Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
An Overview
Ideas of the Enlightenment:
A Review
Remember, these are roughly the same as the basic
ideas of humanism
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious,
rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or
differences substantially affect how this self operates.
1. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality,
posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only
objective form.
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful
forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists,
those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased
rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and
not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can
provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most
of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do.
Faith in, and myths of, social Social and cultural pluralism,
and cultural unity, hierarchies of disunity, unclear bases for
social-class and ethnic/national
values, seemingly clear bases social/national/ethnic unity.
for unity.
Modernism vs Postmodernism
Master narrative of progress Skepticism of progress, anti-
through science and technology. technology reactions, neo-
Luddism; new age religions
Sense of unified, centered self;
"individualism," unified identity. Sense of fragmentation and
decentered self; multiple,
conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central
unit of social order: model of the Alternative family units,
middle-class, nuclear family. alternatives to middle-class
marriage model, multiple
identities for couplings and
childraising.
Modernism vs Postmodernism
Hierarchy, order, centralized Subverted order, loss of
control. centralized control, fragmentation.