Bravo. This is a good read. But I am not sure you have fully captured the critical differences between modern and postmodern thought. You say:
"As the Postmodern age emerged in the 1960s, however, people had enough. Postmodernity was not about fulfilling utopian visions. It was about justice and about equality."
I am not so sure about that. The postmodern vision of "human rights" is every bit as utopian as we saw in the modernist age. One difference, I suppose, is that Marxist at least had a plan to bring about their utopia, while Postmodernists "plan" is simply to destroy existing systems and hierarchies and to see what rises up from the ashes. It is the height of naive to believe that what rises from the ashes will be better than what they are replacing. So no, I am afraid postmoderns are no less naive and no less utopian than moderns.
The primary differences are, as you suggest, nihilism and relativism. But another even more important difference you left out is the postmodern rejection of the modern notion of freedom. Moderns rejected tradition. Tradition (religion in particular) was perceived as an imposition on our freedom. Knowledge, in particular scientific knowledge, was believed to hold the keys to human freedom. Universal education was the project that would free us from the bondage of superstition and ignorance and oppression. Postmoderns reject this. To postmoderns, objective knowledge itself is a tool of oppression. Objective knowledge is part of the power structure, as to is language. Hence, the postmodern's obsession with language.
Freedom, to the postmodern, is a world in which decisions can be made free from external influences, a world where there are neither good nor bad decisions. In this postmodern utopia, all decisions are, so long as they are made with absolute autonomy (including objective reality), equally good. This is the source of postmodernity's nihilism.
Bravo. This is a good read. But I am not sure you have fully captured the critical differences between modern and postmodern thought. You say:
"As the Postmodern age emerged in the 1960s, however, people had enough. Postmodernity was not about fulfilling utopian visions. It was about justice and about equality."
I am not so sure about that. The postmodern vision of "human rights" is every bit as utopian as we saw in the modernist age. One difference, I suppose, is that Marxist at least had a plan to bring about their utopia, while Postmodernists "plan" is simply to destroy existing systems and hierarchies and to see what rises up from the ashes. It is the height of naive to believe that what rises from the ashes will be better than what they are replacing. So no, I am afraid postmoderns are no less naive and no less utopian than moderns.
The primary differences are, as you suggest, nihilism and relativism. But another even more important difference you left out is the postmodern rejection of the modern notion of freedom. Moderns rejected tradition. Tradition (religion in particular) was perceived as an imposition on our freedom. Knowledge, in particular scientific knowledge, was believed to hold the keys to human freedom. Universal education was the project that would free us from the bondage of superstition and ignorance and oppression. Postmoderns reject this. To postmoderns, objective knowledge itself is a tool of oppression. Objective knowledge is part of the power structure, as to is language. Hence, the postmodern's obsession with language.
Freedom, to the postmodern, is a world in which decisions can be made free from external influences, a world where there are neither good nor bad decisions. In this postmodern utopia, all decisions are, so long as they are made with absolute autonomy (including objective reality), equally good. This is the source of postmodernity's nihilism.
Please keep up the great work.