The modern world is a mess! You don’t need a master’s degree in politics or a thorough understanding of a dozen different philosophies to recognize this . . . but perhaps it feels like you would need an intensive education to understand how we arrived here. Catholic speaker and author Bobby Angel would disagree, and his latest book, The Postmodern Predicament: And a Roadmap for Recovery and Restoration, is here to save the day.
Summary and Structure
The Postmodern Predicament is a short read, less than 130 pages long and divided into three sections: “The Story,” “The Mess,” and “The Recovery.” But before diving into any of the above, Bobby Angel begins where all the best contemporary Catholic things do, with Pope Saint John Paul II, via a key insight from his encyclical Fides et Ratio: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” This line from the philosopher pope once prompted Bobby Angel’s own philosophical synthesis, and it undergirds the conviction he wishes to impart to his readers, that “truth can be known and ought to be pursued” (p. 9).
Amid the hundred names and faces that figure into a comprehensive history of philosophical thought, Bobby Angel successfully narrows down the list to a few essentials, offering “a brief flyover of these brilliant minds and their work” (p. 10). The first part of his book, “The Story,” features concise chapters on each era of philosophy. Angel uncovers how the ancient philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle formed Western thought by inquiring into what was knowable and logical about the world. Next, he illuminates how the medieval scholars, albeit in a gritty era intellectually, had the right equation when they harmonized philosophy with faith. Finally, his chapters on the modern and postmodern thinkers characterize the conundrums of recent times, from the Enlightenment to Gen Z, spanning known names (like Luther, Descartes, or Freud) and obscure ones (Ockham, Dewey, and Derrida) alike.
The next section of the book is called “The Mess.” Angel spends these chapters naming the realities that society has attempted to deconstruct, including gender, family, art/architecture, and language. He returns to some challenging figures from the previous section, like Marx and Derrida, but also brings in other voices, including some from the Church, to guide us through the mixed bag of the modern age. Most importantly, these chapters form an important part of Angel’s project in this book: to demonstrate that we should not throw out everything about contemporary society wholesale, for seeds of truth and good intentions do undergird the misguided extremes of our age. Yet since it is difficult to disentangle the right from the wrong, the scene before us is indeed a predicament.
Angel’s final section, “The Recovery,” contains some beautiful reflections. His chapters about reclaiming rest, gratitude, and the giftedness of other persons are a refreshing payoff after the denser philosophy and dismal dilemmas described in earlier ones. Lastly, Angel closes with a list of recommended reading with titles for both philosophical knowledge and overall personal restoration, which will help us recognize that recovery is in our hands.
Style, Strengths, and Critiques
“The best way to teach philosophy is by a story,” Peter Kreeft comments in his own series on the history of philosophy. By this standard, Angel succeeds in his presentation of philosophy in The Postmodern Predicament, for he discloses it to us as a narrative. By viewing these thinkers and their ideas through the lens of story, we can better understand what motivated them. Angel skillfully guides us through this story throughout the book. For example, he unlocks the landscape that produced postmodernism in just a couple of lines:
The Enlightenment through the Industrial Revolution and into the twentieth century were times fixated on exalting humanity’s capacity for unlimited progress [. . .] Postmodernity is the cynical, sobered, angry reaction against those broken promises." (p. 40)
The ease with which Angel spins the story of philosophy is one of the strengths of this book. Reading The Postmodern Predicament feels like an informative, thought-provoking conversation with Bobby Angel, for he utilizes the straightforward style authentic to the persona found in his Ascension Presents YouTube videos. He primarily writes as a speaker, progressing through a number of ideas with slightly less flow between thoughts and paragraphs than a seasoned author might employ. This simpler, bullet-point effect of presenting ideas can work well from the podium, where it is punctuated by pauses and vocal inflection; meanwhile, it takes a bit of effort to read with a disposition prepared to ponder and follow his insights. (I also wished he spent more time unpacking the quotations he used—or perhaps at least informed us that he would rely substantially on the wisdom of others in his reflections.) Nonetheless, I expect that readers who are used to Bobby Angel behind the microphone will appreciate discovering his same voice in the pages of this book.
My Verdict: Dive in, Flip, or Skip?
My verdict on The Postmodern Predicament is to dive in—if you have attention for a mildly intellectual read. It makes philosophy digestible for people of all walks of life, particularly to those with little to no background in philosophical concepts. I particularly anticipate that this book would be helpful to the high school theology teacher striving to instruct her students in the most important aspects of today’s philosophical landscape, but it is also an insightful handbook for every Catholic seeking the way forward.
In The Postmodern Predicament, Angel makes philosophy approachable and applicable, tracing where truth remains to remind us that we can indeed recultivate the culture. With him as our expert guide, we can both observe the mess and decipher how we arrived here in just a few hours’ time rather than spending entire semesters reading heady treatises. But this is not the end of the road, for the way out of the predicament is not in going back, as greatly as we may be tempted to retreat into the past. No, Angel gives us a new goal: We must find the path through. Angel’s book advances us two steps: We now know how we got here and where we are going. We are meant to move forward with courage, regaining wonder, wisdom, and truth.
Leila Joy Castillo calls Florida home but left her heart in hill country long ago. An alumna of Ave Maria University, she freelances in Catholic communications and is a published writer, primarily on Blessed is She and Ascension. When not dabbling in the multitudinous Google docs of her articles, Leila delights in music, personalist philosophy, quality time with her younger siblings, and her literary trifecta: Austen, Lewis, and Dante. You can find her on Instagram @leila_joyinthejourney or follow her personal site here.
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