Postmodernism characterizes mainly as the view that there's no objective truth, no objective moral values, and that logic and reason are socially constructed concepts. These seem to me to be characteristics that align quite well with nihilism. So, is postmodernism actually a form of nihilism?
I know there are different views inside postmodernism, but I'm talking about the generally known one that I listed above.
Postmodernism is an abstraction. There are only postmodern theorists; and if we look at the major postmodern theorists we find a definite, non-nihilistic ethical dimension to their work. The following extract, backed up by references. provides ample evidence :
One of the most persistent, and loudest, complaints raised against postmodernism concerns its allegedly enervating moral stance. According to critics, the postmodern critique, by deconstructing all foundational claims to knowledge and truth, leads to one of two extremely unpleasant ethical alternatives. Either it undermines any possibility of moral judgment, leaving only debilitating nihilism in its wake, or, what amounts to the same thing, it abandons the search for moral standards altogether in favor of a kind of infantile libertarianism where “anything goes.” Anyone who cared (or dared) to examine the literature more closely would, of course, find this accusation to be a gross oversimplification. With the arguable exception of Baudrillard, whose “fatal strategies” betray a distinctly premodern longing for the pastoral simplicities of earlier times, all of the major figures whose names are associated with the postmodern movement (Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida) have produced a considerable body of work addressed to moral or ethical considerations. Lyotard has focused almost exclusively on ethics, or ethically related topics such as politics and justice, in just about everything he has written since The Postmodern Condition (see especially Lyotard and Thebaud 1985; Lyotard 1 988a, 1 988b, 1990). In a similar fashion, toward the end of his life Foucault increasingly devoted his attention to the ways in which individuals are constituted as moral selves (see Foucault 1986, 1988). Finally, a major theme in Derrida’s recent work concerns the ethical significance of differance in the encounter with others (see Derrida 1984, 1988a 1988b). However one evaluates the results of these inquiries (and I surely have my own reservations), the charge that the postmodern critique is necessarily morally bankrupt is uninformed. Many of those advancing such blanket condemnations seem more concerned with bewailing the reckless slaughter of their own,sacred moral cows at the hands of the irreverent French than with examining the complexities of the postmodern critique. ( David R. Dickens, 'The Ethical Horizons of Postmodernity', Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 18, No. 4, Ethnographically Yours (Winter 1995), pp.535-6.)
REFERENCES
Derrida, Jacques. 1988a. “The Politics of Friendship.” Journal of Philosophy 85(4): 632-644.
Derrida, Jacques. 1988b. “Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion.” Pp. 111-160 in 'Limited, lnc.', Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1984. “Deconstruction and the Other.” Pp. 107-1 26 in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1986. The Care of the Self. New York: Pantheon.
Foucault, Michel. 1988. Politics, Philosophy, Culture, edited by Lawrence Kritzman. New York : Routledge.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1988a. 'The Differend: Phrases in Dispute.' Minneapolis: University
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1 988b Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event. New York: Columbia.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1990. Heidegger and “the Jews” '. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, and Jean Thebaud. 1985 'Just Gaming'. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pre, backed up by references,ss.
No. E.g. ' Foucault Truth And The Death Of God' http://www.fourbythreemagazine.com/issue/nihilism/foucault-truth-and-the-death-of-god
Postmodernism is the stance that meaning isn't universal and outside ourselves. Nihilism is the stance that meaning is essentially a fiction.
The philosopher Stanley M. Rosen wrote a book on Nihilism. It is worth reading. I don't think he uses the word postmodernism even once. Why should he? He didn't need the word. We already had words like relativism, laissez-faire, classical liberalism (now called libertarianism). Anything goes.
What did Lyotard have in mind: he was against the violence of the meta-narrative. The big, controlling story. Levinas would agree with him. So would Nietzsche.
Foucault, after Nietzsche, wisely focused on the exercise of power. It can be exercised in many ways, and through the rational and the irrational. We certainly live in times of manipulation today.
The highest art is architecture. Both Le Corbusier and F.L. Wright not only desired to show a rational possible way to live, but actually to dictate how to live within the interior of their structures. They were both intrusive in this respect.
This was just too rational. It was an overdose of rationalism, and there was a rebellion against this totalizing, totalitarian trend of modernism; particularly in modern interior residential architecture. And there was a rebellion against the exercise of rational power by the expert.
What have we learned? Yes, it is better for for man to be rational, but not too rational. Even Habermas may have gone a bit too far with his rational expectations for man. There has to be a balance.
Title: Nihilism: a philosophical essay; Author: Rosen, Stanley; Publisher:Yale University Press,Pub date:1969.
Postmodernity is simply what came after (or later than) modernity. It marks a cultural change but the specifics are not determined. Indeed, nuanced indeterminacy and deconstructionism are features of postmodernism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernity
Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the 1980s or early 1990s – and that it was replaced by postmodernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity, while some believe that modernity ended after World War II.
Asserting that postmodernism entails nihilism is an overly specific determination, not least because the scrambling of meaning does not necessarily lead to the impossibility of moral judgment.
Not necessarily, postmodernismit is an aesthetic current that takes certain degrees of freedom, both on the text (or sometimes metatext) and on the themes/characters and, more importantly, it is rare that it takes itself seriously. having said this, it is not necessarily connected to nihilism, its relation to this philosophy is the same as for all other movements. If you take for example a postmodern masterpiece like Infinite Jest one can argue that there is a good deal of nihilism/solipsism that crawls under its pages but if on the other hand you look at another postmodern masterpiece like Jerusalem you will find the exact opposite in it. I believe that the widespread paradigm nihilism = postmodernism is to be attributed, for example, to the novels of Thomas Pynchon, whome are so maximalists that often the reader loses himself in the entropy of the subplots and in the lives of hundreds of characters, to the point of being led to think that in the end nothing has much sense, forgetting instead that it is the tides of plots and characters that create the gargantuan totality of the story, in the most Hegelian sense of the term.
