Fascinating though the paradoxes of postmodernism are to intellectuals, they are not principles for living. Most people hate them. If all arguments and narratives were “unstable” or “contingent,” who would take the trouble to learn the facts on which they are based? On what basis would respect for truth rest? On what basis respect for other human beings? Such questions were not low-stakes at all. The collapse of old absolutisms was supposed to open up space for diversity. It opened up space for something of that name, which soon showed signs of becoming an absolutism itself.
