The Postmodern Anti-Realism of Value in Caputo and Butler, and its Phenomenological Grounding

Abstract

In this essay, I expose what I take to be implicit phenomenological commitments of both John D. Caputo and Judith Butler’s anti-realist conception of value. As anti-realists and exemplars of what some might call the postmodern tradition of ethics, I can show how their views must presuppose the very phenomenology of moral experience these thinkers would deny, and thus anyone persuaded by the elements of these philosophers should embrace the value ontologies of what I call participatory realism rather than the uncritical and untenable assumptions of anti-realism that so many in the humanities embrace.