Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

society. He believes postmoderns are hungry for spiritual alternatives to traditional
religious forms, and want with it a philosophical realism. To his mind, postmoderns seek
the spiritual, but not the religious. They have a desire for the transcendental, the personal
enlightened consciousness, but without all the dogmas and restrictions that come with
traditional religions. He does not believe a renaissance of traditional religious forms can
meet the deep spiritual hunger of the postmoderns, though some postmoderns are
returning to traditional religions as part of the ‘retro’ aspect of postmodernity.
Benedikter agrees with others, that one of the essential goals of the postmodern
revolution was to make people more aware of inequalities, personally and corporately, of
‘hidden hierarchies’ that control their lives and social surroundings. The unspoken hope
among the postmodernists, was that beyond the deconstructive period would arise a new
generation who would re-construct society into something more equitable for all. Thus,
‘tolerance’ and ‘plurality’ remain something of a mantra for the entire movement.
Benedikter suggests that the essence of all that Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard and the others
strived for was this:
Deconstruct yourself: See what you are not.
You have to destroy your illusions. To reach
progress in society, we have to forget about all
essentials, and to see: Everything, including
your self, is just a construct by socio-economic
and cultural processes. Then we all will live
better, and that means: more self-conscious
and, eventually, more equal. Even if we will
have to pay the price of having nothing
‘objective’ left on which we could build
enduring truths and values, and even if man
himself, following this path, must lose his
‘essence’ than (Benedikter, 2005).
Benedikter believes the falsity and futility of the postmodernity was made intensely
obvious after 9-11 [World Trade Center, NY], when so many who had, to varying
degrees, embraced the postmodern notion, realised how empty it was, and began
returning to more conventional and traditional forms of life and spirituality. The
‘nothingness’ produced by postmodernity has produced a recoil of desire for a “return of
the objective,” or the “return to essence” (ibid.). Benedikter fully realises that
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa