THE PROGRAMME began when in the course of a few weeks we made a dated record of our thoughts. We think of that record as our "genesis" document. There are two parts. Part One ranges generally over the subject. Part Two, below, deals with critical theory.
(1) THE PROGRAMME is not a routine scholarly exercise in pursuit of evidence for a tightly drawn hypothesis.
(2) THE PROGRAMME begins with one person living in the postmodern situation and steadfastly refusing to remove the interests of the person from the project.
These points partake of a postmodern temper, we believe. Whatever its definition may be, the postmodern seems clearly to be unfriendly to the neatly analogical answer that wraps everything up: we have yet to see a neat and complete philosophy of postmodernism.
It seems equally clearly to value the particular experience, the quotidian satisfaction; this seems to favor both the participation of the subject in the pursuit and its presence in that which is captured (or sighted crossing the river into the woods, at least).
Also, we deny identity with the demonic, as the more extreme poststructuralist practitioners are seen by some fearful observers: we think there is no doubt that life is real and not a textual hologram. If that makes it possible for us to think about the postmodern situation--at least in part--as a problem in ethics, that satisfies us.
It will satisfy us even more if, by affirming a reality--even if it is not affirmed the old-fashioned way--we admit the elemental components, the object of study of the natural scientists, to the postmodern investigation. In the more imaginative texts in the postmodern spirit, the context gets so thick that the facticity we know in our bones seems to be questioned--"problematized," as they say. Modern science is, to be sure, reductionist. The strategy of limiting the object of inquiry in the interest of deriving a defensible answer is the centerpiece of modern science. It has made it possible for us to fly to the moon and back. Because of the success of modern science, people came to believe that it could derive all answers, not just those made available through the rigors of reductionist methodology. It will never be capable of giving all the answers. In the postmodern period, we have come to see this more clearly than those in the modern period could see it. Extremists see, wrongly, that the limits of modern science condemn it totally. The need in the postmodern period is to contextualize modern science, not to condemn it. It needs to be put in its proper place in the scheme of all knowledge.
A project in the postmodern must deal centrally with the concept of God. We are not clear at the outset of the most effective avenue into a consideration of God. Whether we find it or not, we acknowledge the importance of God in the western tradition upon which postmodernism comments and against which it reacts. It may be some time before THE PROGRAMME can muster the critical equipment for an adequate engagement with the concept of God.
The Ten Commandments of the Postmodern
Theoretical concepts: an abandoned trail
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