> All translations are biased by the translator; there is no such thing as a translation that "transparently" conveys the meaning of the original
All software has bugs, but not all software is equally buggy. The same goes for translations and bias, humans and honesty, etc.
This is a (common) misinunderstanding of post-modernism. The idea isn't that you should take off your critical thinking cap and dismiss everything but that you should put it on - you don't get to take it off, ever - and make judgements about the varying qualities of (the translation), while being aware of your own bias. Like software developers, we are flawed beings using flawed tools to make flawed code, but that doesn't make us powerless to do better - we still can do incredible things.
> Postmodernists deny that there are aspects of reality that are objective; that there are statements about reality that are objectively true or false; that it is possible to have knowledge of such statements (objective knowledge); that it is possible for human beings to know some things with certainty[0]
So in essence, postmodernism teaches that critical thinking is all about tearing down what it calls the illusion of objective reality, statements that are objectively true or false, objective knowledge, and certainty -- and finding (or at least positing) the subjective sources behind such illusions.
I object to such assertions and flatly deny that reality is subjective. Only perception is subjective -- and critical thinking ought to be used to get through to the objective truth. In the case of ancient texts, critical reading helps us establish what the original text most likely said.
I feel like there's Straw Postmodernism where you can make anything true by wishing really hard, and Tautological Postmodernism, where the human senses are limited in resolution and your mind is limited in memory and cognition, and somewhere between them is a postmodernism that a sane person would bother arguing in favor of. I haven't seen it, of course, but I conjecture it's out there in the libraries somewhere.
IME, it's what is normally discussed when people genuinely want to know about it. Most of the discussion of post-modernism on the Internet is the misunderstanding upthread or anti-postmodernist rants (which ironically often are based on the same perspective as their target).
All software has bugs, but not all software is equally buggy. The same goes for translations and bias, humans and honesty, etc.
This is a (common) misinunderstanding of post-modernism. The idea isn't that you should take off your critical thinking cap and dismiss everything but that you should put it on - you don't get to take it off, ever - and make judgements about the varying qualities of (the translation), while being aware of your own bias. Like software developers, we are flawed beings using flawed tools to make flawed code, but that doesn't make us powerless to do better - we still can do incredible things.