As of 2022, we live in a world of competing post-modernities. Post-modernity, a politically and emotionally charged word if there ever was one, will, for our purposes, simply mean “what comes after modernity.” This assumes an understanding of “modernity”, which is in short supply. To explore the question, “what is modernity?”, in detail, look here, but for a tldr I quote from the article:
“Beginning with Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method, modern philosophy, and, consequentially, modern thought as such, came to privilege methodological reasoning over personal/experiential reasoning. Humans can get things wrong, and with the Hundred Years War being so recent for Descartes, humans can get religion and its application very wrong. To rely on personal authority leads to religious dogmatism, and to rely on personal experience gives you outmoded physics as in the case of Aristotle. What is needed is to separate epistemology from the subject and bring it into the object. Here is the birth of “subjective vs objective.” What your priest or pastor says, what your own observations of nature are, is subjective. Why? Because these authorities are grounded in the subject, be it the trustworthiness, or competence, of your religious elder, or the trustworthiness of your senses and abstractive powers. Methodology, be it that of Descartes, Locke, Newton, or Kant, is objective. Why? Because the authority of a method is independent of any subject and is grounded in the object called method.
Notice how in Kant’s ethics moral truths are discovered through the application of the categorical imperative. Instead of learning that it is wrong to lie from your elders or the Bible, in Kant’s ethics you discover that lying is wrong by reasoning that if you universalize that behavior then it becomes clear that lying ought to be avoided. Subjective (authority) is replaced by objective (the method of the categorical imperative). It is not only the authority of elders or the Bible that is done away with in favor of method, but also personal judgement. Aristotle’s ethics assumes that the person in question is capable of recognizing when a behavior is in excess (such as brashness) or defect (cowardice), and also capable of determining when that behavior is appropriate/within the mean between excess and defect (courage). This too is done away with in favor of method.
The emphasis on method in modernity has saturated the world to such a degree that it is not uncommon to find “defenders of tradition” and “opponents of the modern world”, railing against subjective morality. Though we can use words differently than has been intended historically, implicit in any condemnation of “subjective morality” is the condemnation of the subject’s ability to correctly ascertain ethical truths.”
Modernity, if it is, is the emphasis on method, and the de-privileging of the subject. Yet, modernity is (mostly) behind us. There are the occasional bubbling ups, such as the New Atheism, but by and large we live in one post-modernity or another. Although there are probably more than three post-modernities, and these post-modernities are in no way mutually exclusive, we will narrow our investigation to the three I have noticed the most.
I) Phronetic Post-Modernity
Going beyond method-centered modernity can look like a return to phronesis, to practical/experiential wisdom. What separates a great hockey player from a decent hockey player is that the great player can “feel” when it is right to shoot the puck. He knows at what distance, at what angle, with what amount of force, and based upon who he is playing against. This knowledge is said to be a “feel”, because it requires personal touch (phronesis tends towards the hands). A great teacher, like the hockey player, knows how to read a class, feel (again with the hands) what each student needs, what her strengths and weaknesses are, and plays into these feels. Neither the hockey player nor the teacher follows a method; they both rely upon phronesis, which is built up over time.
Phronesis did not disappear, it is true, but it has been historically de-privileged. Scientists, especially, have insisted upon the necessity of method to such an extent that the scientist, outside of revolutionary discoveries, ought to be replaceable. An experiment should be replicable by anyone, and anywhere. Phronetic science, on the contrary, privileges the scientist over the method, trusting the judgement of the experienced scientist to be definitive in disputed matters. At the risk of messing up timelines, the emphasis on “rule by experts” in the early Progressive Movement looks a lot like phronesis dominated science. In fiction, the character of Walter White, from Breaking Bad, is an example of the phronetic scientist. White’s recipe for crystal meth was known by a number of chemists, but only White, because he was White, was able to produce crystal with 99% purity.
In its soft form, phronetic post-modernity is simply the privileging of personal experience and the elevation of those with the most experience to the rank of authority. In its hard form, phronetic post-modernity views method as inherently suspect because it is independent of the experienced person. Examples of thinkers who would fall into this post-modernity are Joseph Dunne, Jurgen Habermas, Hans-Gorg Gadamer, and Christos Yannaras.
II) Ecological Post-Modernity
Unlike phronetic post-modernity, ecological post-modernity accepts the de-privileging of the subject, but does not emphasize method as was done in modernity. Instead of method replacing the subject, ecology replaces her. By “ecology”, I do not mean, strictly, trees and birds. In the widest sense, an “ecosystem” is the context in which a subject is situated. Substack is an ecosystem, for example. To understand what a thing is, on this account, is to understand the niche it places in its ecosystem. What something does in its ecosystem, how it relates to other organisms, this is what a thing is. Correspondingly, political action is synonymous with ecological adjustments. Since we are but niches in an ecology, our behaviors reflecting that niche, should it be desirable to change the behavior of a number of organisms, the answer is to assign them new niches, and to do this means adjusting what the ecosystem looks like.
If the organ of phronetic post-modernity was the hands, the organ of ecological post-modernity would be the eye. It is the eye which scans an ecosystem, finding what it is comprised of, and how the niches interact. Our friends over at the Tavistock Institute are the leading proponents of ecological post-modernity, developing the fields of social and organizational ecology and using these fields to adjust the cultural-political landscape of Western Europe and North America. Thinkers of ecological post-modernity include Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Wilferd Bion, Michael Foucault, and Alain Badiou.
III) Technological Hypermodernity
Whereas the past two post-modernities are movements away from method, this path is a doubling down on method, and thus the name hypermodernity. What flaws are present in modernity, on this account, are not due to the emphasis on method, but its imperfect application. Humans, in other words, were not up to the task. Should AI become sufficiently competent, however, these imperfections could be erased. Not only menial tasks, but the very pursuit of knowledge could be relegated to AI. If knowledge is primarily methodological, and if humans are unable to follow a method without error, and if AI can follow a method without error, then AI are definitionally better candidates for the pursuit of knowledge. It is not the hands, nor the eye, but the mind as intellect (and only as intellect) that is the organ for technological hypermodernity.
Humans are not necessarily excluded from technological hypermodernity, but they are de-privileged as the subject was in modernity. Although humans and subjects are often meant to be the same thing, humans (in modernity) were necessary to implement method, and since the subject was pushed aside in favor of method, it would seem to follow that humans are not the same things as subjects. Only in technological hypermodernity are humans de-privileged. As the subject still existed in modernity, humans will still exist in technological hypermodernity, but will play supporting roles. Thinkers representing such a path are, above all, Nick Land, and, in fiction, Blade Runner depicts a future where technological hypermodernity is in its infancy.
Mutual Compatibility
Post-modernities are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they can be. Phronesis is likely necessary for ecological adjustment, and AI might be capable of phronesis or ecological adjustment. Yet, a strong version of phronetic post-modernity might lead one to believe that the type of AI needed for technological hypermodernity is impossible, since AI relies on algorithms, which can, unlike phronetic judgement, be universalized. Taking any post-modernity in its “hard” variation will likely lead to incompatibility, but there is no obvious necessity to take the hard variations. Further, that all three post-modernities exist, today, side by side shows their mutual compatibility. We may prefer one over the other, but this preference might very well play itself out in job and community choice rather than a battle for civilizational direction.
Why Bother?
This brief summary of different post-modernities might be interesting to you gremlins, but what does it matter? Part of the reason I started Scattered Roses was to address repeated confusions on the right that lead to paralysis by analysis. Confused ideas about tradition are ones I often come back to, but occasionally the question of modernity comes up. Most on the right speak of modernity as if we live in it, and as if it is a catch all for every sin in the book. There were problems with modernity, but it had its positives and, most importantly, it is a thing of the past. We are, like it or not, post-modern, and the question for us is what kind of post-modernity we want to live in. Seeing a brief description of three possibilities, I hope, can move the conversation away from “modernity bad” to “what kind of future do we want?”