Postmodernists are sceptical about the really Big Stories that drive peoples’ lives.

These stories are sometimes referred to as Metanarratives . . .

. . . . and this technical term is simply referring to the many ideologies that have shaped
our world. For example Shelley suggested passionately that poetry could heal the world.
This is a universal and all-embracing metanarrative.

According to this optimistic romantic yarn all people in all times and places can find
salvation and redemption through drama, operas and novels.
In just the same way Trotsky contended that science could transform ordinary folk into
wonder-working communist heroes.

Here again we encounter a metanarrative.
These stories are not small.
They are huge.
Think Goliath and King Kong.

Postmodernists are dismissive of all these mega yarns. They prefer their own individual
stories or the local tribal yarn. Consider Feldman, our conceptual artist. He embraces the
postmodernist mindset in the sense that he constructs his own world. He doesn’t believe
that magic is mere superstition (scientism). Nor does he believe that magic really
summons occult forces (paganism). Rather his belief creates the reality. In some sense
we are constructing the world around us with our beliefs.

In an important sense we have already
encountered this difficult idea in the work of
Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer.
Eastern mystics and highly intelligent Kantian
philosophers contend that humans construct
both primary and secondary properties.

In other words the world that we encounter
– whales, crocodiles and elephants etc that
occupy senior portions of space and time –
do not really exist.

In a very real sense their existence is illusory. They appear to exist but in a transcendental sense they do not.
This is how Kant explained this vital theme:
The understanding does not derive its laws from, but prescribes them to, nature.

For Kant all humans construct the world in a strictly rational and scientific way. Our minds have the creative audacity to conjure up a rich world of people, trees, plants, mountains and valleys. The human mind can be compared to a powerful and spectacular magician.
There is almost nothing really there (noumenal sphere) and suddenly - as if from nowhere - we have the entire world (phenomenal sphere).

For the orthodox Christian it is God who has created the world. Kant would beg to differ. The Human Mind has become God.
It is the human understanding that is the
law-giver to nature.
Without doubt Kant was peddling a gigantic Metanarrative.

He claimed that all humans construct the world in the classical, mechanical way. We structure the world in such a way that it appears to be a vast and impressive cosmos. Radicalise this ambitious project and we discover the postmodernist mindset.

Let’s replace Humanity with lonely, naked individuals and tribal communities and the Big Kantian story disappears in a puff of magic. Now we have individuals and local communities who are constructing the world. And of course they do it in their own
unique way.



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