Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

deconstruction leads to a foundationless existence, and notes how the postmoderns:
..tried to destroy all illusions by transforming
everything into a construct -- with the goal to
realize fully the principle of equality as the
guiding principle of a more open, pluralistic
and progressive society. But they did not
build anything positive as alternative to the
illusions. They did not create a theory, an
observation that could explain what your real
I or your spirit is. They just tried to destroy
your false I. And nothing more. Leaving
nothing behind. Nothing in the strict sense
of the word (ibid.).
Benedikter also believes there is an important difference between Western postmodern
‘nothingness,’ and Eastern philosophical and religious ‘nothingness.’ Postmodern
‘nothingness’ is the hoped for product of deconstruction, where the facades and illusions
of social hierarchies are removed, and laid bare. Hindu thinkers, for example, might say:
What this postmodern culture tries unconsciously to realize with deconstruction is to
break through the veil of the Maya. It tries to destroy the illusion of the world and of the
normal I. That is the avant-garde of this culture -- but this avant-garde is deeply
ambivalent. It tries to destroy all illusions; but it does so unconsciously. It does not
know what it does. Therefore it knows not how to proceed after coming near the
breakthrough. The postmodern spiritualist works to break through the “veil of Maya,”
but does so unintentionally, where the Eastern religionist does so intentionally
(Benedikter, 2005). Despite differences, postmodernity and Eastern thought are easily
conjoined. Benedikter also sees postmoderns working toward a spirituality that merges
Platonism and Aristotelism, a necessary component of the continuation of the
Globalisation process, bringing West and East closer, in the epoch of transhumanism, and
of the “re-invention of the men by the men” (Peter Sloterdijk, in Benedikter, 2005).
It is most interesting that postmoderns, like many scientists, have come to the point at
which they recognize, via causality, the need, or requirement for a ‘prime mover’ (cf.,
Ayn Rand; Aristotle), or source, or point of origin for all that exists. Postmodern
deconstructionists reach this point, because they eventually come to realise that all things,
both material and spiritual, had to originate somewhere. Like so many before them, the
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa