[1][2] Postmodernist thinkers developed concepts like différance, repetition, trace, and hyperreality to subvert "grand narratives", univocity of being, and epistemic certainty.
[3] Postmodern philosophy questions the importance of power relationships, personalization, and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views.
[3][failed verification] Postmodern philosophy is often particularly skeptical about simple binary oppositions characteristic of structuralism, emphasizing the problem of the philosopher cleanly distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from submission, good from bad, and presence from absence.
[15][18][19] Postmodern philosophy was greatly influenced by the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century and other early-to-mid 20th-century philosophers, including the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, cultural critic Roland Barthes, theorist Georges Bataille, and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
[20] Postmodern philosophy also drew from the world of the arts and architecture, particularly Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and artists who practiced collage.
[citation needed] Baudrillard, known for his simulation theory, argued that the individual's experience and perception of reality derives its basis entirely from media-propagated ideals and images.
Following Nietzsche, Deleuze argued that philosophical critique is an encounter between thought and what forces it into action, and that this requires training, discipline, inventiveness, and even a certain "cruelty".
An analytic philosopher, Rorty believed that combining Willard Van Orman Quine's criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction with Wilfrid Sellars's critique of the "Myth of the Given" allowed for an abandonment of the view of the thought or language as a mirror of a reality or an external world.
[29] Some criticism responds to postmodernist skepticism towards objective reality and claims that truth and morality are relative, including the argument that this relativism is self-contradictory.
[31][32] For example, the historian Richard J. Evans argued that if relativism rejects truth, it can legitimize far-right pseudohistory such as Holocaust denial.
[32] Further lines of criticism are that postmodernist discourse is characterized by obscurantism, that the term itself is vaguely defined, and that postmodernism lacks a clear epistemology.
The linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky accused postmodernist intellectuals of failing to meaningfully answer questions such as "what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc.?
"[33] The French psychotherapist and philosopher, Félix Guattari, rejected its theoretical assumptions by arguing that the structuralist and postmodernist visions of the world were not flexible enough to seek explanations in psychological, social, and environmental domains at the same time.