I saw this quote and I wondered what people thought about it - esp. the "New World Order" part and what that means for us today.
As we have seen, the Enlightenment pictured the human race as engaged in an effort towards universal moral and intellectual self-realization. It was believed that reason allowed access to truth, and knowledge of the truth would better mankind. These tenets were fundamental to the notion of Modernism, the goal of which was the creation of a new world order.
http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/modpolitics.htmlThis was a general description from the same site about Deconstructive postmodernism and Constructive postmodernism. I think that some of the arguments around here are based on Deconstructive postmodernism and some based on Constructive postmodernism (Whether people called it that or not). I tend to agree with the Constructive postmodernist ideas - in that I think that there are some liberal ideas worth saving and expounding upon - combined with feminism and ecological concerns, for instance.
Deconstructive postmodernism is seen perhaps as anti-modern in that it seems to destroy or eliminate the ingredients that are believed necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth. (This point of view, though, that we need a worldview comprised of notions of God, self, purpose, etc, is itself a modernist one.)
Deconstructive postmodern thought is seen by some as nihilistic, (i.e. the view that all values are baseless, that nothing is knowable or can be communicated, and that life itself is meaningless).
Constructive postmodernism does not reject Modernism, but seeks to revise its premises and traditional concepts. Like deconstructive postmodernism, it attempts to erase all boundaries, to undermine legitimacy, and to dislodge the logic of the modernist state. Constructive postmodernism claims to offer a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such, but only that scientific approach in which only the data of the modern natural sciences are allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.
Constructive postmodernism desires a return to premodern notions of divinely wrought reality, of cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature. It also wishes to include an acceptance of nonsensory perception.
Constructive postmodernism seeks to recover truths and values from various forms of premodern thought and practice. Constructive postmodernism wants to replace modernism and modernity, which it sees as threatening the very survival of life on the planet.
http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/modpostmod.html(Some of us have been discussing Postmodernism over in GD.)