Crossing the Postmodern Divide

Commonweal, Nov 20, 1992 by Christopher Lasch

The only way to avoid this nightmare, according to Borgmann, is to respect the limits of human control and to reject the "insubstantial and disconnected glamour" of an artificial world wholly obedient to human desire. Borgmann's exhortation to rediscover the "limits of the land" and the general intractability of nature will strike some as a counsel of resignation. "The crucial task, however, is not simply to put up with the recalcitrance of reality sullenly and resentfully, but to endure it bravely if not gladly." Borgmann pleads not for resignation but for courage and joy. Let us hope the capacity to distinguish these states of mind, these opposing dispositions of the soul, is not another casualty of the postmodern transformation of consciousness.

Elaborating on Borgmann's military imagery, we can summarize the modern project, the modern delirium, as the final solution of the problem of evil - the problem posed, that is, by natural limits on human freedom and happiness, limits experienced as evil. Armed with the seemingly unlimited power of science and technology, the modern world dreamed that the war against nature would end with nature's unconditional surrender. But the war has dragged on longer than anyone expected, and the subjugation of nature (human nature as well) still remains in doubt. As always in protracted wars, the populace grows sullen and resentful, while the generals, still bent on total victory, escalate hostilities, deploy more and more destructive weapons, and call for renewed dedication to the cause.

In effect, Borgmann calls for a peace without victory - not to be confused with surrender. What distinguishes him from many critics of technology, especially from advocates of "deep ecology," whose position really does amount to surrender, is his "wholehearted commitment to the completion of the Enlightenment revolution in its social and scientific aspects." He accepts the most important postmodern discovery - that reality is shaped by human perceptions and that human thought cannot be understood, therefore, simply as a "mirror of nature." But if reality consists of a conversation about reality, as Richard Rorty argues, Borgmann wants to admit nature into the conversation

(which of course is not the same thing as making war against her, though even that is better than ignoring her altogether). The conversation of humanity, as Rorty construes it, is "strictly human" and therefore one-sided. "Nature is utterly silent for Rorty." Borgmann asks us to let her speak - not as an adversary (as she speaks in the modernist tradition) but as an equal partner in the search for understanding and wisdom. In this sense he remains philosophically a realist - a "postmodern realist" but still a realist in his respect not only for the "intransigence" but for the "eloquence" of things.