Modernity – Intellectual Components
This modern thinker said “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”).
Who is René Descartes?
This revolution transformed economies, politics, religion, and everyday life by bringing people into concentrated urban centers.
What is the Industrial Revolution?
Postmodernity rejects the modern belief in this kind of truth.
What is universal truth?
Emotivism says moral statements are really just expressions of this.
What are feelings or preferences?
The main moral problem neither modernity nor postmodernity can fix is this.
What is the human heart (or “sin”)?
Rationalists believed that some truths were this: known by the mind without needing proof.
What is self-evident?
Modern technology has shifted morality from religious norms to this kind of control.
What are legal and technical forms of control?
Derrida argued that meaning is endlessly “deferred,” making this impossible to determine.
What is authorial intent (or “stable meaning”)?
In postmodernism, this “great virtue” is often taken to mean the right not to be offended.
What is tolerance?
Pluralism often leads people toward a psychological disposition favoring this moral view.
What is moral relativism?
Empiricists argued that all knowledge comes from these two sources.
What are experience and the senses?
Modern differentiation means that each part of society—work, home, politics—has its own this.
What is its own ethic?
Foucault believed that all knowledge is actually an expression of this.
What is power?
The internet exemplifies postmodernity by breaking the connection between ideas and creating this kind of experience.
What is fragmentation?
Postmodern tolerance becomes a problem when it replaces this as the ultimate virtue.
What is truth (or “conviction”)?
Both rationalists and empiricists agreed that rejecting this traditional authority was essential for human progress.
What is religious authority?
Pluralism challenges the idea that these kinds of norms can apply to all people everywhere.
What are universal norms (or “universal virtues”)?
Rorty said the important question isn’t “What is true?” but rather “What is ______?”
What is useful?
Traditional religion has declined and been replaced by this mix-and-match personal belief system.
What is “spirituality”?
According to N.T. Wright, this is postmodernity’s divine role with respect to modernity.
What is preaching The Fall to arrogant modernity?
According to modernity, progress in morals and society would eventually make this unnecessary.
What is God (or “religion”)?
Secularization moves religion out of the public realm and into this realm.
What is the private sphere?
According to postmodernism, we cannot step outside our own constructed reality; this idea is known as what?
What is standpoint theory (or standpoint epistemology)?
Modern moral discourse focuses less on character development and more on this type of improvement.
What is self-improvement?
Hollinger says the combination of postmodern intellectual tenets and cultural trends transforms most traditional concepts of this.
What is ethics?