By the way Schaeffer is a Christian, so don’t think I was trying to ambush you with him. I think the book I was thinking about is “How should we then live?”

Definitely will check out Schaeffer.

Jeremy, Bullet makes a good point about the responsibility of finding truth, I hope he reads Schaeffer and enjoys him as much as I did. He was one of the great thinkers of our time.

Jim

I love Neil Postman. He has a great book called “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”

Have you ever heard of Francis Schaeffer? He believed that art is one of the first indicators of where a culture is going, and what a society thinks and feels. Cultural trends are visible through pictures and art long before they make their way into books and articles. So, in a sense, art (and theater) is philosophy put to picture and story.

A ggod tool to examine our relationship to the beginnings of what I believe should still be defined as the current era is Building a Bridge to the 18th Century by Neil Postman. The 1700s started a shift away from empire and privilege to self-determination and empowerment of the masses. We haven’t quite made it through this period, especially as different areas of the world have encountered and responded to these ideas. Postmodernism was born of the despair of WW2 and the apparent breakdown and failure of the ideals of modernism. This wasn’t the case. We can see the same struggle with national identity and determination carrying all the way through to the present day, even among peoples who had already “discovered” it.

I’m sure there is another label out there already, but modernism is still enough for me, at least until someone can be a little more creative than “post-” and “post-post-”.

If there is a serious philosophy student out there, I’m sure he can skewer me on these points, and, frankly, I welcome it, as I’m mostly self-taught.

My formal education in philosophy ended when I informed the head of the department that I had changed my major to theatre. He asked me something to the effect of, “Wouldn’t it be prudent to stick to a major that would lead to a more certain future?” To which I replied, “Like Philosophy?” He didn’t find that very amusing. As it turns out, I absolutely could have turned a Philosophy degree into a great many career opportunities, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.

You know, I’ve been hearing and reading that postmodernism was only a transitional phase, and we are already “over” it. You seem to be saying that very thing. We don’t yet know what to call the era we are in now, and we certainly aren’t back to “modernism” but whatever era we are in, I’m sure history will label it for us.

Have you heard much about this?

Having said that, I totally disagree with relativism. There are (have to be, I should say) absolutes out there. The physical realm is bound by natural laws (i.e. gravity) and there’s no good reason to abandon the idea that the metaphysical realm is no different. That doesn’t mean I believe they come from a god, just that they must exist because we can conceive and comprehend them.

We are moving beyond the post-modern, beyond relativism and existentialism. They weren’t that great to begin with. One should never, I think, come up with a theory of life and truth based upon despair. The era that began with the revolutions of the 18th century is not yet over and we still have so much to learn before it can be. Continuing to rename periods by adding “post-” to them doesn’t make it move any faster.