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Gideon Calder, "Postmodernism and its Ironies" (Review of Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism and Michael Luntley, Reason, Truth and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned), Res Publica III/2 (1997), 221-228: A review of two quite distinct approaches to the issues thrown up by postmodernist thinking in general. Both, I suggest, are well worth reading, though for separate reasons. Eagleton offers a sparkling and incisive corrective to the sloppier, more confused and politically most debilitating aspects of postmodernism which is both eminently readable and full of serious insights. Though rather fudgy amd generalistic in some parts, in others it provides a promising skecth for an alternative, socialist agenda for theory and practice. Luntley's book has a different mission: basically to harness key epistemological insights of postmodernism to a sort of modest realism freed of the scientistic reductionisms he takes to be typical of Enlightenment thought. It's a clearly argued, consistently interesting attempt, although I suggest that his approach is rather one-dimensional, arguably dealing in straw targets. I conclude by suggesting that thought there is much to be sceptical of in postmodernist thought, engagement with it is crucial, both to reveal its strengths and shortcomings and to demonstrate how its own targets might be shown to survive the postmodernist critique intact - a survival which, as Eagleton shows, may be crucial to the future of critical philosophy. e-mail: SENGJC@hum2s.Cardiff.ac.uk

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