Neomodernism
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Neomodernism is a term that has sporadically been used to describe a philosophical position based on modernism but addressing the critique of modernism by postmodernism. It is currently associated with the work of Ágnes Heller and Carlos Escudé, and is strongly rooted in the criticisms which Habermas has levelled at postmodern philosophy, namely that universalism and critical thinking are the two essential elements of human rights and that human rights create a superiority of some cultures over others. That is, that equality and relativism are "mutually contradictory".
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[edit] History
Soon after the modern movement, reactions formed based in the philosophies of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The reaction took on the name of Existentialism, and was characterized by the phrase "existence precedes essence." Existentialism gave rise to postmodernism, embracing Nietzsche's philosophy of the will to power over the will to truth, which is the standing characteristic of modernism. Neo-modernists maintain that truth still exists in a universal form and directly refute existentialist and postmodern viewpoints that the essence of an existent is formed in the observers bias. Neo-modernists detest postmodernity's viewpoint on linguistics. Instead, stating that a text written in simple terms can only have the meaning that the author intended, rather than finding that even the most straight-forward text can have the multiple interpretations.
[edit] Individuals specifically associated with neo-modernism
[edit] Ágnes Heller and Moral Anthropology
Ágnes Heller's work is associated with Moral Anthropology and "probing modernity's destiny for a non-predatory humanism that combines the existential wisdom of ancient theory with modern values."
Neomodernism accepts some aspects of postmodernism's critique of modernism, notably that modernism elevated the world view of dominant groups to the status of objective fact, thereby failing to express the viewpoint of "subaltern groups", such a women and ethnic minorities.
However, in her view, neomodernism rejects postmodernism as:
- unscientific — the ability of science to generate useful knowledge cannot be waved away as "scientism".
- journalism — as not giving any explanation as to how or why things happen.
- local — as being unable to recognise patterns that occur across time or location.
- unverified — as lacking any validation process, and therefore proceeding by fad and hierarchy.
(See also Sokal Affair, Critical Theory, Postmodernity)
[edit] Victor Grauer
In 1982 Victor Grauer attacked "the cult of the new", and proposed that there had arisen a "neo-modern" movement in the arts which was based on deep formal rigor, rather than on "the explosion of pluralism". His argument was that post-modernism was exclusively a negative attack on modernism, and had no future separate from modernism proper, a point of view which is held by many scholars of modernism.
[edit] Richard Dawkins
In 1998, Richard Dawkins wrote a book review entitled Postmodernism Disrobed. In the review of Intellectual Impostures (by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont) he attempts to discredit postmodernist texts by characterizing them as meaningless jumbles of words, purposefully designed to lack any content whatsoever. As an author himself, he cannot accept that his works could have any other interpretation than he intended.
[edit] Other citations
The term has been cited in the law as applying to an approach which granted economic rights to indigenous peoples, but without restricting them to their traditional economic activities. [1]
