Is truth an illusion? Psychoanalysis and postmodernism

Bibliographic Data

ID8972003
AuthorsDavid Bell (0000-0002-2164-0328, Flat 4, Mullion Court, 112 Finchley RoadLondon NW3 5JH, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume90
Issue2
Pages331-345
Publication date2009-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1745-8315.2009.00136.x
PMID19382964
OpenAlexW2073443890
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited6

The sort of reflection that I have been engaging in is just the sort of reflection that both Comte and Rorty see as pointless. For Comte, such reflection is a throwback to a pre-scientific age; for Rorty, a reluctance to enter fully into the postmodern one. Some of you will probaly agree with one or other of these thinkers. But in my view reflection on just what it is that makes thinkers like Rorty doubt the very idea of representing the world, and I think there is a Rorty as well as a Comte in each of us, however suppressed, is part of understanding ourselves, and not just part of understanding certain sophisticated and influential thinkers. For what is common to Rorty and Comte is the idea that much of what we think we know cannot have the status it seems to have. For Richard Rorty the recommended response is to take a more ‘playful’ attitude to what we think we know; and for August Comte it is to sternly restrict ourselves to ‘positive knowledge

Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Illusion · Postmodernism · Psychoanalysis · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Psychology

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