Critique of the postmodern philosophy.

It's difficult to find anyone who would argue that the entire spiritual life of modern society permeated special worldview that is named "postmodernism". In fact, postmodernism is a real "Zeitgeist" of our era and mainstream of culture, politics, even everyday lifes. Like a wolf Fenrir (1) postmodernism had devoured the sun of the sense and established a mise-en-scene for a total metamorphosis of the Universe.

In this small philosophical essay, I will try to make a critical analysis of the spectrum of philosophical ideas that serve as a basis for postmodern culture and express its spirit in the most coherent, logical manner.

The postmodern philosophy calls itself "Post-structuralism" and denies the paradigm of "structure", including with respect to itself.
However, this does not mean that we can not extract major constructions of postmodern philosophical buildings. According to the rules of discourse we will begin with epistemology. The most important philosophical question is a relationship between concept and being, the language and the flow phenomena, significance and signification.
Postmodern philosophy solves this question by the original way.
It refuses to place the issue of cognitive ability of the person and refuses from basic epistemological opposition subject-object.
Postmodernism proclaims a language, a text as a self-sustaining reality and sees the matter beyond any connection with objectivity. It logic leads to the rejection of the notion of the meaning. This notion no longer based on reality beyond the text and not linked with any objectivity. For the postmodern philosopher "language ... has never been, can not be and finally cease to be regarded as a neutral container of a meaning "(J. D. Atkins). The process of speech, semantics text "is never an objective point of detection of a meaning but the insertion meaning in the text, which in itself does not make sense "(J. H. Miller).
Thus, the postmodern thought focuses not on signification but on significance as a movement within itself and limited by itself. Thus, creation of meanings becoming a purely subjective process and is given at the mercy of personal voluntarism from beginning to end. Variability of a meaning , unpredictability of interpretation, the game relativism - all that are "condition of narration: a text can not be determined with one voice, one meaning, there is a presence of many codes in it, many voices, and none of them can take preference ... A volume of some indetermination or superdetermination was born: this volume is significance" (R. Barth).

It could be admitted that postsrukturalism's position in relation to the text (language) is legitimacy only in that sense that it has some roots in epistemology. This position absolutize one of the moments in relationship between the object and its voice and textual representation.
Indeed, in a certain sense, language is a product of convention. We can call some object by any word, for eg. faeces we can call a Rosa. But it does not cancel the fact that our sense of smell will be differently perceives the smell of faeces and smell the Rose. Shakespeare beautiful told about this: "What is a name? Rose smells a rose, it's not important, whether calls it rose or not ..." Relative conventionality of a language does not cancel that it has a structure. Any language reflects the ontology. We fixate statics of an object (a noun), its dynamics (a verb), its qualitative definitions (an adjective), etc. Postsrukturalism denying of any ontological reference with the text and wondered only marking subject of significance for his affiliation to any cultural tradition.
But this cultural tradition based on the ontology, on the practice.
Can we argue that the language of Karafai tribe in Papua New Guinea (which is still practicing cannibalism) is more informative than the English language? But postmodern "insertion meaning in the text" within some particular traditions finally determinate by ontological references.
We mean, for eg. diferent interests (individual, group, social community, etc.) that arising in relation with significant benefits.

Postmodern philosophy makes negation of a given (by ontology) value of Logos and it causes destruction very idea of ontology. In fact, very idea of ontology becomes fundamentally impossible in this philosophy. The world is understood as a text, that left to the mercy of chaotic individual interpretations. There is something "like the collapse of reality. The words become a sounding shell, devoid of a meaning" (E. Ionesco). The postmodern chaos proclaims itself in the concept of "rhizome". This is unstructured, unstable organization of integrity, that opposite the classical concept organization of the integrity which metaphorically expressed by the image of a tree growing from a single root. The postmodern theorists are focusing on the potential creativity and activity, that embodied, in their view, in this worldview. That is nonrandom, as they are aware that the very idea of the chaos is immanent unacceptable to consciousness.

Ontological reasoning of postmodern philosophy (or, speaking more precisely, its anti-ontological destructions) are based on subjectively interpreted by experts in humanitarian science some modern theories and hypotheses (2). But, in our view, the main impetus for the conceptualization of ontological chaos was the overall socio-cultural situation of the last third of XX century - beginning the XXI century.
This, on the one hand, the crisis of classical liberal models, and on the other hand, the crisis and marginalization anti-sistem ideological projects (such as Stalinism, Fascism). Important role in the establishment of a postmodern concepts of cultural relativism played the processes of exchanges and interaction between different cultures, that actively unfolded with the onset of globalization. It must be noted, that сultural globalization in its present form is flowing not through the deep content dialogue of cultures, but through a superficial exchange of artefacts that is out-of context of a meaning field.

Anyone could be satisfied in cognitive futility of philosophical postmodernism by taking an example analysis of mythological complex.
There are mythemes of holy stair, mountain, tree, liana, column, etc. almost in all cultures of the peoples of the Earth. But in terms of poststruсturalism they are equivalent "narratives" which are not linked to any objectivity and actualy can be used as a substrate for any arbitrary interpretations. In fact, these cultural-genetically different mythemes express themselves the same archetype of organization space - the Axis of World (Lat. Axis mundi). A similar pattern holds for archetypes of time. Widespread myths about the cyclical movement of time from the harmony to the entropy and then to the new beginning reflect the movement of natural cycle.

The postmodern type of philosophy refuses from articulation the object as well as a person. It postulate, metaphorically speaking, the "death of subject." A language in the optics of this philosophy is presented as a form of unconscious. However, according to poststructuralists, "I" determined primarily by constructs of general symbolic order, which are connected to the "significance" (ie linguistic structures that shape articulatory rules). Postmodern philosophers are based on the opposition between Freudian unconscious scope and the scope of invasive forces "Super-Ego" (culture). Thus they come to the conclusion about de-centered nature of the person, who is torn between "unconscious" and "symbolic" (which find its objektivation in "significance"). We see, that in place of the classical understanding of the subject as a rational subject and also Freudian lecher subject, there has come some kind of simplified postmodern type de-centered weapon for representation of cultural meanings (linguistic "significances"). The disappearance of human under the compressive impact of linguistic structures and discursive practices on individual consciousness logically leads postmodernists to the conclusion of the so-called "Death of Man".

Therefore, it could be notice a clear contradiction of postmodern philosophy. On the one hand postmodernists are claiming that "insertion meaning in the text" can not be an objective process. On the other hand they are talking about "the death of subject". But who makes the process "insertion meaning in the text"? On the one hand, they declare aimlessness, randomness and unpredictability of being of a text (and, from their view, being of a world). On the other hand, they tell us about dictatorship of linguistic structures. However, we can easy to explain these contradictions. In a some sense, postmodernism is a continuator (and logical finale) of an "emancipative line" in the Western European philosophy. We meant the way of thinking, that driven by impetus of "liberation" from all things, which this kind of philosophers see as limitative structures, natures, phenomenons, forces. If this reckless "liberation" momentum is opposed to the truth - so much the worse for the truth ...

Postmodern attempts create ontology of a text and de-ontology of a being, dissolution a person, are nothing else like regular idealistic hoax.
Consideration of a text in terms of its autonomous existence outside its source in subject-object opposition is tantamount to a denial of all and every cognitive criteria, impotence of thought and the actual self-destruction of philosophy.

We told already, that postmodernists portray that their philosophizing is opening new prospects for creative activity. In fact, we see otherwise.
The adoption of this kind of worldview leads the man to the deadlock of absolute spiritual emptiness, to the total devaluation of any ethical values. The consequence of that is the passivity and conformism. The postmodern philosophy by its very nature is suited to support anything (3). The only thing for which it is not suitable - to give a correct understanding of the world, let alone to change it.

Notes.

1. One of the archetypal character of German mythology, who had swallowed the sun, started by this action the final act of the Ragnarek - the battle gods with the giants.
2. Sokal A., Bricmont J. "Impostures intellectuelles". P., Ed. Odile Jacob, 1997.
3. For example, in the liberal intellectual discourse postmodernism could serve to the ideology of "political correctness" and cosmopolitanism.
But, in the context of the left discourse, postmodernism justifies anarchical ideology and practice of apologists of a Chaos. In addition, postmodernism is quite widespread among the left students. It's very noteworthy, that even one of the leaders of LCR (French section of the Fourth International), Daniel Bensaid did not see anything wrong in the works of postmodern philosophers.

Dmitry Kremnev.