Scholasticism

:Scholastic redirects here. For the U.S. book publisher, see Scholastic Press.

Contemporary Scholasticism

The Canadian essayist John Ralston Saul has argued in his books that much of what passes for post-modernist discourse in universities today is nothing more than a contemporary version of scholasticism. Today's auctors would be the post-structuralist canon consisting of such people as Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida etc.

Related Topics:
John Ralston Saul - Post-modernist - Post-structuralist - Michel Foucault - Jean Baudrillard - Jacques Lacan - Jean-Francois Lyotard - Jacques Derrida

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The post-structuralist deconstruction method can be seen as the exercise of this current scholasticism's version of disputatio.

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Saul is highly critical of this 'revival', stating that the mediaeval scholastics did nothing more than tie up debate in irrelevant details, and that the current version does nothing more than create a variety of technocratic dialects that separates intellectuals from reality through relentless abstraction.

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