Dr. Vallicella is on Substack, a forum where you can, if you're a decent writer (or even if you suck), write articles for public consumption. It's a bit reminiscent of blogging, but with no pictures of food or cats. Substack is about issues. I've thought of going on the forum myself, but I already write so much here that it might prove to be a time sink. Anyway, Dr. V has a good article up right now that confirms things I've written in the past about the connection between Nietzsche and postmodernism, and how PoMo thinking has seeped out of academe and into the larger society (see here, here, and here, for example). An excerpt:
What Nietzsche wants to say is that there is no truth 'in itself'; there are only various interpretations from the varying perspectives of power-hungry individuals, interpretations that serve to enhance the power of these individuals. At bottom, the world is a vast constellation of ever-changing power-centers vying with one another for dominance, and what a particular power-center calls 'true' are merely those interpretations that enhance and preserve its power. For the essence of the world is not reason or order, but blind will, will to power.
To say there is no truth, you have to make a truth-claim: It is true there is no truth. So the claim undermines itself, and there's no escaping truth. Nietzsche prioritized power over truth, and this lies at the heart of today's PoMo-influenced leftism: everything is a power discourse, and power determines authority. This is why white people can be racist while non-whites can't: whites have the power while everyone else is an oppressed victim. Where you sit in the power structure matters, and the power structure is always asymmetrical. And this is why Nietzschean thinking needs to be overthrown. Think, too, about the paradox of the leftist position: the implication is that power is associated with culpability (whites are powerful and racist), but despite that, the oppressed vie for power. Why, if power is so corrupting?
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