A Comparative Study of Modernism and Postmodernism: Philosophical Foundations and Social Significance

Abstract

Postmodernism, as its name suggests, emerged as a reaction against Modernism. Modernism first appeared in embryonic form in the 1860s, coalesced into a recognisable movement around 1910, and is generally held to have run its course by 1939. It championed reason, empirical inquiry, scientific progress, logical clarity, technological advancement, and sweeping cultural change, and it dominated literary and philosophical discourse across the first half of the twentieth century. Postmodernism, which began to take shape in the decades following the Second World War, also invoked reason and logic, but denied that any single, universal, absolute truth could be established; it held instead that human nature and human knowledge are shaped by the particular circumstances, cultures, and power relations within which individuals find themselves. Where Modernism, for all its progressive rhetoric, often reproduced a patriarchal and Eurocentric social order, Postmodernism explicitly sought a more genuine and equitable representation of gender, class, and cultural difference. Modernist writers of the early twentieth century foregrounded reason, reality, and the rational human subject as the proper objects of literary and philosophical attention; Postmodernist thinkers, convinced that no discourse is final or complete, turned instead to the deconstruction of inherited narratives and to an expanded sense of individual liberty against rigid, totalising doctrines. This article examines the differences between Modernism and Postmodernism from a social perspective, asking which movement contributed more meaningfully to human welfare, and it evaluates the positive contributions each movement made to literature, philosophy, and society.

Keywords: Modernism, Postmodernism, Reason, Truth, Social Values, Literary Theory