From "Postmodern Warfare: The Ignorance of Our Warrior Intellectuals," by Stanley Fish, Harper's Magazine, July 2002, pages 33-40--
"Who would have thought, in those first few minutes, hours, days, that what we now call 9/11 was to become an event in the Culture Wars? Today, more than nine months later, nothing could be clearer, though it was only on September 22 that the first sign appeared, in a New York Times opinion piece written by Edward Rothstein and entitled 'Attacks on U.S. challenge the Perspectives of Postmodern True Believers.' " ....
"Rothstein begins by saying that 'Postmodernists challenge assertions that truth and ethical judgment have any objective validity.' Well, it depends on what you mean by 'objective.' "...
Or what "is" is.
Read Fish in the July Harper's, then read the following--
From my website The Diamond Theory of Truth--
"It is said that the students of medieval Paris came to blows in the streets over the question of universals. The stakes are high, for at issue is our whole conception of our ability to describe the world truly or falsely, and the objectivity of any opinions we frame to ourselves. It is arguable that this is always the deepest, most profound problem of philosophy. It structures Plato's (realist) reaction to the sophists (nominalists). What is often called 'postmodernism' is really just nominalism, colourfully presented as the doctrine that there is nothing except texts. It is the variety of nominalism represented in many modern humanities, paralysing appeals to reason and truth."
-- Simon Blackburn, Think, Oxford University Press, 1999, page 268
Review the use of the term "universal" in Fish's Harper's article, and the article's conclusion--
"Can the complex reality of particular situations be captured by the abstract vocabulary of so-called universals? No, in thunder."
and read the following essay--
Discerning and Defining the Essentials of Postmodernism , by Stan Wallace (Director, University of Wisconsin, Christian Leadership Ministries).
Read the following remarks by Fish (see above)--
"Who would have thought, in those first few minutes, hours, days, that what we now call 9/11 was to become an event in the Culture Wars? Today, more than nine months later, nothing could be clearer, though it was only on September 22 that the first sign appeared, in a New York Times opinion piece...."
and the following from a column by Michael Kelly dated September 19, 2001, at Townhall.com--
"On the morning of September 11, as it happened, The New York Times ran a story that was very typical of the Times in recent years. The story warmly profiled the life--and plugged the memoirs--of a former 1970s radical and terrorist bomber named Bill Ayers. 'I don't regret setting bombs,' Ayers was quoted in the lead. 'I feel we didn't do enough.' Ayers boasts in his book that he took part in the 1970s bombings of the New York City police headquarters, the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. The Times called these 'daring acts in his youth.' The Times found Ayers to be possessed of an 'ebullient, ingratiating manner,' and accorded him the respect of 2,000 words in the paper plus a generally fawning and deeply stupid interview in the Sept. 16 New York Times Magazine, which was printed before the events of September 11."
Note that Fish is Dean at University of Illinois, Chicago, an institution that can also boast of Ayers as a distinguished professor.
For background on Fish, see The Stanley Fish Resources Center.
June 18, 2002 shc759