Does postmodern philosophy abandon the pursuit of “ultimate questions"? If so, how do people develop values without it?

Question

Philosophers from Descartes to Kant have engaged deeply with “ultimate questions”—metaphysical issues about the nature of reality, certainty, and universal truths. However, postmodern philosophy appears to have shifted away from these pursuits, critiquing the very idea of universal answers and certainty.

1. Is it true that people basically gave up hope on definite answers to those ultimate questions?

2. If postmodernism denies the possibility of certainty or universal truths, how do people develop coherent values, worldviews, or ethical frameworks within this paradigm?

I’m interested in understanding both the philosophical rationale behind this shift and its practical implications for individuals.

Answer 1

I think this question carries a fundamental misunderstanding of modern (post-Hegelian) philosophy in general and (noting that I dislike this term) postmodernist philosophy in particular. So it's worth looking at the historical trend.

Somewhere around the mid-19th century philosophers started coming to the conclusion that 'grand philosophy' — the pursuit of “ultimate questions”, as you put it — was increasingly academic and divorced from the actual human world. This isn't to say that philosophers thought such pursuits were intrinsically bad or wrong, but that they were at best idle attempts at establishing some imagined ideal state of humanity, and at worst counterproductive attempts (to use on overly evocative phrase) to polish a turd. Thinkers of that age could see wars becoming more brutal and destructive; they could see industry destroying land and communities; they could see Colonialism's intrinsic racism and dehumanization; they could see the coarse hypocrisies and dysfunctions of religion and ideology. What use were grand theories of philosophy when such were not applied, used, or even considered anywhere except scholarly works?

This led to the first wave of philosophical rebellion: Nietzsche-ism, existentialism, phenomenology, absurdism, and more obliquely Marxism and Freudianism. All of these in their way reconstituted the philosophical project, setting aside grand universal truth in favor of human truths: seeking out what it is to be human, looking for ways that people can escape and transcend the stultifying and corrupt rules and values transmitted and imposed by society. The general idea (across the board) was that if people could escape from societal constructs they could find a better and more authentic morality within and through themselves.

Then around the mid-20th century, a new generation of thinkers started coming to the conclusion that these new philosophical trends — while not nearly as detached from human life — weren't having the intended effect. Phenomenalism and existentialism were still largely academic pursuits; Marxism had collapsed into the same oppressive nonsense it was ostensibly trying to erase; Freudianism had peaked and faded as a human project, mainly replaced by clinical psychotherapy with its more limited goals… The effort to help individuals transcend social constructs didn't seem to be going anywhere, and so philosophers started digging into the nature of these social constructs.

in other words, philosophers started looking at how things like culture, social systems, group psychology, political organization, even language itself constrain, control, organize, and even constitute individuals. If people aren't able to break free of social constructs, then maybe the trick is to break down social constructs and rebuild them, reorienting individuals as a consequence. This is how we end up with with schools like post-structuralism, critical theory, feminism and cultural-awareness programmes, and all the approaches that try to deconstruct language or social elements to expose (and hopefully redress) structural biases and oppressions.

In sum, philosophy shifted from:

• a (Classical Liberal) conception of humans as empowered individuals bolstered by society, to…
• a more problematic view of individuals as burdened by corrupt and anachronistic social constraints that must be overcome, to…
• a somewhat dire view of individuals as intractably enmeshed in sociolinguistic webs that dictate both identity and social role

'Grand Theory' of the type posited only fits with the first conception, because it demands empowered individuals who can and will enact it. In the latter conceptions, the only type of 'Grand Theory' that's meaningful is one that somehow unlocks the cage that society and language place us in; we won't get back to the first type until until we can step into true humanness.

Answer 2

Does postmodern philosophy abandon the pursuit of “ultimate questions"? If so, how do people develop values without it?

Absolutely. In radical forms, "ultimate questions" make no sense because of radical skepticism, relativism, and radical visions of ambiguity and value. Questions about reality, causality, and God dominate the postmodern Western canon, but introducing ideas like radical interpretation, relativism, deconstruction and critical theory make it hard for the average Joe to know if there's meaning at all, when it seems both technically impossible and conspiratorial.

And yet you correctly note that hope springs eternal, and people persist in public meaning, and personal meaning, and grand sweeping metaphysical frameworks in the face of the naysayers. Psychologically speaking, humans seem to be universally predisposed towards cultivating coherent worldviews. The short of it is that human beings are the product of evolution, and the development of the worldview, and philosophical systems, and even the selection of truths seems to be driven ultimately by biological impulses and biases. Kierkegaard, for instance, acknowledged the importance of embracing emotions, and talked about love and anxiety. "Ultimately questions" are intimately tied to such emotions.

Another view on why people seem to pursue "ultimate questions" in light of the abyss of post-modernist thinking that reduces people to unimportant or trivial facts is narrative identity theory. From WP:

The theory of narrative identity postulates that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life.1 This life narrative integrates one's reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. Furthermore, this narrative is a story – it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots, and themes and often follows the traditional model of a story, having a beginning (initiating event), middle (an attempt and a consequence), and an end (denouement). Narrative identity is the focus of interdisciplinary research, with deep roots in psychology.

Thus, if you subscribe to a naturalized epistemology, the answer to your question is a complicated one and lies withing both psychology and the philosophy of psychology. The suggestion, of course, lies in our evolutionary history. Our brains, no matter how persuasive complicated and abstract arguments are, drive us towards making sense of the world with worldviews, narratives, and personal meaning informed by "ultimate questions", Derrida be damned.

Answer 3

You have to understand that postmodern philosophy is not philosophy. It is an ideological concept that pursues political ideologies. Postmodern philosophy wants to implement its ideological standpoints in society, and like any other ideology, it postulates certain assumptions dogmatically. It is strange that this ideology has spread so widely. It is probably due to the phenomenon that Nietzsche already mentioned. People who are decadent want to change the world, and of course the world must be changeable, which is incompatible with objective reality. On the other hand, some errors in thinking have entered philosophy via Foucault, which can be traced back to Nietzsche. Some of Nietzsche's statements here were wrong, but they should not have led to the kind of ideology that has now happened. Here Nietzsche was anti-dogmatic (see his contributions to intellectual conscience). Postmodern philosophy should be considered a religion or ideology, so the term is misleading. Kant and other philosophers practiced real philosophy, one has nothing to do with the other. Every real philosopher wants real proofs, just like every mathematician.

Answer 4

IMO Heidegger followed-through on Kant and took the transcendental unity of apperception and its grounding (the "unconditioned necessity") on to indeterminate Being, which cannot even be defined. Then Derrida (postmodernist) grouped the words connected to presence as 'transcendental signifiers', which means they're such complicated historical words that they simply mean different things to different people.

If Kant and Heidegger do their best to set a direct course in the classical philosophy (Newtonian, as it were), then deconstruction and postmodernism is the quantum theory that complicates the classical. But the classical course can still be seen. (Actually, Kant's motive for existentialism was not simply for the 'classic' understanding of existence but to found the basis for his system of morality.)

In the case of Being, postmodernism may make what was already indeterminate maybe less 100% indeterminate, or maybe 200% indeterminate, lol. In this theme is a lot of preoccupation with the understanding and elucidation of existence; it's relevant all round (but not the only topic in philosophy). But on this topic a postmodern dimension does not "deny the possibility" of navigating the question of existence.