ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 is dedicated to the most important arguments against philosophical realism and in favour of various forms of antirealism, with a focus on the postmodernist rejection of reference to reality and of its importance for human thought and behaviour. Postmodernist philosophy, scholarship, and culture are described as questioning the significance of reference to reality on a number of grounds and with respect to different issues. The chapter discusses Postmodernism’s indebtedness to Nietzsche, and in particular to his rejection of realism as a dubious moral, psychological, political, and personal attitude, underlying (and purportedly disqualifying) any philosophical argument in favour of it. The reasons in favour of postmodernist antirealism are thus revealed as not exclusively theoretical but rather as political and ethical as well.
