Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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Will 'Po-Mod' Endure
Ernst Gellner (1925-95), whose credentials are extensive and impressive, had the ear
of world leaders for many years, and his opinions are highly respected. Regarding the
future of postmodernity Gellner concluded: “Postmodernism as such doesn’t matter too
much. It is a fad which owes its appeal to its seeming novelty and genuine obscurity, and
it will pass soon enough, as such fashions do” (Gellner, 1992:71). To Gellner,
postmodernity was the currently fashionable form of [philosophical] relativism,
something actually practiced by only a handful of academics. Yet, Gellner expected that
while postmodernism will pass as other philosophical fads have, the relativism and
pluralism it endorsed will largely remain. Gellner’s views accord with the growing
backlash from others toward postmodernism. As already mentioned, modernity continues
unabated in the West and beyond. Gellner believed, “the more securely a society is in
possession of the new knowledge [modernity], the more totally it is committed to its use
and is pervaded by it, the more it is liable to produce thinkers who turn and bite the hand
which feeds them” (Gellner, 1992:79) -- as the postmoderns have done.
Gellner, like many others, believed the scepticism and criticism the postmoderns
bring, is no kind of foundation upon which to build one’s worldview. Gellner added that
the cognitive ethic of the Enlightenment requires “the break-up of data into their
constituent parts, and their impartial confrontation with any candidate explanatory
theories” (Gellner, 1992:84). As such, the Age of Reason shares with the monotheisms
the belief in the existence of unique truth -- not endless pluralisms and relativisms.
Gellner was personally convinced there is only “one genuinely valid system of
knowledge, and that, in very rough outline, the mainstream of Western epistemological
tradition, currently so fashionable, has captured it” (ibid. 85). Steven D. Schafersman, of
the University of Texas, Department of Philosophy, adds this insight:
Present-day philosophers of science are
attempting to forge a new, third-generation,
synthetic philosophy of science based on the
best attributes of the previous two schools
[positivism and empiricism]; this new school
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa