Marx and the “Death of God”
It is remarkable that so many postmodernists seem to mourn the death of God. The fact that the totality is no longer total, that there is no ultimate mystical reality behind the world seems to disappoint these people. Their writings show a pathetic nostalgia for the total even as they proclaim its opposite.
Their actions are a part of the tradition which they place themselves over against. We can begin with Plato and Socrates, in their confrontation with the sophists. The problem with the sophists was that their art was nomadic; it had to be domesticated. The sophists did not teach a transcendent term that should govern all discourse, their way of teaching was foundationless. It seems that Plato was a brilliant sophist, who appropriated many sophistic techniques in order to compose his works, but then turned around and attempted to declare himself the last prophet. His theory of the forms is a theory of the beyond, one which falsifies the life-world and subordinates it to external concepts. The bottom line, the most essential characteristic of Plato is his insistence on the universality of values.
Well burrowed, old mole! 