The Consequences of The Postmodern Worldview of Michel Foucault

By Brannon S. Howse

Many people today assault the idea of absolute truth by proclaiming that all truth is relative and situational, so individuals must decide what is right or wrong based on each situation they encounter, without reference to any overarching standard. The predominant form of this way of thinking is postmodernism, the belief that truth (and the consequent reality) is not discovered but is created by mankind. 

People create truth when they survey a situation and choose a course of action that will give them the most self-serving results. This approach derives from the humanist worldview that proclaims “man is the measure of all things.” Therefore people are always guided by doing what is in their own best interests.

If people are the highest measure, then we can decide what is and what is not truth. This is why so many people repeat the catch phrase, “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me.”

A postmodern worldview allows that two opposing truth claims can be equal—unless one of the views is based on a fixed moral standard. An “absolute” view is not seen by the postmodernist as being equal but as being unacceptable because it is  “intolerant.” Christians, on the other hand, believe God created truth for people to discover and that God’s truth is for all times, all places, and all people and, further, that all people will be held accountable by God at the end of their lives for what they did with that truth. To the postmodern humanist, Christianity is the enemy, the reason for all problems in our world, the worldview that slows progress, that prohibits equality, and sabotages world peace. Postmodern humanism allows no tolerance for Christianity. 

To understand why this is so, consider the source for basic humanist beliefs. The Humanist Manifesto states:

"We believe that intolerant attitudes by orthodox religions and puritanical cultures, unduly repress sexual conduct…the many varieties of sexual exploration should not be considered evil…A civilized society should be a tolerant one..."

French philosopher Michel Foucault is considered one of the founders of postmodern thinking. Among his ideas, Foucault believed that homosexuality is a species, not an action. Speaking of Foucault in his book, The Idea of Decline in Western History, Arthur Herman explains that to Foucault “even the notion of truth itself was a ruse of power.” He also reveals Michel Foucault’s disturbing life:

[quote] During his visits to the United States in the late seventies, Foucault became fascinated by San Francisco’s gay scene with its bathhouses, leather bars, chains, whips, “glory holes,” and sadomasochistic rituals….When Foucault learned that he had contracted AIDS as the result of his pursuit of sexual transgression, that too became in his mind just another limit-experience: sex as a form of death, as well as the power to give death to others through sex. For at least two years after he contracted AIDS (from 1982 to 1984), Michel Foucault continued to visit his various gay orgy sites, knowingly passing the disease on to his anonymous partners. “We are inventing new pleasures beyond sex,” Foucault told an interviewer—in this particular case, sex as murder. [end quote]

Postmodern thinking allowed Michel Foucault to justify murder in satisfying his deviant pleasures. 

Postmodernists claim that each culture or community is free to determine for itself what is right or wrong. Stanley J. Grenz points out in A Primer on Postmodernism, “truth is relative to the community in which a person participates. And since there are many communities, there are necessarily many different truths.” This postmodern thinking is now frighteningly well accepted by young and old in America. 

In a U.S. News & World Report article Professor Robert Simon shares his fears about the impact of postmodernism. The example he gives is unnerving. The professor notes that he has never met a student who denies that the Nazi Holocaust took place, but:

[quote] What he sees quite often, though, is worse: students who acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust but who can’t bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong... “Of course, I dislike the Nazis,” one student told Simon, “but who is to say they are morally wrong?” Overdosing on non-judgmentalism is a growing problem in the schools. Two disturbing articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education say that some students are unwilling to oppose large moral horrors, including human sacrifice, ethnic cleansing and slavery, because they think that no one has the right to criticize the moral views of another group or culture. [end quote]

Now why would students say they do not agree with Hitler but cannot say what he did was wrong? It is because humanists have been alarmingly successful in infiltrating America’s educational system with the moral relativism and situational ethics of the postmodern worldview. The assault on truth is essential to the successful proliferation of a humanistic worldview in law, science, economics, education, sociology, government, and religion. Humanists must deny fundamental truth in order to be free from the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Only then can people genuinely write laws that change to fit whatever evil desires may be chic at a given time, and only then can they assert that morality and the law evolve.

The notion of absolute truth must also be undermined if naturalistic evolution is to successfully replace God as Creator—both of nature and nature’s laws—in the minds of millions of Americans. The denying of an all-powerful, all-knowing God that rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked is the ultimate goal of humanism, and promoting evolution is a central strategy for accomplishing that goal. Only if you deny truth can you believe in evolution—which is both unscientific and mathematically impossible.

Humanists must attack truth in order to call evil the economic system of free enterprise that rewards hard work, responsibility, serving customers, and that honors private contracts and private property rights. This is because Secular Humanists’ economy of choice is socialism with its unjust and non-Biblical concepts of redistribution of wealth, confiscation of private property, rewarding laziness, and disregard for private contracts and property. Socialism empowers a government to steal what honest, hard-working people have acquired.  

In addition, liberals have to attack truth if their humanist organizations are to receive religious, tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service while at the same time telling the courts and the American people their beliefs are secular so they can be the federally funded religion of America’s educational system. 

They must attack truth to convert Americans to the humanistic definition of marriage and sex. Only through a humanistic worldview can marriage be defined to include same-sex couples, and only through a humanist worldview can sexual promiscuity, experimentation, and an “if it feels good, do it” philosophy be justified.

Humanists attack truth in order to proclaim that human rights are not given by God but rather that rights are granted, secured, and protected by the highest authority that exists, the government. In his book When Religion Becomes Evil, Charles Kimball, a college professor at a well-known university, suggests that the hallmark of a religion “becoming evil” is when the religion makes absolute truth claims:

[quote] When zealous and devout adherents elevate teachings and belief of their tradition to the level of absolute truth, they open the door to the possibility that their religion will become evil. [end quote] 

Today’s postmodernists believe that any time someone upholds convictions based on absolute moral truth, it reflects intolerance and evil. (Prof. Kimball, by the way, fails to explain how someone with no benchmarks for judgment decides that something is evil.)

America’s students are indoctrinated with such anti-Christian propaganda, and the process begins with teachers. One humanist, liberal educator that has brainwashed thousands upon thousands of teachers is Dr. Bill Spady. Spady was one the biggest promoters of outcome-based education in the 1980s and 90s. He encouraged teachers to prepare students to deal with the intolerance of Christian conservatives when he declared:

[quote] Despite the historical trend toward intellectual enlightenment and cultural pluralism, there has been a major rise in religious and political orthodoxy, intolerance, fundamentalism, and conservatism with which young people will have to be prepared to deal. [end quote]

History is filled with individuals committed to a Secular Humanist worldview, who deny the God of the Bible, and who adhere to pagan philosophies. These beliefs laid the groundwork for justifying abuse, imprisonment, and murder of countless innocent people. 

When was the last time a truly evangelical Christian beheaded someone, blew up a building filled with innocent people, flew a plane into an office tower, or slaughtered school children in the name of God? To the contrary, it was Christians and their accompanying worldview that led to the first American hospitals, the first rescue missions and the pro-life clinics that offer healthcare and adoption services to save thousands of babies from destruction each year. 

As politically incorrect as it may be to say this, the worldview of people like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy is what makes them dangerous as they approve and work for the taking of innocent life through abortion—even late-term abortion. The same worldview that has allowed Al Gore and his ilk to vote in favor of legislation and policies that fund the killing of unborn babies is the same worldview that allowed Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini to justify the murder of millions. Such a comment may seem extreme to some Americans, but the roots of the worldview are the same. They are not built on a genuine compassion for anyone. 

Founding Father Dr. John Witherspoon would doubtless agree that most of today’s radical, Secular Humanists are enemies of America:

[quote] [H]e is the best friend to American liberty who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not [do not hesitate] to call him an enemy to his country. [end quote] 

Indeed, religion can be evil. Islam is an evil and violent religion. However, I contend that Al Gore and Professor Kimball are wrong when they decry the moral absolutes of Christianity as evil. History reveals that the twentieth century was the bloodiest of all centuries, and Secular Humanism was the foundational worldview (the religion) of those who committed every one of the atrocities.    

Today’s postmodern adults and students are so consumed with being tolerant and nonjudgmental that there are those who say we should not even call wrong or evil the terrorists that attacked America on September 11, 2001. In a Time magazine essay entitled “God Is Not on My side. Or Yours,” Roger Rosenblatt declares:

[end quote] One would like to think that God is on our side against the terrorists, because the terrorists are wrong and we are in the right, and any deity worth his salt would be able to discern that objective truth. But this is simply good-hearted arrogance cloaked in morality—the same kind of thinking that makes people decide that God created humans in his own image. The God worth worshipping is the one who pays us the compliment of self-regulation, and we might return it by minding our own business. [end quote] 

In a more palatable vein, Yale University student Alison Hornstein wrote in the December 17, 2001, issue of Newsweek an article entitled “The Question That We Should Be Asking—Is Terrorism Wrong?”. “My generation may be culturally sensitive,” she notes, “but we hesitate to make moral judgments.” After that dramatic understatement, she continues: 

[quote] Student reactions expressed in the daily newspaper and in class pointed to the differences between our life circumstances and those of the perpetrators, suggesting that these differences had caused the previous day’s events. Noticeably absent was a general outcry of indignation at what had been the most successful terrorist attack of our lifetime. These reactions and similar ones on other campuses have made it apparent that my generation is uncomfortable assessing, or even asking whether a moral wrong has taken place. [end quote]

In her article, Alison describes how on September 12, one day after the murder of more than 3,000 people at the hands of Islamic terrorists:

[quote] A professor said he did not see much difference between Hamas suicide bombers and American soldiers who died fighting in World War II. When I saw one or two students nodding in agreement, I raised my hand. I believed … there is a considerable distinction. American soldiers, in uniform, did not have a policy of specifically targeting civilians; suicide bombers, who wear plainclothes, do. The professor didn’t call on me. The people who did get a chance to speak cited various provocations for terrorism; not one of them questioned its morality. [end quote] 

Along with its overarching dismal consequences, postmodernism has one monumental philosophical problem: It cannot possibly be true. Because God is truth, postmodernism is false. Man did not create God. Postmodernism is the belief that truth is created by man, not discovered. This is the logical equivalent of saying that the painting created the painter. God created man; man did not create God.

While moral relativism is the belief that there is no absolute standard of right or wrong or good or evil, God is always the same, always good, and always opposed to evil. That means truth is truth.

Copyright 2006 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.