemology) which paves the road for a postmodern crisis of epistemology.
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This is the first installment of a series on the “Epistemology of Postmodernism.”

Let us begin with a brief overview of the series: In the first three installments we will survey two “Modern Precursors” to postmodernism - René Descartes and Immanuel Kant. We will briefly summarize and evaluate each figure.

In the next four installments we will survey three “Transitional Figures” to postmodernism - Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. Likewise, we will briefly summarize and evaluate each of them.

After this, we will attempt to define the concepts that are crucial to postmodern epistemology, and we will interact with and critique them.

Let us now turn to our first section.
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“Foundationalism, allied as it was with metaphysical realism and the correspondence view of truth, was undeniably the epistemological king of the Enlightenment era.”¹

Thus quotes Millard Erickson the late Stanley Grenz, concerned that as foundationalism goes and as the correspondence view of truth goes, so goes the concept of truth altogether. “Although neither [Grenz] nor John Franke overtly reject the correspondence view, it is so closely allied with foundationalism that their rejection of the latter seems to entail the negation of the former as well.” (Continue Reading…)

1. Stanley J. Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era Baker Academic, 2000), 190.↩

There has been somewhat of an interesting discussion recently in the blogosphere with regard to the relationship between a rejection of foundationalism and relativism & skepticism. One of the contributors at our own blog, Paul Helm, put forth a response at the Alliance site to critical comments made by Steve Bush concerning Helm’s review of Franke’s book, The Character of Theology. Following soon after Bush’s initial criticism, David Decosimo from Roundtower also weighed in, accused Helm of misunderstanding foundationalism, and then proceeded to essentially argue against a classical account of foundationalism (although I agree with James Anderson’s observation that David’s critique could be read as a broader criticism of all forms of foundationalism [such as externalist versions of foundationalism advocated by people like Alvin Plantinga or internalist versions advocated by people like Laurence BonJour]), all the while assuming that Helm was or is committed to defending a classical form of foundationalism (which seems unwarranted in so far as I can tell).
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