Modernity & Post-Modernism

Modernity & Post-
Modernism:
Structuralism &
Deconstruction
Modernity
• The Enlightenment (Age of Reason 18th Century)
• Is synonymous with modernity (from the Latin word
modo, meaning "just now").
• Beginning in 1492, coincident with Columbus's
journeys to the Americas, and its overall spirit lasting
until the middle of the twentieth century.
Two Prominent Features
1. a belief that reason is humankind's best guide
to life
2. that science, above all other human endeavors,
could lead humanity to a new promised land.
Rene Descartes (1596-
1650)
• a French philosopher, scientist, and
mathematician
• declares that the only thing one cannot
doubt is one's own existence
• Certainty and knowledge begin with the
self.
• the rational essence freed from
superstition, human passions, and one's
often irrational imagination allows
humankind to discover truth about the
physical world.
Francis Bacon (1561-
1626)
• scientific method has become part of
everyone's elementary and high school
education.
• It is through experimentation, conducting
experiments, making inductive
generalizations, and verifying the results
that one can discover truths about the
physical world.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
• an English mathematician, astronomer,

theologian, author and physicist
• the physical world is no longer a mystery
but a mechanism that operates according
to a system of laws that can be
understood by any thinking, rational
human being who is willing to apply the
principles of the scientific method to the
physical universe.
• Of all Enlightenment thinkers, Benjamin Franklin
(1706-1790) may best exemplify the characteristics of
modernity.
• is the archetypal modern philosopher-scientist.
• Believing in the power and strength of the individual
mind, he delighted in the natural world and decided
early in life to know all possible aspects of his
universe.
• Similar to Descartes, Franklin does not abandon
religion and replace it with science.
• For Franklin and other enlightened minds, truth is to
be discovered scientifically, not through the unruly
and passionate imagination or through one's feelings
or intuition.
• What is to be known and discovered via the scientific
method is reality: the physical world.
Modernity’s Core CharaCteristiCs
• The concept of the self is a conscious, rational,
knowable entity.
• Reality can be studied, analyzed, and known.
• Objective, rational truth can be discovered
through science.
• The methodology of science can and does lead
to ascertaining truth.
• The yardstick for measuring truth is reason.
• Truth is demonstrable .
• Progress and optimism are the natural results of
valuing science and rationality .
• Language is referential, representing the
perceivable world.
Post-Structuralism/Post-
Modernism
• Meaning "after modernity" or "just after now," from
its Latin root meaning "just now.“
• modernity's understanding of reality is challenged and
turned on its head by postmodernism.
• For Derrida and other postmodernists, there is no
such thing as objective reality.
• all definitions and depictions of truth are
subjective, simply creations of human minds.
• Truth itself is relative, depending on the nature
and variety of cultural and social influences in
one's life.
The Map
The Collage
Further More…
• many truths exist, not the truth.
• reject modernity's representation of discourse (the
map) and replace it with a collage.
• Unlike the fixed, objective nature of a map, a collage's
meaning is always changing.
• Each person shapes his or her own concepts of reality.
PostModernisM’s Core
Characteristics
• A skepticism or rejection of grand
metanarratives to explain reality
• The concept of the self as ever-changing
• No objective reality, but many subjective
interpretations
• Truth as subjective and perspectival, dependent
on cultural, social, and personal influences
• No "one correct" concept of ultimate reality
• No metatheory to explain texts or reality
• No "one correct" interpretation of a text

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Modernity & Post-

• an English mathematician, astronomer,

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