Postmodern Reflections On The Enlightement

In the second half of the 20th century,Postmodernism not only makes the whole Humanities "postmodernized", but also makes the Enlightenment and modernity become "problematic". Then it puts forward a new theme of " postmodern reflections on the Enlightenment ".The complexity of the problem is, regardless of the Enlightenment, or postmodernism, are not monolithic, homogeneous phenomenon, which determines the need of clarifing the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment, postmodernism, and other related terms firstly. This is the first two chapters. Then,in order to get better reflections on "postmodernists’ reflections on the Enlightenment ", we must enter the problem domain of the so-called postmodernist and their specific texts. On the basis of combination of the whole grasp and careful analysis, we get the basic judgments of postmodernists’ reflections on the Enlightenment or postmodernists’ criticism of it. This is the third to the six chapters. Then we find that on the one hand, Lyotard’s, Derrida’s, Foucault’s and Rorty’s understanding of postmodernism and the Enlightenment are not consistent with each other, and their grasp to the problems of the Enlightenment are also very different. Lyotard strive the critiques of the hegemony of meta-narrative, revealing the impossibilities of the traditional mechanism of the Enlightenment from various.However, he did not give up the grand narrative of postmodern style, and he regard Kant as a teacher, continuing to positive reflections on justice, freedom of political discourses. Derrida managed to "deconstruct" the Enlightenment and beyond the Eurocentrism, at the same time, he still insisted on this heritage, and thus started discussion of the new humanities with a "new enlightenment " significance. However, Foucault reexamined Kant’s thesis of the Enlightenment with highly philosophical consciousness, and based on the new understanding of "our own ontology, " he place the Enlightenment on the basis of "critique" and maked it "processed". Rorty is very neat deal with the issue of Enlightenment.He adhered to the Enlightenment’s political project - liberalism, and reject the rationalism of the Enlightenment. All these are quite different from the academic common sense. In order to understand the philosophical meaning of the "Enlightenment " and its contemporary proposition well, we must go back to the 18th century thought "meta-point. " In the seventh chapter, we take Kant’s definition of Aufkl?rung and its opposites as departure, starting to reflections on the Dialectic of Enlightenments - the Counter-Enlightenments.In the final, the dissertation emphasises that there are many tensions in " postmodern reflections on the Enlightenment ", at the same time, it outlines the basic trend of the "post-Enlightenment culture", pointing out that the Enlightenment as a process rather than the Ausgang or conclusions of dogmas.