Postmodernism and Utopia
Postmodern ethics
Micro ethics
Macro ethics
Political demand
What I want to do is to redefine or reposition the postmodernism condition described by Lyotard and to extend Nuyan's Postmodern ethics to the political area. Postmodernism flowers almost in any intellectual field and in most field they are profoundly productive. However, in the political theory postmodernism inserted few fingers. What People so called postmodernism politicians did were just some raise some separate criticisms that considered as the odd noise upon traditional political theories and government policies and actions. It seems like they are content with such kind of position in political area. But in fact, they can do more and what Lyotard said means more than what we know now. As Nuyan drew out a coherent theory of postmodern ethics, I will try to expend it to the political area following the same route.
One person can plays several kinds of games at the same time. There is no metanarratives that could be appealed to for legitimization when different games are in conflicts.
Why do we need a government? If the society is naturally well organized, we will not need to appeal to the government for just judgement. The natural good society is impossible because of the fact that some individual or group want to override others. In the situation no one's life, freedom and property is under protection. We can call the kind of action terrorism.
According to the postmodern ethic of Lyotard, we can recognize two kinds of terrorism. The first one is the direct terrorism, like murder, ritual killing, bomb, all that directly threaten person's life. Another one is indirect terrorism, which is what Lyotard called white terrorism. White terrorism originates from the differend, the negative effect of postmodern condition. It presents in the form of totalization which means one kind of game becomes superior over other games.
To avoid these kind of terrorism, we need a political solution. The political solution must be directed by the rules of metagame, that is, the rules of just gaming articulated by Lyotard. What is the nature of postmodern condition? Being free. Postmodern condition, in my mind, is actually the ideal free society for human beings. The destructive elements of the ideal, or the enemies of the free society are the two kinds of terrorism, one is visible and another invisible. These two kind of terrorism is consistent with the free society and would be ruled out by the rules of just gaming. The rules of just gaming is the ethical demands in a postmodern society.
But how to implement the rules of just gaming. The government. Government is built up to ensure the rules of just gaming are followed by all game players and prevent the society or all other kinds of games from the destruction of the two kinds of terrorism. Here we can see that the government derives from the existence terrorism. The nature of terrorism is violence. To fight against violence, the government has also need the violence, that is, the power. This is the insight of law or authority that Derrida has in the force of the law. Therefore, he say that in the foundation moment the power is neither just nor unjust. But in the postmodern condition, the government is based on the rules of just gaming.
The obligation of government is to rule out the two kinds of terrorism. In fact, the first one is easy to be recognized and to be ruled out. But the second one is hard to recognize and to fight against. The reason is that the totalization is often connected with the government. They get the legitimate coat by connecting closely with the government. This is the worst situation. In this situation, the role of government is suspicious. In fact, in this situation, the authority of government has lost her legitimacy. The situation is just what Foucualt described in his works, that the mixture of power and truth.
So, according to the postmodern ethics, we need a new kind of government. This kind of government is at the stake of protect all game player from not only from the violent terrorism, but also from the white terrorism, namely, the totalization where the old government is involved in. To be a postmodern government, she must keep herself neutral during all kinds of games. What is the proper being neutral for the government? According to the postmodern ethics, it should not only avoid involvement in the process of totalization, but also fight against any intentional or unintentional tendency to totalization, and erect all wrongs caused by the deferends. In Lyotard's words, the government should does her best to present the unpresentable, to free the unpresentable. Here, I point out that the multiplicity is the phenomenon originates from the free society without diferrend, rather than the value of the society that is set as value superior over others.
However, although Lyotard recognized the postmodern condition, but in fact we are not in the postmodern condition. Because the postmodern condition is actually an ideal of society like the original position of Rawls or the state of nature of Locke. The society we are living in is the society full of diferrend. What is the worst, we are living in a society where the government is still involved in the process of totalization. So, to have a government that could struggle against the the white terrorism of totalization, we first need to fight against the the government involved in the process of totalization. That is to say, now we still have to fight for ourselves in two war field at the same time, one is to fight against the totalization itself to present the presentable, the other is to fight against
the government involved in the process of totalization to build up a postmodern government that see preventing totalization as her sake.
Here I described a new kind of government based on the postmodern ethics drawn out by Nuyen form Lyorad's theory. But the postmodern political theory need to be justified more concretely. The biggest problem that I may have is the same one that Lyotard and Nuyen have to face, that is, since in postmodern condition, there is no narrative that could be justified to be superior over other games, then how could we justify the rule of just gaming is not such kind of metanarratives? In fact, I am inclined to admit that the rules of game is a kind of metanarrative, and the only one that could be justified in postmodern condition.
Another problem is that how to see the role of government during different games. Is it a kind of game? A metagame? Actually, Lyotard can not explain the compacted relation between different games. When he talks about games, he seems to see them as independent games to each other. However, in fact, they are closely woven together. For example, the economic game is almost connected with all other kinds of game. The relation between political game and other games is more complex. I am inclined to see the political game as the metagame the role of which is to ensure the fair condition for all other games. In this sense political game is the condition for the possibilities of other games. In this sense, I share the view of political theory that Rawls holds in his political liberalism.
From the postmodern point of view, we can give some new reviews about Marxism and Utilitarianism. For Marxism, the positive aspect is that it presents the unpresentable, namely, the worker class exploited by capitalists and fights against the totalization of capitalism. The negative aspect is that Marxism fell into totalization itself in its solution of the problems. I think that it find the right problem but it did not find the proper way to solve it. In its collective solution, individuals become the unpresentable. The mass become the unpresentable and the government become the totalization itself.
Utilitarianism actually is friendly with socialism. In the age of Bentham and Mill, the majority of the society is the poor. When they advocated to reform the society they were actually presenting the poor who were unpresentable in that age. But after the World War II, the majority of western society have a comfortable life. According to the principle of utility, it is unclear whether the minor poor should be improved by the sacrifice of common good. This implies that one theory may be coherent with the postmodern political demand but then it may become the opposition of the demand in the time. So the the view of postmodern political theory also implies a historical dimension at the principles of justice. I think this feature is consistent with the tamper of Postmodernism. In this sense, we may imagine that one day the principles of justice given by Rawls will become the opposition of the demand, that is, to present the unpresentable. Therefore, the mission of postmodernism is an endless task. It holds an ideal, that is the postmodern society, but in fact we will always be on the way getting close to the ideal. Of course, this ideal is an one different from the communist society, which is the extreme form of totalization.
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