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Steven Hayward on Postmodernism and the Possibility of Conversation

Steven Hayward in "How Are We Having This Conversation?" at Powerline (July 4th, 2015).

Like most post-modernist professors of jargon, Caputo isn’t ever clear about anything, but he appears here to be saying that reason itself is “socially constructed,” and therefore subjective or arbitrary, or something. The close corollary is that language is also “socially constructed” and just a tool for power.  Whenever I meet such people I have two questions: Why are we having this conversation — if in fact we really can’t talk to each other?  Moreover, if language is an arbitrary social construction, then how are we having this conversation? May I answer by interpretive dance instead of sounds from my mouth? Why not?