Argument, in any full sense of the word, needs resources and assumptions that postmodernism does not provide. Postmodernism is not a phenomenon that emerged ‘after modernism,’ as it were, to replace it; postmodernism is just an ultimate expression of the nihilistic tendencies of modernism, tendencies which were present from its beginning and have continued to the present. A radical critique of modernism undercuts postmodernism as well and clears the way for a revival of realist foundations for argument and rhetoric.