Are you saying that we might give too much respect to postmodernists because they use postmodern reasoning to support ends that we also support?
More or less, although I’d cast it in terms of giving too much respect to incoherent arguments rather than to postmodernism. It’s an arguments-as-soldiers thing; if we find ourselves nodding along with an argument that leads to a conclusion we like, and the internals of the argument are later shown to have been nonsense, we look at minimum very silly. Worse, we might along the way have internalized some related nonsense.
On the other hand, we should also be careful not to demonize particular postmodern thinkers or conclusions on account of coming out of the postmodern movement, for the same reasons—a test that many on the empirical side of the Two Cultures divide have failed, unfortunately. Themes and methods characteristic of the movement are, of course, still fair game.
Your secondary-exposure method seems solid in principle, but I’d also say that that’s a good time to revisit the concerns about cost-effectiveness that you raised earlier; it’s a heavyweight method, and I doubt that the certainty it gives you is likely to be worth the time spent on gaining it. Even a prerequisite as basic as learning the vocabulary of, say, deconstructionism is a daunting task, at least comparable in complexity to reading the Sequences.
More or less, although I’d cast it in terms of giving too much respect to incoherent arguments rather than to postmodernism. It’s an arguments-as-soldiers thing; if we find ourselves nodding along with an argument that leads to a conclusion we like, and the internals of the argument are later shown to have been nonsense, we look at minimum very silly. Worse, we might along the way have internalized some related nonsense.
On the other hand, we should also be careful not to demonize particular postmodern thinkers or conclusions on account of coming out of the postmodern movement, for the same reasons—a test that many on the empirical side of the Two Cultures divide have failed, unfortunately. Themes and methods characteristic of the movement are, of course, still fair game.
Your secondary-exposure method seems solid in principle, but I’d also say that that’s a good time to revisit the concerns about cost-effectiveness that you raised earlier; it’s a heavyweight method, and I doubt that the certainty it gives you is likely to be worth the time spent on gaining it. Even a prerequisite as basic as learning the vocabulary of, say, deconstructionism is a daunting task, at least comparable in complexity to reading the Sequences.