Here, I am suggesting that even though postmodernism comes with potential problems, in that it can give rise to a collapse of values, the insights of modernity and postmodernism are important for enabling critical analysis. — Jack Cummins
Politically, aesthetically and emotionally, no one seems to much like the present time, no one seems to praise the modern and most folk seem afraid of the post-modern and the future. People seem to be going for pre-modernism. — Tom Storm
I usually say "Yeah, back in the good old days when black people couldn't vote and we could beat up gay people. — T Clark
— 180 Proof
:smile:
I do wish I had your way with words and a smidgeon of your knowledge of philosophical isms. — Amity
With many positions on modernity and the individual, can one say they are indifferent? Some philosophers say we are still living in modernity, for some we are in post-modernity, some say we were never modern. — Warren
I have not recovered from the fall. — unenlightened
The alternative is not to abandon reason but to hold to a more modest view of reason and the limits of what it is capable of. — Fooloso4
...a new “religion of Humanity” appeared in the works of the positivist school led by Auguste Comte.... The positivists believed that Humanity had to be substituted definitively for God. Modern individuals who managed to subject nature to their needs now expected to achieve full autonomy, self-sufficiency, and self-determination. They felt entitled to give value to things, and decide what is good and evil without the aid of religion or tradition; this is what Nietzsche once called the “hyperbolic naiveté of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.”
The implications of this shift were far-reaching. “Two centuries after the project of a domination of nature...the project of a rivalry with God appeared.” From that moment on, it dominated the agenda of modernity. Modern individuals could no longer content themselves with dominating nature: they became God’s challengers, believing that there could only be one Sovereign on earth. The result was the appearance of an exclusive, atheistic humanism that went beyond rejecting God to actively seeking to replace him with the new godlike man. As the ultraconservative Joseph de Maistre once put it, “A boundless pride leads them continually to overthrow everything they have not themselves made, and to bring about new creations.” Nothing seemed impossible anymore to modern individuals, armed with the tools of new science, technology, and knowledge that made them capable of experimenting and controlling phenomena.
Roughly speaking:
'Modern' period - commenced with publication of Newton's Principia 1687.
'Post-modern' period - commenced with publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity 1915.
Modernity is characterised by the idea of progress, trust in science, confidence in civilized values, the idea of destiny.
Post-modernity is characterised by nihilism, distrust of meta-narratives, cultural relativism, rejection of universal values, a plurality of competing cultural and social constructs. — Wayfarer
More precisely: reason dispenses with God-of-the-gaps "explanations" and (over)interpretations of such non-explanations (i.e. "mysteries" "visions" "divinations" etc). It's the mathematization of Logos translating Mythos (i.e. asymptotically collapsing the woo-of-the-gaps paths of least mental effort vestiges of the pre-Bronze Age) which has inaugurated modern philosophy. "Meaning" denotes relevance derived from context; the only constant in our civilizational context is accelerando (towards extinction or apotheosis?) so that the future is "the source of meaning", not "the new" or "the latest", but the always not-yet or sublime, temporal singularity of unknown unknowns – unbounded immanence (Spinoza contra-ultra Descartes).The modern conception of reason was somewhat promethean, that man could displace God as the source of meaning. — Wayfarer
"Meaning" denotes relevance derived from context; the only constant in our civilizational context is accelerando (towards extinction or apotheosis?) — 180 Proof
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