材料音频

Listen to a conversation between a student and a philosophy professor.
Professor: Hi, Melissa, you're rough draft for your paper is looking very promising so far.
Student: Thanks. I still have some reading to do. Post modernism is pretty challenging, so…
Professor: Well, you’re off to a good start. So anything else about the class or post modernism?
since we have a few minutes before my next appointment.
Student: Well, actually, in class, you talked about a French philosopher. Uh, Utah. You said he
didn’t believe in stories or something like that, that stories were invalid.
Professor: Okay, I think I see. Uh, first of all, you understand what he um, remember what
Leahthar said about the uh, the grand narrative?
Student: Not really.
Professor: Okay, have a seat.
Student: All right.
Professor: It’s not quite the same way you’re thinking of narratives, not stories. Leahthar, not
narrative as in a way of understanding the world.
Student: Um, I uh…
Professor: How can I explain this, uh, grand narrative… It’s like an idea that helps people make
sense of history, like when you picture the early middle ages in Europe, what do you think?
Student: Okay, like, um, there weren’t a lot of cultural achievement then, lots of wars, but not a
lot of important art or books or anything, like it was the Dark Ages.
Professor: All right, that’s a simple explanation of a time in history, right? Something that tends
to be accepted or understood by most people. That makes it a grand narrative. Here’s a more
recent one, scientific progress.
Student: Ah ha.
Professor: People look at important inventions throughout history light bulbs, cars, computers.
And we generally believe that there’s an underlying universal truth that modern technology
makes the world better. It’s been the belief for so long that people accept it as being true. We
don’t even think of it much. We just accept that modern technology has that effect.
Student: Well. It does make our lives better.
Professor: All right. This is where Leahthar comes in. He believed we have be careful about
accepting ideas like that. He said these beliefs really oversimplify things and that we should think
more critically. Are there times when technology would not be considered progress, where it
doesn’t bring improvement?
Student: Oh, I don’t know, uh, pollution, but I…
Professor: No…no, that’s good. It would be hard to say pollution was a form of improving the
world.
Student: But isn’t pollution just a side effective of …? Oh, so it kind of goes against the grand
narrative about technology. It complicates things.
Professor: Yeah. And that’s a basic idea behind post modernism, that we should be skeptical of
grand narrative, because there’s a good chance they’re not completely true.
Student: You mean?
Professor: Well, not to say there’s no truth in grand narratives. Of course, it’s just that nothing is
as simple and straightforward as it seems. We should look critically at the things we assume.
Student: Okay. I think I get it . Thanks.
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