Knowing and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Epistemology

Modern thought, finally free from premodern excesses of belief, immediately fell prey to excesses of doubt. This book points toward a postmodern approach to knowing that moves beyond the tired choice between dogma and skepticism. Its key deconstructive aim is to help contemporary philosophers see that their paralyzing modern "epistemological gap" is a myth. Its positive outcome, however, reverses the identification of "postmodern" with deconstruction rather than construction, with the "end of philosophy" rather than renewal in philosophy.

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Points toward a postmodern approach to knowing that moves beyond the tired dialectic of dogma vs. skepticism. Ferre (philosophy, U. of Georgia) rejects the identification of postmodernism with deconstruction, concluding rather that the epistemological gap does not exist, and that an ecological worldview can heal that supposed gap. He begins by tracing the origins of the gap, examining the thought of ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers; moves to the ideas of thinkers who attempted to reduce, web, or leap the gap; and finally deconstructs the gap with his own thought, summed up in the aesthetic metaphor: "Knowing is the music of thought." Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.