As a “liberal natural lawyer,” I take a good amount of ribbing from colleagues in the legal academy. I'm told my self-description is either an oxymoron or just my own “language game.” But from such a perspective, I was recently provoked to examine the post-modern enterprise by an exchange I had with an eminent Jesuit philosopher who was giving an address at a local Catholic seminary on some conflicting currents in neoscholastic philosophy.

In his formal remarks, the renowned Thomist took a rather hard swipe at post-modernism, singling out Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty for special scorn. Afterwards, in a personal chat, I asked him what he found so troubling about the outlooks of those influential, contemporary thinkers. He gave the succinct response that I should have expected from such an erudite Aristotelian. “People like Focault and Rorty,” he said “have destroyed the sense of wonder.”

Given the gentleman's stature, I took his criticism quite seriously. However I'd like to offer a broader reading of those two most notable post-moderns-commending them for the valid and important contributions they've made. But I'd also like to point out where they come up short and may even be searching themselves for something beyond the conventional understandings of their works.

Foucalt and Rorty represent two quite different strains of post-modernism. Foucault is the pre-eminent French post-structuralist while Rorty, an American, is often reviled by such radicals as a decadent moderate and an apologist for the North Atlantic bourgeoisie.