What's true and right is conditioned by our circumstances, and nothing lasts because our needs change. Obviously I'm oversimplifying things . . . Wisdom in this kind of environment seems to shrivel into sophistry or cynicism. And that's exactly what's happened. As I was preparing for my talk tonight, I asked one of the philosophy professors at our seminary to name what he sees as the biggest problems in contemporary philosophy.
Philosophy today is eclectic.
If we refuse in principle to accept any universal explanation of life, no real school of thought or shared understanding of the world can develop. It's revealing that so few of our American university philosophy departments have any use for metaphysics . . . The idea behind deconstruction is taking apart the stories and language of our culture to discover their hidden prejudices. Skepticism is cheap. It's easy to take things apart.