Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

108 MARTIN MCKEEVER
In so far as one can talk of a subculture of “postmodernity”, it
is a matter of some importance for human rights discourse. There
is a strange irony in the fact that, philosophically speaking,
postmodernism tends to deny all possibility of universals. 6 This
has major consequences for a discourse such as that of human
rights which makes claims for all human beings everywhere
precisely because they are human beings! The irony of
contemporary culture construed as postmodern is, therefore, that
it notionally rejects the theoretical basis of the discourse it uses in
order to promote in practice a wide range of emancipatory claims.
One final introductory point on modern/postmodern
culture. Both are generally considered “secular” forms of culture
in which religion plays no constitutive role in the functioning of
the State. The question arises as to where such a State is to find
its ethical vision, which has been traditionally closely linked to,
when not actually integrated into, a religious vision. 7 The main
candidate for this role proposed by modernity was of course
human reason itself, in the version conceived by Descartes and
Kant. It is this very concept of reason which is charged with
instrumental and totalitarian tendencies by the fathers of
postmodernism such as Levinas and Lyotard. 8 In their zeal to
refute such a conception these thinkers have, logically enough,
felt the need to recreate ethics as such. This is not the place to
evaluate their success or failure in this regard, but it is
important to note that their theory deprives modernity of its
primary source of ethical vision without providing an alternative
of an accessible or popular kind. The listlessness and nihilism of
contemporary culture has surely some of its roots here.
6
For a rather strident presentation of this position see Z. BAUMAN,
Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) 37-61; a more restrained line of
argument is to be found in A. TOURAINE, Critique de la modernité, (Fayard,
1992).
7
An important area which requires more attention in academic studies
is the relationship between protestantism and human rights discourse. For a
recent overview of the protestant ethical tradition alert to these issues see D.
MÜLLER, L’éthique protestante dans la crise de la modernité, Généalogie,
critique, reconstruction. (Paris, CERF; Genève, Labor et Fides, 1999).
8
J-F. LYOTARD, La condition post-moderne, (Éd. de Minuit, 1979 ); E.
LEVINAS, Etica come filosofia prima (Milano: Guerini, 1991).