Modernism and Postmodernism

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Modernism andPostmodernism

• Nicolò Zentilin

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• Postmodernism
• is hard to define, it is a complicated term.
• is a concept that apperas in a wide variety of
  discipliners or areas of study.
• is difficult to be located temporally or
  historically.
• to start thinking about postmodernism is easier
  to think about modernism.
• there is nothing above us there is no
  trascendent reality.
• people are finite and limited in a particular
  space and time.
• there is no way to have access to objective
  truth.
• there is no possibility to really know anything.
• society is based on pluralism and it is full of
  prejudices.
• the concept of character is a myth, an illusion
  created to reinforce the ideology of capitalism.

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Modernism

• is the movement from which postmodernism seems to
  emerge.
• lasted from 1900 to 1930.
• is away from the apparent objectivity provided by
  omiscient third person narrator.
• has rejected the need of gods existence.
• belives in some universal ethical standards.
• reason is sufficient to understand the nature of
  life and man.
• Poetry seems more documentary and prose seems
  more poetic.

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Sameness between modernism and postmodernism

• Rejecting boundaries between high and low form of
  art culture is only one.
• Rejecting rigid genre distinctions.
• Reflexivity and self consciousness.

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Differences between modernism and postmodernism

• Postmodernism
• reason can not lead through knowledge and truth.
• knowledge is interpreted as a kind of colonialism
  to attack other people.
• it celebrates the idea of fragmentation,
  incoherence, chaos and disorder.
• Modernism
• reason is sufficient to know the truth.
• knowledge is important to be knowledgeable in
  general and to become an educated person.
• it celebrates the idea of unity, coherence,
  rationality and order out of chaos.

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Modernism and Modernity

• Modernism generally refers to the broad aesthetic
  movements of the twentieth century.
• Modernity refers to a set of philosophycal,
  political and ethical ideas which provide the
  basic for the aesthetic aspect of modernism.
  Modernity is older than modernism.

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The basic ideas of the Enlightenment

• The basic ideas of Enlightment are similar to the
  ones of Modernism.
• There is a stable knowable self that is
  conscious, rational and autonomous.
• Reason is the highest form of mental functioning.
• The mode of knowing produced by the objective
  rational self is science.
• The knowledge produced by science is truth and is
  eternal.
• All human istitutions and practices can be
  analyzed by science.
• Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true.
• In a world governed by reason the true will
  always be the same as the good and right.
• Language must be rational and trasparent.