05-16-2016, 07:49 PM
(05-16-2016, 03:36 PM)Odin Wrote: The issue is that there are no context-free facts, all information is understood ONLY though interpreting them though cultural and ideological lenses. One of the big reasons Postmodernism took off was because of the realization by intellectuals that what is often considered "neutral" or "apolitical" is in most cases just a dominant cultural mindset or ideology being taken as "just the way the world is". Marx famously argued this in terms of political assumptions (an idea later expanded upon by Antonio Gramsci), but it took mid and late 20th century thinkers to logically extend this to other areas. I suspect that the increasing development and growing economic importance of non-Western countries has helped encourage this philosophical shift.
The Marx connection, unfortunately, has become the source of a lot of ridiculous conspiracies about "cultural Marxists" that have become seen as self-evident truth among the Alt-Right folks, who thinks any connection to "evil commies" makes an idea automatically wrong...
Of course there are context-free facts, typically mathematical and physical laws, biographical data, and some historical realities. There are conventions that only fools break. One does not have the choice of whether one goes south or north on Interstate 65 in Louisville, Kentucky to get to Indianapolis or on whether Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.
Political and aesthetic values are subjective. The only objective judgments on politics are of efficacy; the objective judgments on art are of competence of execution. I have seen people praise murderous dictators, which I could never do; I consider murder unconscionable.
Whether one would rather listen to a recording of Oscar Peterson or to one of Van Cliburn playing the piano is a matter of taste. Or, for example, Bouguereau or Malevich.
I cannot speak for Marx or Gramsci. Objective reality and needful conventions exist. One cannot reshape reality to fit the desires of some person at a certain time. Orwell warns us in 1984 that words have meanings lest we be unable to think, let alone communicate.
Can a Marxist accept that gravitation is genuine, that 6+ 5 = 11, or that that Julius Caesar was a real person, or that Antarctica is mostly covered in ice? I would think so. To believe otherwise would be either gross folly or madness.
Non-Western countries? Does anyone think rationality strictly a characteristic of Western civilization?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.