I consider myself a postmodernist in the tradition of American pragmatism (James to Rorty) and European phenomenology (Husserl to Merleau-Ponty). But because of the stereotypes and I feel misunderstandings of postmodernism, I prefer to use the word “transmodernism.” The t-word both respects modernity (enlightenment, scientific method, secular humanism) but also critiques modernity (dualism, absolutism, rationalism). It affirms the symbolic mode of human knowing the world. It substitutes relationalism for rationalism and relativism by denying absolutes and certainties in the human way of adapting to, understanding, and constructing the world. It does not deny truth, freedom, equality, values but recognizes the human personal and collective role in realizing them. It recognizes that the definition of things (res, the real) is by understanding their interior and exterior relationships. It expresses that symbolically in words, formulas, propositions, art, and beliefs. But beliefs are never final and are subject to revision through a higher viewpoint or context that unveils more relationships.

We’ll, as your treatise started as a response, I promise a fuller articulation of transmodernism, or maybe post-postmodernism. As I of course provisionally and incohatively understand it.