Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 8, 1994 TAG: 9412230100
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NICHOLAS J. PAPPAS AND MATTHEW J. FRANCK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now that the simplicity of the modern era has ended, Prof. Teske contends, we must bend every nerve to find out the meaning of our ``postmodern'' age by finding its essence. But, the argument goes, this new age may resist categorization because sophisticated thinking nowadays ``is not either/or, good or evil, win/lose, but is rather both/and, win/win.'' Well, now ...
We remind you that the Cold War was not simple. Rather, the protracted conflict that was ``neither war nor peace'' rested on an intellectual edifice that took an enormous effort to construct and sustain - especially against the assault of Western intellectuals who hadn't the slightest understanding of the principles of regime differentiation, nor of the philosophic understanding of good and evil on which that differentiation was based. And how ``simple'' was it to come up with calculations about relations among policy, strategy, tactics, national morale and justice? The fact that many errors were made - and many of them paid for in blood - begins to show how simplistic is the notion that things were ``simple'' during 40 years on the hair-trigger of nuclear deterrence.
We commend Professor Teske for reminding us of the tremendous task confronting our profession. The commentary made us realize that we have a lot more work to do than merely trying to understand our Western heritage in all its truthfulness and deformation.
What we in our profession didn't see for a long time was that for all its nobility, the Cold War encouraged an unfortunate fixation on realpolitik, with its emphasis on power relations and its sleazy ethics. It was perhaps that context which allowed a lot of fuzzy thinking to flourish and even be praised and rewarded in the academic world. Thus the process of rescuing a proper understanding of our common Western heritage, which began in the '30s and continues today, confronts as never before pressures of relativism, many absurd claims of social science, and flat-out nihilism.
These pressures are evident in this commentary to an eminent degree. The ``modern era may have ended," as the professor contends, but with what result? That the distinction between domestic and international politics has collapsed? This is what we may infer from the buzzwords of ``holism,'' ``interconnection'' and ``interrelationship.'' But so long as human beings' attachments and affections are to their particular communities, all talk of ``global'' community remains an abstraction and an illusion. The world remains inescapably a ``collection of fragmented parts'' and not ``a whole'' so long as people remain free to look after themselves as best suits them. Only global tyranny can change that.
Or perhaps living in the ``postmodern'' age means to stand, with an odd sentimentality, at the edge of an abyss, wondering awestruck at the nothingness below. What else are we to make of the announcement that there's no alternative to the ``terrifying prospect'' of the ``loss of science-based rationality?'' We had thought that ``science'' as conceived by modernity had no monopoly on the use of reason. Now it appears that it had, and in the failure of science to provide neat solutions (or perhaps in its advancement beyond them), we are come to a pass in which we search in vain for ``categories'' and ``essences'' that can make sense of our moral responsibilities in the world we inhabit.
Professor Teske announces, with either lamentation or celebration (we cannot tell which), that ``it is no longer easy to distinguish between good and evil.'' But that's never been an easy thing since Socrates asked his companions in Plato's Republic, ``What is justice?'' What our colleague has done, while summoning us all to be ``engaged in a great debate,'' is truly to have closed off debate by proclaiming the death of reason.
Sentimental calls for ``holism'' in global politics cannot disguise the underlying nihilism in this account of our predicament. Political scientists abdicate their responsibilities to politics and to their discipline when sincere handwringing about our spiritual state results in a refusal to engage in hard thought about the abiding presence of good and evil in the world.
As for ``postmodernism,'' we have our doubts that a new age is really dawning. The end of the Cold War only heralds a new set of problems with which moral reason must grapple. Are we truly on the brink of a new intellectual breakthrough in the understanding of international relations? Like Professor Teske, we too would like to end with a poem, this one by the wise Ogden Nash and retitled ``Ode to a postmodern political scientist'':
I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.
Nicholas J. Pappas and Matthew J. Franck are an associate professor and assistant professor, respectively, of political science at Radford University.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***