Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

within each culture” (Carson, 1996:541). Even more disconcerting, Carson further
suggests that the postmodern climate will not decline until a successor has replaced it. To
date, several candidates are vying for the position, but none has yet risen to the challenge.
One alternative promoted by some Christians is Critical Realism, which:
Accepts that there is an objective real world
out there (physical and historical) which we
can know, but it insists that we need to be
constantly critical of our own capacity to
know it with any finality or completeness.
All our knowing is embedded in culture,
history, community, but that does not
invalidate it. We may never be able to know
fully or perfectly, but that does not mean we
cannot know anything. So we need to be
humble (shedding Enlightenment arrogance)
but not despairing (Wright, in Taylor,
2000:74).
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Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault represents the postmodernists as well as any, and to my mind, bears
special consideration. Foucault is a true product of post-WWII, postcolonial European
culture. Foucault (15 October 1926 - 26 June 1984) was a French born philosopher, who
came to hold a chair at the College de France, to which he gave the title The History of
Systems of Thought. His writings are influential, multi-disciplinary and often described
as postmodernist, or post-structuralist. He was critical of social institutions, especially
psychiatry, medicine and prisons. He opposed social constructs that implied an identity,
such as homosexual, criminal, and the like. His work often purposed to refute the
modernist position that rationality was the sole means to truth, and the foundation for
validating ethical systems.
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa