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Pablo Valverde Ávila ID10100432

Too many philosophical and cultural movements have taken place along the history. At the end of the 19th century, it emerged a new one which was named modernism. This movement broke with the conservative and old-fashion values of realism which were used as a link by the subsequent movement namedPostmodernism. In this essay I am going to make a critical analysis of this cultural, political, philosophical and artistic movement. We will see what relations exist between Postmodernism and some factors such as enlightenment or simulacra. Postmodernism found its best representative in some French writers such as Lyotard or Baudrillard, who related it to social, philosophical and artisticquestions.

First of all, we should make clear what we understood as postmodernism. It is not even clear for most of people. Some authors think Postmodernism started at the middle of 20th Century but another authors disagree. I´ve found a quote which maybe could help: “Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s.Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins” (Dr. Klages, Mary “Postmodernism”) However, what we do can takefor sure is that this period came up after modernism. Nevertheless, the uncertainty is so deep that many authors prefer to call Postmodernism as Liquid modernity or High Modernity.

In order to get a better comprehension of modernism, some key words related to it have to be explained. I have found these key words in a power point from the course and I would like to focus most of my essay onthem. Words are the following;

✓ Enlightenment

✓ Modernity

✓ History

✓ Knowledge

✓ Simulacra

Now let´s start from the beginning at the top of the list; the basic ideas of the Enlightenment are almost the same as on humanism. Taking a look to one article of Jane Flax (page 41) we could enumerate the next properties of enlightenment:

1) There is a coherentexisting being: This being is conscious, autonomous, and universal guiding himself by reason.

2) This being knows itself and also the world through rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning.

3) “Science” is the mode of knowing produced by the objective and rational being, which provides universal truths about the world surrounding him.

4) All knowledge coming from scienceis "truth".

5) This truth is our way toward evolution and perfection.

6) Only reason can establish what is true and what is not.

7) Truth has to be corresponded by the right and the good. So no disputes between rightness and truth can occur.

8) Authority of science is so unarguable because of its objectivity and neutrality.

9) Reason should be expressed by means of rationallanguage. The connection between a reality and the word used to name it must be clear.

The second key word is Modernity. I have found a simple but useful definition of this term: “Modernity is simply the sense or the idea that the present is discontinuous with the past, which through a process of social and cultural change (either through improvement, that is, progress, or through decline) lifein the present is fundamentally different from life in the past. This sense or idea as a world view contrasts with what I will call tradition, which is simply the sense that the present is continuous with the past, that the present in some way repeats the forms, behavior, and events of the past” (Hooker, Modernity and crisis of modernity)

But beyond a personal opinion like that,...