Modernity and postmodernity: theoretical concepts and distinctions

¶ … dialectic of the Enlightenment in terms of the values of truth, progress and liberation. We will tangentially see how these concepts are linked to modernity and post modernity. Also, we will see what the two alternatives to dealing with the demise of the Enlightenment as Ferraris and Taraboletti Segre argue. The author will also refer to Lyotard and Habermas's stance on the issue. We will answer the question of why one can not separate the concerns of modernity and postmodernity from each other. We will see how the two discourses inform each other in terms of above subjects.

The dialectic of the Enlightenment has almost always been known in terms of the values of truth, progress and liberation. Rather than having to look upon it as having died Ferraris and Taraboletti Segre argue that by becoming a philosophical issue, it is now beyond being localized to one discipline. The modern and postmodern alternatives continue the dialogue regarding truth, progress and liberation. They never really ended with the eclipse of the enlightenment. They simply continue on in new form (Ferraris and Taraboletti 1988 pp. 12-13).

As will see further on below in our second source, Lyotard and Habermas differ greatly on how this is to be looked and discussed. Lyotard sees that there is a need for an overarching dialogue that does not have a predetermined end with regard to modernism and postmodernism because the "metahistorical" arguments have died with modernism. Postmodernism is a new entity and therefore needs a new dialogue to explain it (ibid, 13-15). Habermas sees post modernism as a deconstruction of postmodernism (ibid. p. 17). Just as the ideals of the enlightenment did not really die with it, so its brainchild modernism is just a continuation of a stream of thought that has form and can be described and studied. We do not have to "transcend" it to understand it.

Lyotard critiques used to normal judgments to ground all discourse in a philosophy of universal history. Our preoccupation with what he calls metanarratives has to be replaced by a conception of political discourse as a dual of local narratives and language games and not toward "final" resolutions, but a continuing dialogue. But toward creative and novel. Habermas, wishes to preserve his and other scholars epistemological and modernist search for a universal and impartial theory of justice. He calls Lyotard an irrationalist and conservative, betraying an intellectual poverty of the resources needed to carry out a systematic critique of present practices and in the detection in ideological distortions in discourse. Perhaps this is why one can not separate the concerns of modernity and postmodernity from each other. It is a bit like the chicken and the egg. Both perspectives have validity and it is hard to say other is wrong. Both have seeming beginnings and ends that look similar. The two discourses form each other because they are part of a dialectical paradigm that can not be separated. Like permanently joined Siamese twins, they die without each other. The paradigm can not be "localized" to one discipline. Instead, it is one that spans disciplines (Fairfield 994)