This is an excellent and insightful question. The “Meaning Crisis” – a term popularized by philosopher John Vervaeke – and Postmodernism have a deeply intertwined, yet often antagonistic, relationship. Understanding their connection is key to understanding a major fault line in contemporary thought.
In short: Postmodernism is simultaneously a symptom of the Meaning Crisis and, for many of its critics (including Vervaeke), a significant aggravating cause of it.
Let’s break this down.
First, What is the “Meaning Crisis”?
Vervaeke argues that the Meaning Crisis is not just about feeling sad or anxious. It’s a cognitive crisis: a loss of relevance realization . This is our brain’s ability to sift through a flood of information and instantly grasp what is relevant to our goals, actions, and sense of self.
Historically, we had “technologies of the self” (religion, philosophy, ritual, art) that helped scaffold this relevance realization, providing:
- A Cosmos: A meaningful, ordered universe where we fit.
- A Self: A coherent, enduring agent with a purpose.
- A Community: Shared rituals and values that connect us.
- Wisdom: Not just information, but the practical, embodied skill of living well.
The Meaning Crisis is the collapse of these scaffolds due to scientific naturalism (a disenchanted, purposeless universe), the Protestant Reformation (fragmentation of authority), capitalism (commodification), and the information age (overload). The result is a feeling of futility, isolation, and the inability to discern what truly matters.
Second, What is Postmodernism’s Core Claim?
Postmodernism (as found in Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, etc.) is a profound skepticism towards “metanarratives” – the big, unifying stories a culture tells itself to justify its knowledge, values, and power structures. Examples of metanarratives include:
- The Christian story of salvation.
- The Enlightenment story of progress through reason.
- The Marxist story of liberation from class struggle.
Postmodernists argue that these narratives aren’t discovered truths but socially constructed tools of power. They “deconstruct” them, revealing internal contradictions, hidden biases, and how they marginalize alternative voices. The result is a radical anti-foundationalism: there is no ultimate ground for Truth, Meaning, or the Self. Everything is “text,” open to endless interpretation.
The Connection: Symptom and Aggravation
1. Postmodernism as a Sophisticated Description of the Symptom
Postmodernist thought brilliantly articulates the experience of the Meaning Crisis. It says:
- “There is no Cosmos” (Lyotard): The grand story that gave the universe order is just a story. This matches the feeling of a disenchanted, meaningless universe.
- “The Self is a decentered fiction” (Derrida, Foucault): There is no stable “I” behind your thoughts, just a product of language and power. This matches the feeling of a fragmented, incoherent identity.
- “Truth is a construct of language games” (Rorty, late Derrida): There’s no truth to be known, only local, competing narratives. This matches the feeling of cognitive overload and the inability to realize relevance – if no truth is more real, how do you choose?
In this sense, postmodernism provides the philosophical vocabulary for the Meaning Crisis. It tells you, “That feeling of groundlessness you have? You’re right to have it. There is no ground.”
2. Postmodernism as an Aggravating Cause
For critics like Vervaeke, this is where postmodernism becomes dangerous. It doesn’t just describe the crisis; it actively deconstructs the very tools we need to solve it.
- It attacks “Wisdom” as “Power”: A core part of overcoming the crisis is recovering genuine wisdom – the know-how of living. Postmodernism, especially Foucault, tends to reframe any claim to wisdom (therapist, teacher, guru, priest) as a hidden power play. This creates a paralyzing cynicism where any path toward meaning is immediately suspected of being a trap.
- It rejects “Relevance Realization”: Vervaeke argues that some frames are more relevant, more adaptive, more true to reality than others (e.g., the scientific method works). Postmodernism’s radical relativism says one “language game” is as good as any other. This short-circuits our brain’s ability to learn from feedback and optimize for meaning. If all interpretations are equal, why try to be a better person or build a better society?
- It offers a “hermeneutics of suspicion” but no “hermeneutics of recovery”: Postmodernism is a masterful scalpel for cutting apart false meanings. But it provides no guidance for weaving together new, genuine meanings. It leaves you in a heap of deconstructed parts with no blueprint. As Vervaeke says, you can’t live in permanent deconstruction.
The core conflict: Postmodernism says, “The ultimate cause of the crisis is the oppressive, illusory nature of all claims to Absolute Meaning.” Vervaeke and others say, “No, the ultimate cause is the loss of genuine, albeit fallible, frameworks of meaning. And by destroying all frameworks, postmodernism makes the crisis worse.”
A Crucial Distinction (And Where Vervaeke Goes)
It’s vital to distinguish postmodernism from post-critical or post-postmodern thinking.
Vervaeke is not a premodern traditionalist trying to bring back medieval Christianity. He agrees with the postmodern critique of naive realism and oppressive metanarratives. He accepts the lessons of deconstruction (be wary of power, be humble about your frames).
His project (the “Meaning Crisis” series) is to move through postmodernism, not go back behind it. He tries to build a new, more robust “relevance realization” using insights from:
- Cognitive Science (4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended, enactive)
- Buddhist & Stoic philosophy (practices of attention and wisdom)
- Platonism (reinterpreted as a process of participatory knowing, not abstract dogma)
- Ritual & Flow States
He wants a participatory knowing that is both critically aware (postmodern) and genuinely transformative (premodern wisdom), grounded in a scientific understanding of the mind (modern).
Summary Table
| Feature |
Postmodernism |
Meaning Crisis (Vervaeke’s view) |
| Core Problem |
Oppressive, hidden power structures in claims of universal truth. |
Loss of “relevance realization” - the ability to discern what matters. |
| View of Metanarratives |
Inherently totalitarian & illusory. Must be deconstructed. |
Necessary (but fallible) scaffolds for meaning. Their loss is the crisis. |
| View of the Self |
A decentered fiction, a product of language/power. |
A dynamic, embodied, and relational process that needs coherence. |
| Solution |
Endless critique, deconstruction, celebrating multiplicity and local “language games.” |
Rebuilding “wisdom” through participatory practices (dialog, ritual, contemplation, flow). |
| Relation to Meaning Crisis |
Symptom & Aggravator: Brilliantly describes the groundlessness, but then forbids you from building new ground. |
The condition to be solved: A real cognitive dysfunction, not a liberating philosophical insight. |
Conclusion
Postmodernism is the philosophical echo of the Meaning Crisis. It heard the crash of the old cathedrals of meaning and, instead of trying to rebuild, declared that all cathedrals were prisons and that living in the rubble was true freedom.
The Meaning Crisis is the experience of the cold, drafty rubble. And the central intellectual and spiritual challenge of our time, which Vervaeke tackles head-on, is: How do we build new, resilient, and wise scaffolds for meaning after postmodernism has taught us to see all scaffolds as potential prisons?