Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD January 20, 2015
Where does holism fit in the discussion among postmodernists relative to the idea of universal values, reason, truth, and reality? Is holism a form of postmodern theory and practice or a force counter to it? Is holism a modernist system of thought or an advance on it?
To answer these questions, we must first distinguish between modernism and postmodernism. The single greatest distinction here can be found in their different conceptualizations of truth and knowledge. Modernists retained the notion of an objective and discrete reality existing prior to human experience. They held to the universality of reason and progress on behalf of the enlightenment of humanity and sought unchanging values across borders of time, space, and culture.
Postmodern deconstructionist scholars have altered the Enlightenment notion of truth as beyond critique. They maintain a view of truth as social agreement within various cultural traditions. In an attempt to include the many view points and voices previously isolated or ignored by modernism, postmodern thinkers reject the modernist hierarchy of truths and certainties, favoring difference and multiplicity of equally valid but partial perspectives. This point of view is variously referred to as multiculturalism, diversity, pluralism, or heteronomy. Enlightenment reason is replaced by postmodern reason, a pragmatic, socially learned process for individual and collective action.
It is helpful here, perhaps, to discuss the two discrete but related brands of the postmodern project. Lacking a singular definition of postmodernism, scholars isolate two different forms: constructive postmodernism and deconstructive postmodernism. A characteristic of the two postmodernism is their kinship and their singularity. The kinship lies in their mutual efforts to respond to challenges of cultural renewal. I will address the singularity of difference below. I assert that our holistic theory and practice must be a form of constructive postmodernism. But what is meant by the term?
David Ray Griffin coined the term constructive postmodernism. For Griffin, constructive postmodernists seek to transcend and include aspects of the modern worldview by “constructing a unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions.” The critique of modernism championed by Griffin and other constructive postmodernists is not so radical as to preclude development of a new worldview of wholeness, consisting of the revision of some modernist beliefs and practices, such as the privileging of abstract reason above other cognitive modalities. Constructive postmodernists endeavor to salvage what is most worthwhile in modernist values of truth, rationality, selfhood, and historical meaning, integrating them with revisions of premodern values, including Spirit and a conscious natural world.
Therein lies the aforementioned disjunction between constructive and deconstructive postmodernism. Seeking to avoid radical individualism and relativism, constructive postmodernists place significance upon intersubjectivity, cooperation, and elements of the perennial philosophies of the premodern worldview. Constructive postmodernists usually refer to Alfred North Whitehead’s “process” cosmology as the source of their unequivocal rejection the mechanistic worldview of modernity and their primary inspiration concerning the project of interdependent wholeness of multiple perspectives. Whitehead’s process orientation moves away from dualism and determinism toward synthesis, interdependence, and dialogue.
Deconstruction scholars seek the disestablishment of traditional centers of power and authority, positing a notion of multiple “truths.” They seek to indicate that philosophical texts do not mean what they seem to mean, do not mean what the author intended, and in fact possess no discernible meaning at all. Deconstructionists aim at showing how the attempt by traditional philosophers to use language in such a way as to get beyond language and arrive at some translinguistic, transcultural, and transhistorical perspective ultimately fails.
To answer questions I raised earlier about holistic theory’s relationship to modernism and postmodernism, let us say that insofar as holism posits a fundamental unity of the universe and seeks meaning, it is related to modernism. However, in its attempt to move beyond modernist hierarchy and absolutism by honoring multiplicity and difference, holism is part of postmodernism. Even as it values scientific reasoning through analysis and inquiry, holism also prizes intuition through contemplation and subjectivity as means of realizing value from the world’s interconnectedness, and so it is a force that augments the rationalism of modernism.
Holism seeks to better understand the relationship between our higher self and Spirit within the contexts of culture and cosmos. It attempts to restore the link between ethics and behavior through engagement, relatedness, and cooperation. So, as it posits the interdependence of life, seeks a new unity of humanity and nature inclusive of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions rejected by deconstructionists, and values human wholeness through embrace of multiculturalism and multiple intelligences, holism is a form of constructive postmodernism.