Liberal to postmodern

Poor Christopher Butler: He really doesn’t like postmodernism, but he keeps saying that postmodernism at its most sane is just repeating what liberals have always believed and doing what liberals have always done. Postmodernists challenge “the boundaries of our social roles,” and liberals join in; in fact, “the postmodernist deconstructive attitude has been extraordinarily effective in combating restrictive ideologies in this way.” Postmodernists also make “an essentially liberal demand for the recognition of difference, an acceptance of the ‘other’ within the community,” a pluralism that ensures that “no one framework is likely to gain assent” – no framework but the liberal framework of honoring all frameworks except the framework that refuses to honor all frameworks.

But he can’t accept postmodernism’s assault on his beloved Kantian self, his Rawlsian liberalism, his Anglo-American analytic philosophy. There one must draw the line. There one must fight for truth, justice, and all that stuff.