Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
Post-modernism will NOT bring an end to modernity. There. I said it. Post-modernity is a necessary critique that has come out of modernity, but I believe what will result will be some form of neo-modernity: material, progressive, humanistic, but with some heavily tempered edges that recognize the allusive nature of certainty, cause and effect, the spiritual and the divine.
Talking from a saturated religious perspective this could mean some very positive developments that I would welcome: most noteably, the continuous blur that should occur between sociological/anthropological categories of religion/culture. "Getting along" could come to dominate the next stage in our societal evolution, and this will likely mean a whole reshaping of what religion is and how it ought to function.
...Has this become another thread yet?
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OK. We can do it here!
If by "modernity" you mean that de-centering of exterior authority and blurring of boundaries that you refer to, then I guess I agree. You can't put the genie back into the bottle, at least not in Philosophy.
But in spite of a lot of activity on the intellectual front, isn't it true that the era of modernity hasn't really changed much in terms of the total, abject
real--that is, authority may be partial and contingent, but it still works, still dominates, and still has the force of tradition behind it even if that tradition has been undermined and questioned by hippies in elbow patches since the 1950s? There's a reason that the period we refer to as "postmodernism" is referred to by post-Frankfurt marxists as "late capitalism"--because the same era that has brought us pluralism, relativism, uncertainties about identity, also brought with it a disturbing political nihilism and apathy along with a newly ubiquitous mass culture which is more or less the vehicle for a conformist ideology that rebuilds the authority that postmodernism sought to erase.
Given that, what hope is there for a future of blurred boundaries and a more socially responsible religion/critique? I guess I'm not as optimistic.