A General Suspicion of Reason. One distinguishing feature of postmodern thinking is the questioning of the idea central to the Enlightenment project, the supremacy of human reason.61 That is, postmodern thinking attempts to deconstruct the concept of self- reflective human being as the subjectivity of thinking and doing according to reasonable principles, pointing out that the faculty of reason and rationality has never been the fundamental foundation to resolve the problems faced by humankind; on the contrary, it is considered that the present crisis in contemporary culture and civilization may be a result of the oppressive role played by reason and rationality. Postmodernism has alerted us to the fact that the attempt born out of the Enlightenment to discover universal truth through reason alone has been abandoned. One current manifestation of this is the persistent assault on foundationalism. Postmodernists point out that rationalism as a particular discourse scheme of the modern thinking represses all dissenting viewpoints as inferior in the name of rationality and reason. Such argumentations are articulated particularly in the work of French philosophers such as Xxxx-Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx (1924-1998), Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx (1926-1984), Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx (1925-1995), Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx 61 Yet, one ought to ask whether postmodernity is a rejection of rationality or rather the recognition of its limitations. (1930-2004), and Xxxxxxx Xxxxx (1901-1981), and in spite of many differences between them, they share a common stance in terms of their critical destruction of the legitimate role of reason.62 Xxxxxxxx, for example, argues from a historical perspective, that the ideology of universal reason is a product spawned by the power-knowledge connection of a particular time, and the determination of what counts as reason or knowledge and what does not is a result of the discourse formulated by the norms of rationality that constitute the dominant social life in a certain context.63 Thus, in the dominant epistasis of a particular reason the other dissenting reason must be silenced, excluded, and seen as unreason in the social and public domain. In Xxxxxxxx’x analysis, reason as the normative foundation for critical assessment reveals its limitations and crisis, urging us to reject the universal justification of instrumental rationality. As a consequence, it is contended that our knowledge is relative, subjective and fallible rather than certain and absolute, and that truth is inherently ambiguous. In line w...
