Postmodernism and Existentialism have eroded effective policy-making.
The writings of Michel Foucault and his rejection of essentialism is a key example of this phenomenon. Foucault made his contention on human nature clear when he said: “If you say that a certain human nature exists, that this human nature has not been given the rights and possibilities that allow it to realize itself in our contemporary society […] if one admits this, does not one risk defining this human nature – which is at the same time ideal and real and has been hidden and repressed until now – in terms borrowed from our society, from our civilization, from our culture?”
This reinterpretation of modernity sought to break the pillars of foundationalism, resulting in a philosophical movement beset towards anti-reality, anti-objectivism, and anti-essentialism. His writings on subjectivity also contributed to the likings of continental philosophy, espousing views that seek to attack the primacy of essentialism. Foucault defined subjectivity as the way in which the subject experiences himself and how he relates to himself. This is considered to be a fabrication of external power.
Thanks, Sǿren!
Before the considerations of those like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, and the rest of the existential-postmodern cadre; accepting a broad notion of essentialism was a rudimentary requirement of modernist civilized thinking. In the German tradition specifically, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel were committed to defending the concept of essentialism, arguing for an ‘essence’ characteristic of all individuals persisting against any external contingencies that would otherwise influence visible phenomena.
The French Revolution marked the death of despotism in Europe and brought on a newfound system of civil order and interaction. The vulgarization of natural science, modernist sociology, and positivism began to reinforce essentialist philosophy amongst the greater public thanks to the contributions of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Charles Darwin and his revelatory work in the Origin of Species (1859); furthering a rationale for the use essentialism insofar as it pertained to taxonomic order. Empiricism explicated the integral nature of human understanding and perception and recognized man’s eternal finitude.
The rise of existentialism was one of the earliest critiques of the modernist philosophy of human nature and the doctrine of essentialism. In line with the tradition of existentialist Sǿren Kierkegaard, subjectivist ontology codifies the purpose of the individual as a task of grasping meaning. The purpose of existence is the central intention of Kierkegaardian thought. According to this view, this task involves achieving the utmost freedom from the confines of the aesthetic sphere of existence. Over the years, Kierkegaard’s works on existentialism have attracted the attention of Postmodern thinkers based on his anti-rational thought. As a result, the emergence of a generally adopted Postmodern existentialism has had a broad impact on modern philosophy and greater society.
You Are No Longer Human
These intellectual scaffoldings provided a framework from which future deniers of modernist thinking would derive their further and further obscured presuppositions, and arrive where we are today. Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance, promoted the idea of viewing the individual scope of analysis as foundational to all philosophical and phenomenological exploration. Central to the philosophy of Sartre is the rejection of the essence of human nature, and that one’s existence overrides the possibility of there being essential human qualities. However, Sartre's existentialist works are often conflated with his postmodernism, and it is rather obvious that his contributions to Postmodernism directly influenced his perceptions of existential problems as a whole, inferring more and more esoteric presuppositions as he went.
In line with the philosophical tradition of postmodern existentialism, rejecting the essential idea of human nature – of objective qualities – became a requisite for much of Postmodern thinking.
The conception of essential human self-interest that the great thinkers of classical antiquity once heralded has been left out of philosophical discussion. It is easy to say that its dissolution is a symptom of a greater problem in political philosophy discourse and stands as a testament to declining views on essentialism, human nature, and structuralist thinking. Additionally, others have argued against realism on methodological terms by rejecting the systematic use of scientific analysis for assessing theoretical knowledge. However, it is important to know that such accusations are only ever thrown against neorealist and essentialist schools of thought for generating statements that are typically non-falsifiable and largely characterized by a sense of Ptolemaic parochialism. These criticisms are limited insofar as they pertain to neorealism's design and analytical techniques, and less so demonstrate the societal and philosophical decline experienced in the Present Age.
The End of Effective Policy
The conceptual death of essentialist and otherwise modernist theory has brought up regimes wholly inept in installing effective policy or nation-building enterprises. The Ronald Reagan administration, for instance, marked a major turning point in United States foreign policy. Reagan’s idealism immunized Americans against the machinations of Kissinger-era statecraft, an endeavor entirely built on the idea of essentialism and inherent human nature, by instead embracing the values of revivalism, liberal internationalism, and American exceptionalism. Following this administration, Americans had witnessed the end of the Cold War, thus standing as a testament to liberal politicking. The Bush regime would only try to replicate Reagan’s foreign policy wins by building upon preceding liberalized policy approaches at home and abroad. The Bush administration sought to further democratize the world by introducing peace theory and neoliberal economics policy designed to transition third-world states into ostensible Western democracies, as well as utilizing nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations to facilitate widespread cultural changes and color revolutions across the developing “Global South.” For instance, to combat terrorism, the Bush administration directly sought to expunge all elements of Middle Eastern regional supremacy and terrorism under the ideological premise that the liberal project served American national interests. The need for liberalization was so great that it could justify being afforded at the cost of genuine liberalized democracy in occupied Arabic nations. For it is obvious, given free and fair elections, what the majority Muslim-Arabic nations would inevitably install as their democratically elected government. Attempts to supplant Western hegemony and appeals to the project of general human flourishing fall upon deaf ears when put to test against theoretically inclined peoples, unfamiliar with Western virtues and freedoms.
The persistent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan buried the previous notions of successful foreign policy strategies rooted in liberal theory and subtly revealed once commonly understood truths about essentialist human behavior.
Thank you Daniella. I enjoyed reading this, felt like being in uni again. I agree, except for one minor detail: I exclude Heidegger from the postmodern bunch you justifiably criticize, only because he is more of a precursor to mainstream "existentialism". To my knowledge, he never used that term, and was concerned with the "question of Being". As a result, his work continues that of Husserl--Phenomenology or the study of consciousness and its modality. While I am not a "Heideggerian", I find more value in his work that everything that comes after. Sartre took Heidegger and made a "brand-name" out of it--Existential-ism. In many ways, Sartre commercialized this school of thought, and turned it into total "subjectivity". It is this anti-elitist sentiment that is directly-responsible for the Marxist and Communist leanings among the mid-century French thinkers.