Postmodernism as a philosophy and principle of worldview. The influence of postmodernism on philosophy

Concept "postmodern" used to refer to a wide range of phenomena and processes in culture and art, morality and politics that arose at the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century. Literally, the word “postmodern” means something that comes after modernity. At the same time, “modern” is used here in the traditional sense for European philosophy, that is, as a complex of ideas characteristic of the New Age. Thus, post-modernity is a modern era in world culture, which is designed to complete the centuries-old era of the New Time.

Under postmodernism usually understood a certain philosophical program that offers a theoretical justification for new processes and phenomena in culture. How philosophical movement postmodernism is heterogeneous and represents more of a style of thinking than a strict scientific direction. Moreover, the representatives of postmodernism themselves distance themselves from strict academic science, identifying themselves with strict academic science, identifying their philosophy with literary analysis or even works of art.

Western academic philosophy has a negative attitude towards postmodernism. A number of publications do not publish postmodernist articles, and most of today's postmodernists work in literary studies departments, since philosophy departments deny them places.

The philosophy of postmodernism sharply contrasts itself with the dominant philosophical and scientific tradition, criticizing the traditional concepts of structure and center, subject and object, meaning and meaning. The picture of the world proposed by postmodernists lacks integrity, completeness, and coherence, but, in their opinion, it is precisely this picture that most accurately reflects the changing and unstable reality.

Postmodernism was originally a critique of structuralism, a movement focused on the analysis of the formal structure of social and cultural phenomena. According to structuralists, the meaning of any sign (a word in a language, a custom in a culture) depends not on a person or on objects in the real world, but on the connections of this sign with other signs. In this case, the meaning is revealed in the opposition of one sign to another. For example, culture in structuralism is analyzed as a system of stable relationships that manifest themselves in a series of binary oppositions (life-death, war-peace, hunting-farming, etc.). The limitations and formalism of this approach led to sharp criticism of structuralism, and later of the very concept of “structure”. Structuralism in philosophy is being replaced poststructuralism who became theoretical basis for the ideas of postmodernism

In its most obvious form, criticism of structuralism manifested itself in the theory of deconstruction of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004).

J. Derrida: Deconstruction

Modern thinking is caught in dogmatic frameworks and stereotypes of metaphysical thinking. The concepts, categories, and methods that we use are strictly defined by tradition and limit the development of thought. Even those who try to fight dogmatism unconsciously use stereotypes inherited from the past in their language. Deconstruction is a complex process aimed at overcoming such stereotypes. According to Derrida, there is nothing rigidly fixed in the world; everything can be deconstructed, i.e. interpret in a new way, show the inconsistency and instability of what seemed to be the truth. No text has a rigid structure and a single method of reading: everyone can read it in their own way, in their own context. Anything new can arise only in such a reading, free from the pressure of authority and traditional logic of thinking.

Derrida in his works opposed logocentrism– the idea that in reality everything is subject to strict logical laws, and existence contains a certain “truth” that philosophy can reveal. In fact, the desire to explain everything using flat determinism only limits and impoverishes our understanding of the world.

Another major postmodernist - Michel Foucault – wrote about speech practices that dominate a person. By them he understood a set of texts, sets of strict terms, concepts characteristic of some sphere of human life, especially science. The method of organizing these practices - a system of rules, regulations, prohibitions - Foucault called discourse.

M. Foucault: Knowledge and power

Any scientific discourse is based on the pursuit of knowledge: it offers a person a set of tools for searching for truth. However, since any discourse orders and structures reality, it thereby adjusts it to its ideas and puts it into rigid schemes. Consequently, discourse, including scientific discourse, is violence, a form of control over human consciousness and behavior. Violence and strict control are a manifestation of power over a person. Therefore, knowledge is an expression of power, not truth. It does not lead us to the truth, but simply makes us believe that this or that statement is the truth. Power is not exercised by anyone in particular: it is impersonal and “diffused” in the system of language used and texts of science. All “scientific disciplines” are ideological instruments.

One of the powerful ideological tools, according to Foucault, is the idea of ​​the subject. In fact, the subject is an illusion. A person’s consciousness is shaped by culture: everything he can say is imposed by his parents, environment, television, science, etc. A person is less and less independent and more and more dependent on different discourses. In modern times we can talk about subject's death.

This idea is developed by the French literary critic and philosopher Roland Barthes (1915-1980) in concept death of the author.

There is no authorship. Modern man is an instrument through which various speech practices, imposed on him from birth, manifest themselves. All he has is a ready-made dictionary of other people's words, phrases, and statements. All he can do is simply mix up what someone has already said before. It is no longer possible to say anything new: any text is woven from quotes. Therefore, it is not the author who speaks in a work, but the language itself. And he says, perhaps, something that the writer could not even suspect.

Any text is woven from quotes and references: they all redirect to other texts, those to the next ones, and so on ad infinitum. The world in postmodernism is like a library, where each book quotes another, or rather, like a computer hypertext, with an extensive system of references to other texts. This idea of ​​reality is developed in detail in the concept Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007).

J. Baudrillard: Theory of simulacra

Baudrillard called a simulacrum (from the Latin simulacrum - image, likeness) “an image that copies something that never existed.” In the early stages of human development, each word referred to a specific object: stick, stone, tree, etc. Most modern concepts does not have a strict substantive meaning. For example, to explain the word “patriotism”, we will not point to a specific subject, but say that it is “love of country.” However, love also does not refer to a specific object. This is, say, a “striving for unity with another,” and both “striving” and “unity” again do not refer us to the real world. They refer us to other similar concepts. The concepts and images that define our lives do not mean anything real. These are simulacra that have the appearance of something that never existed. They refer us to each other, not to real things.

According to Baudrillard, we do not buy things, but their images (“brands” as signs of prestige imposed by advertising); we uncritically believe the images constructed by television; the words we use are empty.

Reality in the postmodern world is being replaced hyperreality – an illusory world of models and copies, which does not rely on anything other than itself, and which, nevertheless, is perceived by us much more real than true reality.

Jean Baudrillard believed that the media do not reflect reality, but create it. In “There Was No Gulf War,” he wrote that the 1991 Iraq War was “virtual,” constructed by the press and television.

The art of the 20th century comes to the realization of the emptiness and illusory nature of the images around us and to the understanding that everything has once been said. At this time, realism, which tried to depict reality as accurately as possible, was replaced by modernism. By experimenting in search of new means and destroying old dogmas, modernism comes to complete emptiness, which can no longer be denied or destroyed.

Modernism initially distorts reality (in the works of cubists, surrealists, etc.). The extreme degree of distortion, which has almost nothing to do with reality, is presented, for example, in “Black Square” by Kazimir Malevich. In the 1960s Art is completely rejected, replaced by conceptual constructs.” So, Damien Hirst displays a dead sheep in an aquarium. Dmitry Prigov makes paper coffins from sheets of his poems and solemnly buries them unread. “Symphonies of silence” and poems without words appear.

According to the Italian philosopher and writer Umberto Eco (b.1932), It was precisely this dead end to which art had come that led to the emergence of a new postmodern era.

U. Eco: Postmodern irony

Eco wrote that “the limit comes when the avant-garde (modernism) has nowhere to go further. Postmodernism is a response to modernism: since the past cannot be destroyed, because its destruction leads to muteness, it needs to be rethought, ironically, without naivety.” Postmodernism, thus, refuses to destroy reality (especially since it is already destroyed), and begins to ironically rethink everything that was said before. The art of postmodernism becomes a set of quotes and references to the past, a mixture of high and low genres, and in the visual arts - a collage of various famous images, paintings, photographs. Art is ironic and easy game meanings and meanings, a mixture of styles and genres. Everything that was once taken seriously - sublime love and pathetic poetry, patriotism and ideas for the liberation of all oppressed, is now perceived with a smile - as naive illusions and beautiful-hearted utopias.

French postmodern theorist Jean Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) wrote that “to simplify as much as possible, postmodernism refers to a distrust of meta-narratives.”

J.F. Lyotard: The Decline of Metanarrations

Lyotard called metanarratives or (metanarrations) any universal systems of knowledge with the help of which people try to explain the world. These include religion, science, art, history, etc. Lyotard considered the most influential meta-narratives of the modern era to be ideas about social progress, the all-conquering role of science, etc. Postmodernism is the time of decline of meta-narratives. Faith in universal principles has been lost: modernity is an eclectic connection of small, local, heterogeneous ideas and processes. Modernity is an era not of a single style, but of a mixture of different lifestyles (for example, in Tokyo a person can listen to reggae, wear French clothes, go to McDonald's in the morning and a traditional restaurant in the evening, etc.). The decline of metanarrations is the loss of totalitarian ideological integrity and the recognition of the possibility of the existence of opposing, heterogeneous opinions and truths.

The American philosopher R. Rorty believes that one of such meta-narratives is philosophy, or more precisely the traditional theory of knowledge, aimed at searching for truth. Rorty writes that philosophy needs therapy: it needs to be cured of claims to truth, since these claims are meaningless and harmful. It should move away from being scientific and become more like literary criticism or even fiction. The purpose of philosophy is not to search for truth and foundations, but to maintain conversation and communication between different people.

R. Rorty: Chance, irony, solidarity

In traditional philosophy, based on the ideal of scientific truth, systematicity and theory of knowledge, Rorty sees the danger of social fundamentalism and authoritarianism. He contrasts it with his theory, where truth is understood as usefulness and any text is interpreted from the point of view of the needs of the individual and solidarity society. The highest ideological truths are replaced by free communication and the priority of “common interest” - social control - sympathy and trust, regularity - by chance. A person must irony to realize the illusory and limited nature of any - other people's and one's own - beliefs and therefore be open to any opinions, tolerant of any otherness and foreignness. For Rorty, the life of society is eternal game and constant openness to the other, allowing one to escape from any “hardening” of one of the ideas and from its transformation into a philosophical truth or ideological slogan. Unlike other postmodernists, Rorty does not criticize modern bourgeois society, because he believes that it is already quite free and tolerant: we should move further in the same direction, encouraging communication between different people and tolerance of other people's points of view.

Postmodern philosophy is a vivid manifestation of the traditions of irrationalism in world philosophical thought. It takes the ideas of “philosophy of life,” Freudianism, and existentialism to their logical extremes and criticizes the ideas of reason, truth, science, and morality that are fundamental to traditional thought.

Academic philosophy rejects the constructions of postmodernists: it considers them too chaotic, vague, incomprehensible and unscientific. However, it must be admitted that postmodernism, in a number of its provisions, was able to most accurately describe the changing and fickle world of modernity with its eclecticism, pluralism and distrust of any global projects of politicians and scientists.

Scientific and technological progress of the twentieth century affected the economic space and social sphere. The world community was unable to resist the technological breakthrough; the result was the emergence of postmodernism and the transformation of the humanities. Postmodernism expresses the problem of the modern world - the opposition to various ways of perceiving reality and life forms. The concept was first used by the French thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard in the late seventies. In the emerging style, the service sector, science, and education take first place; big business professional scientists. Information is of greatest importance. For young people New Age marked by the emergence of subcultures. Among them, the hippie is a striking example of the transformation of human thinking in the second half of the twentieth century. Having received enormous development in culture, postmodernism in philosophy manifested itself in a change in the purpose of science, a fundamental restructuring of the movement.

Postmodern model of philosophy

The emergence of postmodernity dates back to the fifties of the twentieth century, when the manifestation of post-industrialization began in various countries of the world - Italy, the USA, Japan, but for the first time the movement acquired a conscious, generally accepted form after the publication of the book “The State of Postmodernity” by Lyotard in the late seventies. The publication was criticized, it gained adherents and public recognition.

Already in the eighties, a trend emerged that spread throughout the world, became fashionable, and triumphantly in demand. It was difficult at that time not to become his representative.

Postmodern philosophy is characterized by the following principles - professional relevance, financial success, which must be achieved as early as possible. For their sake, adherents were ready to make sacrifices. The rules of morality ceased to have value, spirituality lost its significance. Clients and consumers have become important. The intelligentsia clung to the common people (an amorphous mass), and in its place came the intellectuals of one day.

Fashion and advertising are considered fundamental aspects of culture. Fashion replaces religion, mythology, science, philosophy, evaluates by appearance, effectiveness, and sets boundaries. What does not correspond to fashion has no possibility of existence. The disadvantages of the latter are considered to be fleetingness and transience. Thanks to them, the philosophy of postmodernism is unstable and unsteady.

Politics occupies a special place in the breakthrough current. An integral part of postmodernism is theatricalization. In all spheres of life, she plays a key role, exhibiting social processes in the form of a bright staged show, performance. Politics is no exception - serious activism gives way to theatrical spectacle, which acts as a place of emotional release for society. It is devoid of depth, the search for truth, and therefore does not lead to revolutions. It's no longer about life important issues, being. The central role of the gaming direction does not decrease, on the contrary, it increases, as it exposes society to emotional excitement. Politics becomes the religion of progressive modernism.

New Age Philosophy

The philosophy of postmodernism is ambiguous, superficial, and comes down to the denial of the goal as such. The goal loses its logical purpose, as well as moral standards. No theory of the knowledge of existence has greater significance than another. The world, as modernists believed, is multipolar, fragmented, without a core. There are no connections between the fragments. Only aesthetics are important. Old values ​​are becoming obsolete. New ones do not appear, since the concept of truth is erased. The personality acquires unlimited freedom, which gives rise to chaos. Reason degenerates into reason, which is guided by technology. Humanism is replaced by the barbarism of the “technical desert”.

Postmodern philosophers personify intellectuals as masterminds of teaching because they have undergone radical change. Under modernity, intellectuals dominated in all spheres; under postmodernism, they lost this privilege. Intellectuals no longer act as generators of ideas, performing a more mundane function - career. A person is no longer ascetic, does not think about the future, lives one day at a time. The postmodern worldview lacks a core, which was mythology in ancient times, religion in the Middle Ages, and science and philosophy in the new society. Postmodernism simplified the meaning of the latter and did not offer any alternative. This made it difficult for a person to navigate and assert himself.

Pluralism versus monism

Pluralism denotes plurality and is the opposite of monism. If monism implies the superiority of the whole over the particular, then pluralism implies the dominance of the individual, the individual. This contributes to the development of personality and individual thinking. The term allows for the simultaneous existence of fundamentally opposite principles, mutually exclusive opinions. He deviates from the very concept of philosophy and plays the role of a regulator of the relationships of social life.

The principle of pluralism rejects the same truth for everyone and proposes a model of equality.

Interest in multipolarity of opinions arose for a reason. Pluralism is a reflection of our socio-cultural reality: the study of the phenomenal before the study of the foundations of the universe.

The comparison of monism to pluralism is characterized by the difference in ontological and epistemological approaches. Monism is based on the unity of the human mind - people are equal because they are reasonable. Metaphysical monism declares that the world is one, but unity is not predetermined by the conditions of existence, but is created anew by subsequent generations of philosophers. They will have to rethink the theory without going beyond the boundaries of real space and time.

Dominant ideas of the New Age

To understand the main ideas of the New Age, it is necessary to compare postmodernism with the modernity that preceded it. Modernists were based on the acceptance of antiquity, maintaining the relationship of the past with the present. Postmodernism is a revolutionary, aggressive direction. Its peculiarity is the promotion of a break with traditions and classics. Thinkers have proposed a complete refusal to apply scientific truth as a last resort. The only true source of interpretation is the absence of immutable truths.

Postmodernism in philosophy and culture

The end of the 20th century was marked by this trend in all industries creative activity like postmodernism. Its formation is associated with the ideas of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, F. Kafka and Z. Freud. Initially, this movement arose in the fine arts in the USA and France. The concept of “postmodernism” does not have an unambiguous definition, but is used as a characteristic of the modern period in the development of culture. This is due to the fact that today this trend has spread to politics, science, and religion. And, of course, there is the philosophy of postmodernism.

Basic ideas of the new era

First, let's compare postmodernism with its predecessor. How does postmodernity differ from modernity? Firstly, modernity, as a movement in art, never criticized antiquity and did not break with its traditions. But postmodernism in philosophy is a revolutionary new approach and an aggressive attitude towards traditions and classics. Philosophers decided to abandon the use of scientific truth in the final instance, replacing it with interpretive reason. Thus, postmodernism in philosophy, as a direction, is characterized by the following fundamental feature - the absence of immutable truths and the only correct criteria for interpretation.

Specific features of postmodern discourse

1. Refusal of the following categories: truth, cause-and-effect relationship, essence, as well as categorical-conceptual hierarchy.
2. The emergence of the concepts of “irony” and “immanent”, which were opposed to the traditional terminology of modernity.
3. Uncertainty is becoming a central concept in the works of modern philosophers. This is another feature of such a trend as postmodernism in philosophy, because before that everyone strived for certainty always and in everything.
4. The desire for the destruction of previous structures of intellectual practice and the creation of a new conceptual apparatus based on creative synthesis.

New century - new approach

This is what postmodernism was. The philosophy of this time is well reflected in the works of R. Barthes, J. Baudrillard, J. Derrida, J. Deleuze, J. Lacan, R. Rorty and M. Foucault. In his writings, Derrida, in particular, raises the question of the insufficiency of the resources of the human brain in the forms in which they were used by representatives classical philosophy. He considers the main drawback of traditional philosophy to be its dogmatism. For example, he turns to Freud's psychoanalysis, paying attention to its central concept - the unconscious. Unlike Freud, Derrida believes that this phenomenon is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. He is not interested in certainty, because the approach to anything can only be subjective. And J. Bordriard goes even further in his works. This scientist creates his own system of history development, which is associated with the evolution of writing. His theory about the repression of death is also interesting. The concept of postmodernism can be perceived both positively and negatively, but the fact remains indisputable that it has brought a lot of interesting things to the development of thought.

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Federal state budget educational institution higher professional education

"ULYANOVSK STATE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY"

separate structural unit

"INSTITUTE OF AVIATION TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT"

Essay

POSTMODERNISM IN PHILOSOPHY

Subject: "Philosophy"

Completed: Lipatov Andrey Yurievich

profile "Production Management"

Supervisor: Professor,

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences Verevichev I.I.

Ulyanovsk 2016

INTRODUCTION

1.2 Modern and postmodern

2.1 Main currents

2.2 Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze

2.3 Philosophy of Jean Baudrillard

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

The age of postmodernism is approximately 30-40 years. It is, first of all, the culture of a post-industrial society. At the same time, it goes beyond culture and manifests itself in all spheres. public life, including economics and politics.

Because of this, society turns out to be not only post-industrial, but also post-modern.

In the 70s of the 20th century, postmodernism was finally recognized as a special phenomenon.

In the 1980s, postmodernism spread throughout the world and became an intellectual fashion. By the 90s, the excitement around postmodernism subsided.

Postmodernism is a multi-valued and dynamically mobile complex of philosophical, scientific-theoretical and emotional-aesthetic ideas depending on the historical, social and national context.

First of all, postmodernism acts as a characteristic of a certain mentality, a specific way of perceiving the world, worldview and assessment of both the cognitive capabilities of a person and his place and role in the world around him.

Postmodernism went through a long phase of primary latent formation, dating back approximately to the end of the Second World War (in a variety of fields of art: literature, music, painting, architecture, etc.), and only from the beginning of the 80s was it recognized as a general aesthetic phenomenon of Western culture and theoretically reflected as a specific phenomenon in philosophy, aesthetics and literary criticism.

The service sector, science and education are acquiring a leading role in a post-industrial society, corporations are giving way to universities, and businessmen are giving way to scientists and professionals.

In the life of society, the production, distribution and consumption of information is becoming increasingly important.

If the allocation of youth to a special social group became a sign of man's entry into the industrial age.

Having expressed itself most clearly in art, postmodernism also exists as a well-defined direction in philosophy. In general, postmodernism appears today as a special spiritual state and frame of mind, as a way of life and culture.

1. MEANING AND BASIC INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF POSTMODERNITY

1.1 Views and interpretations of postmodernity

However, even today in postmodernity much remains unclear. The very fact of its existence. J. Habermas believes that claims about the advent of the postmodern era are unfounded. Some proponents of postmodernism view it as a special spiritual and intellectual state characteristic of the most different eras at their final stage. This opinion is shared by W. Eco, who believes that postmodernism is a transhistorical phenomenon that passes through all or many historical eras. However, others define postmodernism precisely as a special era.

Some opponents of postmodernism see in it the end of history, the beginning of the death of Western society and call for a return to the “pre-modern” state, to the asceticism of the Protestant ethic. At the same time, F. Fukuyama, also perceiving postmodernism as the end of history, finds in this the triumph of the values ​​of Western liberalism on a global scale. For the American sociologist J. Friedman, it represents “an era of increasing disorder of a global nature.” French philosopher J.-F. Likhtar defines it as “an uncontrollable increase in complexity.” Polish sociologist Z. Bauman connects the most significant in postmodernism with crisis social status intelligentsia.

In many concepts, postmodernism is viewed through the prism of the disintegration of a single and homogeneous world into many heterogeneous fragments and parts, between which there is no unifying principle. Postmodernism appears here as the absence of a system, unity, universality and integrity, as a triumph of fragmentation, eclecticism, chaos, emptiness, and so on.

Some representatives and supporters of postmodernism pay attention to its positive sides, often passing off wishful thinking as reality. This approach is partly manifested in E. Giddens, who defines postmodernity as a “system after poverty”, which is characterized by the humanization of technology, multi-level democratic participation and demilitarization. It is premature to talk about these features as actually inherent in postmodernism.

1.2 Modern and postmodern

The era of modernity (New Time) - from the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 20th century. This is a period of radical change in Western history. Modern times became the first era to declare a complete break with the past and a focus on the future. The Western world is choosing an accelerating type of development. All areas of life - socio-political, economic and cultural - are undergoing revolutionary modernization. Special meaning At the same time, there were scientific revolutions in the 18th century - century.

Enlightenment - Enlightenment philosophers are completing the development of a project for a new society. Modernism becomes the dominant ideology. The core of this ideology is the ideals and values ​​of humanism: freedom, equality, justice, reason, progress, etc. The ultimate goal of development was proclaimed to be a “bright future” in which these ideals and values ​​should triumph. Its main meaning and content is human liberation and happiness. The decisive role in this is given to reason and progress. Western man abandoned his former faith and acquired a new faith in reason and progress. He did not wait for divine salvation and the arrival of heavenly paradise, but decided to arrange his destiny himself.

This is the period of classical capitalism and at the same time the period of classical rationalism. In the 17th century is being done scientific revolution, as a result of which the natural science of the New Age appears, combining the evidence and formalism of ancient science, the absolute reason of the Middle Ages and the practicality and empiricism of the Reformation. Physics emerges, starting with Newtonian mechanics - the first natural science theory. Then there is an expansion of mechanics into all of physics, and the experimental method into chemistry, and the development of methods of observation and classification in biology, geology and other descriptive sciences. Science, Reason and Realism become the ideology of the Enlightenment. This happens not only in science and philosophy. This is also observed in art - realism comes to the fore as the end of reflexive traditionalism. We see the same thing in politics, law and morality - the dominance of utilitarianism, pragmatism and empiricism.

Finally, the personality of the New Age appears - autonomous, sovereign, independent of religion and power. A person whose autonomy is guaranteed by law. At the same time, this leads (with the further development of capitalism) to eternal enslavement, “partiality” (as opposed to the universality of Renaissance man), to formal rather than substantive freedom. (Compare Dostoevsky’s statement: “If there is no God, then everything is permitted!”) This spiritual permissiveness within a legal framework leads, in essence, to the degradation of morality; “morality without morality” arises as a formal individual autonomous will or desire. Formalism and modernism appear as a crisis of classical forms and spiritual and practical reflection precisely on the form of these classical forms of spiritual life. Similar things happen: in art, in science, in philosophy and even in religion at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries.

The classical forms of spiritual life, having ceased to correspond to the new subjectivity and new public relations, are beginning to become obsolete. By the middle of the 20th century, it became clear that instead of the expected heaven on earth, the picture of real hell was emerging more and more clearly. Understanding the changes that have taken place in society and culture gave rise to postmodernism. It means, first of all, a deep crisis of modernist consciousness, which is progressive. It also means a loss of faith in reason, progress, and humanism. Postmodernism realized the urgent need to find a new path of development, since the previous path had exhausted itself. As the American philosopher D. Griffin notes, “the continuation of modernism poses a significant threat to the life of mankind on the planet,” so it “can and should go beyond the boundaries of “modernity.”

Postmodernism criticizes the project of modernity, but does not develop or propose any new project. Therefore, postmodernity does not act as antimodernity, since it does not completely deny modernity. He denies his claim to a monopoly, placing him on a par with others. Its methodological principles are pluralism and relativism.

Therefore, postmodernism appears as an extremely complex, heterogeneous and uncertain phenomenon. Postmodernism conducts an investigation and writes an endless indictment of the case of modernity, but it is not going to bring this case to court, much less a final verdict.

2. MAIN TRENDS AND REPRESENTATIVES IN POSTMODERNITY

2.1 Main currents

Postmodernity is involved in all the ruptures of modernity, since it enters into the rights of an inheritance that should not be completed; but canceled and overcome. Postmodernity needs to find a new synthesis on the other side of the opposition between rationalism and irrationalism. It's about about the rediscovery of a lost common spiritual state and human forms of knowledge that go beyond the boundaries of communicative competence and analytical reason.

Today, postmodernism in philosophy and art still seems to be an open arena of clashes between competing forces. However, among them three main trends can still be distinguished:

· Late modern, or trans-avant-garde.

· Postmodernity as anarchism of styles and directions of thinking.

· Postmodernity as postmodern classicism and postmodern essentialism, or neo-Aristotelian synthesis of the doctrine of natural law with liberalism in philosophy.

Late modernity represents postmodernism as an intensification of modernity, as an aesthetics of a future time and a transcendence of the ideal of modernity. The primacy of the new requires modernity, which threatens to become classic, to overcome and surpass itself. The demon of modernization demands that the new, threatening to become old, strengthen the new. Innovations in late modernity have the meaning of new in new. The anarchist version of postmodernity follows the slogan of Paul Feyerabend (“anything goes” - everything is allowed) - with its potential for aesthetic and methodological anarchism and the danger of permissiveness and eclecticism that are characteristic of anarchist pluralism.

Permissiveness is a danger for the artist and the philosopher. In the depths of anarchist postmodernity, the chance of an essential postmodernity arises, which is able to contrast jargon and the aesthetics of allegory with new substantial forms. Postmodern essentialism in art, philosophy and economics perceives from ancient and modern heritage, first of all, what can serve as an example, a standard. He does this by leaving behind modernity with its principle of subjectivity and individual freedom. In contrast to the attempt to conceptualize thinking as a dialectical or discursive process, postmodern essentialism emphasizes the formation of the world and our knowledge by ideas or essences, without which there would be no continuity of the external world, nor of cognition and memory.

The world by nature has forms that transcend the singular configurations of an otherwise random dialectical or discursive process. Understanding the process as a whole, not only external level, without recognition of essential forms, leads to the fact that only what should be criticized with such comprehension is reproduced: the predominance of circulation processes.

Postmodernity is philosophical essentialism, since all the divisions and distinctions achieved in postmodernity, all the bad things that were generated by art, religion, science in isolation from each other - it does not evaluate all this as the last word, but as an incorrect development that must be necessarily overcome, which in life must be countered by a new integration of these three areas of the spiritual. He seeks to avoid two dangers of “pre-modern” classicism: the academicism of exact copying and the danger of social differentiation and correlation with certain social strata, which is characteristic of everything classical.

Since we managed to gain common rights and freedoms in modernity, we are obliged to preserve democratic freedoms, human rights and the rule of law as significant achievements of modernity, and we can strive for a new synthesis of these freedoms and substantial forms of the aesthetic and social. The characteristic features of the era of “New Time” are equally both the deification of reason and despair in it. Irrationalism and flight into the realm of cruel, merciless myths follow the dictatorship of reason like a shadow. Nietzsche's criticism of Western European history and the incantation of the Dionysian principle belong to the "Modern Time", as well as the "myth of the 20th century" and the new paganism of German liberation from Judeo-Christianity of the recent German past. postmodern transavantgarde liberalism philosophy

Some ideas of postmodernism successfully developed within the framework of structuralism. Lacan's work was a significant step in the development of structuralism, and some of his ideas go beyond this movement, making it in some way a precursor to postmodernism. For example, the concept of the subject, criticism of the classical formula of Descartes: “I think, therefore I exist” and a rethinking of the famous Freudian expression “where the It was, the I must become.” Lacan, as it were, splits the Subject, distinguishing in it the “true Self” and the “imaginary Self.” For Lacan, the “true subject” is the subject of the Unconscious, whose existence is revealed not in speech, but in the breaks of speech. Man is a “decentred subject” insofar as he is involved in the play of symbols, the symbolic world of language. The idea of ​​decentering, as applied by Lacan to the analysis of the subject, is of great importance in post-structuralist thought.

2.2 Philosophy of J. Deleuze

The thinking of J. Deleuze, like many other philosophers of his generation, was largely determined by the events of May 1968 and the problems of power and the sexual revolution associated with these events. The task of philosophizing, according to Deleuze, lies primarily in finding adequate conceptual means for expressing the mobility and power diversity of life (see his joint work with F. Guattari, “What is philosophy?”, 1991). Deleuze develops his understanding of philosophical criticism. Criticism is a constant repetition of the thinking of another that generates differentiation. Criticism is thus directed against dialectics as a form of removing the negation in identity (the negation of the negation).

Negation is not removed, as dialectics believes - thinking, which Deleuze strives to develop, in contrast to dialectics as “thinking of identity,” is thinking that always contains difference, differentiation. Drawing on Nietzsche, Deleuze defines his project as a “genealogy”, i.e. as devoid of “beginnings” and “origins” thinking “in the middle”, as a constant process of revaluation and affirmation of negation, as a “pluralistic interpretation”. In this moment Deleuze sees an active principle to which further work he will add others - the unconscious, desire and affect.

He understands these principles as unconscious and inseparable from the processes of magnitude occurring in subjectivity, with the help of which Deleuze develops a philosophy of affirmation of powerful vital forces and non-personal becoming, in which the individual is freed from the violence of subjectification. This mode also includes the concept of a “field of uncertainty” developed by Deleuze, which precedes the subject, in which pre-individual and impersonal singularities unfold, or events that enter into relations of repetition and differentiation with each other, forming series and further differentiating in the course of subsequent heterogenesis. Above this field, like a kind of cloud, “floats” the principle, which Deleuze defines as “ clean order time", or as "death drive".

An individual can correspond to this pre-individual field only through “counter-realization,” and therefore either by producing a second, linguistic level above the level of this field, at which each previous event is brought to expression, i.e. subject to restrictions. According to the concept put forward by Deleuze, all life-constituting processes are processes of differentiation leading to diversity. “Repetition,” Deleuze declares - explicitly in polemics with psychoanalysis - is inevitable, because it is constitutive of life: processes of repetition unfold in every living being beyond consciousness; these are processes of “passive synthesis” that form “micro-unities” and set patterns of habits and memory. They constitute the unconscious as “iterative” and differentiating. “We repeat not because we repress, but we repress because we repeat,” states Deleuze in opposition to Freud.

Deleuze’s ethical imperative therefore states: “What you want, you want in you because you want eternal return in it.” Affirmation does not mean simple repetition, but a process of sublimation, in which intensity of the nth degree is released and selection is carried out among impersonal affects.

In a number of works studied by Deleuze with the help of certain textual procedures, the author is desubjectivized and thereby the processes of impersonal formation are released; in them the “Becoming” of oneself is staged. Deleuze calls this process heterogeneity: diverse sign series and sign worlds through “transversal machinery” become open, self-reproducing a system that independently creates its own differences.

The most explicit formulation of what becoming is is given by the work “A Thousand Surfaces,” written jointly with Guattari. Capitalism and schizophrenia,” 2nd volume. Here, invisible and inaccessible to perception, formation is described as the sequential passage of various stages of becoming a woman, an animal, a partial object, an impersonal Man. “Anti-Oedipus” became a kind of marker of this train of thought. Capitalism and Schizophrenia,” Deleuze’s first text, written together with F. Guattari. His non-academic intonation, as well as his subject matter, which pushed the boundaries of philosophy (including psychoanalysis, sociology and ethnology in its field), were a direct reflection of the mood of May 1968. The parallel analysis of capitalism and schizophrenia serves as a polemic between Freud's defined psychology and Marx's defined sociology.

In contrast to both theories that claim dominance, the authors identify a special area of ​​phenomena characterized by such features as controllability by desire, productivity and “deterritorialization.” Thanks to these features, these phenomena are endowed with the ability to break the inert relationships and couplings of both individual and social existence.

Thus, in schizophrenia there is a potential for a rupture of the Oedipus complex, which wrongfully fixes the unconscious on imaginary parents; likewise, the margins generated by capitalism carry within them the potential for new individuality and new savagery. Both processes - capitalism and schizophrenia - produce productively the individual and social unconscious, due to which the “factory of the real” must take the place of Freud’s mythical theater and its system of representations. Even in terms of its form, the text is understood by its authors as a direct participation in the launch of “machines of desire”: descriptions of flows, cuts, notches, withdrawals and insistence on the productive nature of the unconscious acquire a ritual character in the book.

2.3 Philosophy of J. Baudrillard

Postmodernists also usually include J. Baudrillard, J.-F. Lyotard, K. Castoriadis, Y. Kristev. In his theoretical constructions, J. Baudrillard attaches great importance to “simulation” and introduces the term “simulacrum”. The entire modern world consists of “simulacra” that have no basis in any reality other than their own; it is a world of self-referential signs. IN modern world reality is generated by a simulation that mixes the real and the imaginary. When applied to art, this theory leads to the conclusion about its exhaustion, associated with the destruction of reality in the “kitsch world of endless simulation.”

Conceptually, postmodernism is characterized by the negation of the Enlightenment project as such. The unlimited possibilities of rationality and the desire to know the truth are questioned. Postmodernism insists on the “death of the subject”, on the fundamental impossibility of knowing the hidden reality. This is due to the fact that in the era of postmodernity and globalization we live in a world without depth, only in a world of appearance. In this regard, the emphasis of postmodernism on the growing role of image, QMS and PR in modern life is especially important.

A radical break with the statement about the fundamental distinction between reality and individual consciousness was made by the French postmodern philosopher J. Baudrillard. The use of the growing capabilities of mass media, associated both with the expansion of image editing techniques and with the phenomenon of spatio-temporal compression, led to the formation of a qualitatively new state of culture. From Baudrillard's point of view, culture is now defined by certain simulations - objects of discourse that do not initially have a clear referent. In this case, the meaning is formed not through correlation with independent reality, but through correlation with other signs.

The evolution of representation goes through four stages, representation:

· how an image (mirror) reflects the surrounding reality;

· distorts it;

· masks the absence of reality;

· becomes a simulacrum - a copy without an original, which exists on its own, without any relation to reality.

A simulacrum is a completely isolated transformed form of the original reality, an objective appearance that has reached the self, a puppet that declares that there is no puppeteer and that it is completely autonomous. But since, unlike the absolute subject, the opinions of puppets (especially if they are specially designed) can be as many as desired, a world of fundamental plurality is thereby realized, denying any unity.

However, from the point of view of postclassical rationality, property, power, law, knowledge, action, communication, and so on are always present in this world, albeit hidden and dotted. And their existence is possible only if there are centers of subjectivity (at least as sanity) - therefore, the postmodernist perspective (and the simulacrum of J. Baudrillard in particular) is not the only one possible.

Usually the virtual is opposed to the real, but today the widespread spread of virtuality in connection with the development of new technologies allegedly results in the fact that the real, as its opposite, disappears, reality comes to an end. In his opinion, the assumption of reality was always tantamount to its creation, because the real world cannot but be the result of a simulation. Of course, this does not exclude the existence of the effect of the real, the effect of truth, the effect of objectivity, but reality in itself, reality as such does not exist. We find ourselves in the field of the virtual if, moving from the symbolic to the real, we continue to move beyond the boundaries of reality - reality in this case turns out to be the zero degree of the virtual. The concept of the virtual in this sense coincides with the concept of hyperreality, that is, virtual reality, reality, which, apparently being absolutely homogenized, “digital,” “operational,” due to its perfection, its controllability and its consistency, replaces everything else.

And it is precisely because of its greater “completeness” that it is more real than the reality we have established as a simulacrum. However, the expression " a virtual reality" is an absolute oxymoron. Using this phrase, we are no longer dealing with the old philosophical virtual, which sought to turn into the actual and was in a dialectical relationship with it. Now the virtual is what replaces the real and marks its final destruction.

By making the universe the ultimate reality, it inevitably signs its death warrant. The virtual, as Baudrillard thinks today, is a sphere where there is neither a subject of thought nor a subject of action, a sphere where all events take place in a technological mode. But does it put an end to the universe of the real and the game absolutely, or should it be considered in the context of our playful experimentation with reality? Are we not playing out for ourselves, treating it quite ironically, a comedy of the virtual, as happens in the case of power? And isn’t this boundless installation, this artistic performance, in essence, a theater where operators have taken the place of actors? If this is the case, then there is no more value in believing in the virtual than in any other ideological formation. It makes sense, perhaps, to calm down: apparently, the situation with virtuality is not very serious - the disappearance of the real still needs to be proven.

Once upon a time the real, as Baudrillard claims, did not exist. We can talk about it only after the rationality that ensures its expression arises, that is, a set of parameters that form the property of reality, allowing it to be represented through encoding and decoding in signs. There is no longer any value in the virtual - simple information content, calculability, calculability reigns here, canceling any effects of the real.

Virtuality seems to appear to us as a horizon of reality, similar to the event horizon in physics. But it is possible that this state of the virtual is only a moment in the development of the process, hidden meaning which we have yet to unravel. It is impossible not to notice: today there is an undisguised attraction to the virtual and related technologies. And if the virtual really means the disappearance of reality, then it is probably a poorly understood, but bold, specific choice of humanity itself: humanity decided to clone its physicality and its property in another universe, different from the previous one, it, in essence, dared to disappear as a human race in order to perpetuate itself in an artificial race, much more viable, much more effective. Isn't that the point of virtualization?

If we formulate Baudrillard’s point of view, then: we are waiting for such an exaggerated development of the virtual, which will lead to the implosion of our world. Today we are at a stage of our evolution at which it is not given to us to know whether, as optimists hope, the achievement of highest degree the complexity and perfection of technology from the technology itself, or we are heading towards disaster. Although a catastrophe, in the dramatic sense of the word, that is, a denouement, may, depending on what actors drama it happens, be both misfortune and happy event. That is, to the drawing in, absorption of the world into the virtual.

CONCLUSION

The main question is how universal and global is this perspective of postmodernism and is there an alternative to it? Logically and historically, we know at least one thing - “free individuality as a communist ideal according to K. Marx. However, one more thing: this is the absolute spirit (subject) according to Hegel or according to one or another Abrahamic religious tradition - in this case it does not matter.

So there are three possible futures social development:

· free individuality;

· absolute spirit;

· impersonal global communication dependence.

Is it a full range of options or not? Logically it seems yes. Historically, we must hope not, because... option one looks like a utopia, option two looks like a squared utopia, and the third, on the contrary, becomes frighteningly real and dominant. At the same time, it is global communication and PR, as its active part, that speaks and moves those who recognize this as their own aspiration, their own subjectivity. It does not even inhabit people, but gives birth to them, that is, their active part. And they, in turn, give rise to everyone else (J. Deleuze). And when postmodernity (represented by J.-F. Lyotard) asks how one can philosophize after Auschwitz, we know the answer. This answer was given at the Nuremberg trials. Whatever the order, no matter what absolute you appeal to, this does not exempt you from responsibility (a person does not have an “alibi in being,” in the words of M. Bakhtin) in “here-being” (dasain by M. Heidegger) or in being-here-and-now.

Therefore, only law, politics, economics, science, technology, production, medicine and education can act that responsibility, and therefore subjectivity, exist. Moreover, the latter can happen without the former. We were convinced of this after September 11, 2001, the events in Iraq and Yugoslavia. The point is not even that the vast majority of representatives of philosophical postmodernity have taken a completely biased, definite and simple position of Atlantic totalitarianism. If we introduce the special term totalism as universal social and spiritual domination, and totalitarianism as the first type of totalism, implemented through direct directive subordination, then the second type is totalization or totalitarianism, where total control is achieved indirectly (invisible hand) through the creation of the necessary value- symbolic space and corresponding objects of attraction and the formation of internal preferences, together leading to non-reflective optimization of individual behavior from the position of an invisible manipulator (“Star Factory” is a variation of this second type of totalism).

The point, first of all, is that they consider their simulative, pluralistic position at the meta level to be the only correct one and, thus, like the entire model of a totalitarian society at the meta level, they reveal this monistic basis. And with the process of globalization, the entire or almost entire planetary management model as a whole turns out to be similar. (Of course, there are many differences: third countries, the Kyoto Protocol, and so on, but in general this planetary monism can be traced quite clearly, including in the field popular culture and PR.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Baudrillard, J. Temptation / J. Baudrillard. - M., 2012. -361 p.

2. Baudrillard, J. System of Things / J. Baudrillard. - M., 2012. -278 p.

3. Gurko, E.N. Deconstruction: texts and interpretation / E.N. Gurko. - Mn., 2012.-258 p.

4. Deleuze, J. Difference and repetition / J. Deleuze. - St. Petersburg, 2011.-256 p.

5.Derrida, J. On grammatology / J. Derrida. - M., 2012.-176 p.

6. Deleuze, J., Guattari, F. What is philosophy? / J. Deleuze, F. Guattari. - M., 2013.-234 p.

7.Derrida, J. Writing and difference / J. Derrida. - St. Petersburg, 2014.-276 p.

8. Derrida, J. Essay on the name / J. Derrida. - St. Petersburg, 2014.-190 p.

9. Ilyin, I.P. Poststructuralism. Deconstructivism. Postmodernism / I.P. Ilyin. - M., 2015. -261 p.

10. Kozlowski, P. Postmodern culture. - Mn., 2013.-367 p.

11. Lyotard, J.-F. The state of postmodernity / J.-F. Lyotard. - St. Petersburg, 2011.-249 p.

12. Philosophy of the postmodern era. - Mn., 2011.-249 p.

13. Foucault, M. Archeology of knowledge / M. Foucault. - M., 2014.-350 p.

14. Foucault, M. Supervise and punish. The birth of prison / M. Foucault. - M, 2013.-247 p.

15. Foucault, M. Words and things. Archeology and humanities / M. Foucault. - M., 2011.-252 p.

16. Eco, U. Missing structure: an introduction to semiology / U. Eco. - M., 2014.-289 p.

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Postmodernism, as a phenomenon in the history of philosophy, is relatively young. Its appearance and development dates back to the middle - end of the 20th century. $The main representatives of the philosophy of postmodernism: J.F. Lyotard, J. Derrida, J. Deleuze, M. Foucault, D. Vattimo and others.

Genealogy of the term

The term "postmodernism" comes from the French word postmodernisme, which literally means "after modernity." $In the first half of the 20th century$ the term was used to characterize new trends in literature and fine arts.

Within the framework of philosophy, the concept of postmodernism appears in the works of the French philosopher J.F. Lyotard's "The Postmodern Condition" ($1979). Here postmodernism appears as a kind of reflection of the spiritual state of modern European society.

Definition 1

Postmodernism in philosophy is an intellectual phenomenon designed to reflect the general philosophical attitude, mindset, of a modern philosopher, characterized by a radical revision of basic, largely traditionally interpreted, concepts and concepts, which leads to absolute plurality, making possible religion without God, mysticism without the superreal, etc. P.

Ideological origins

The formation of postmodern philosophy was influenced by F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, L. Wittgenstein. F. Nietzsche demanded a revaluation of values, a rejection of the ideological developments of classical philosophy and the absoluteness of truth. F. Nietzsche is the herald of postmodern philosophy. M. Heidegger continued the Nietzschean line of thought with his criticism of reason. According to him, the new European mind is characterized by instrumentality, symbolized by technology. Technology leaves no room for humanism. Therefore, the technological society is inhumane. The influence of the philosophy of L. Wittgenstein was reflected in the attention of postmodern philosophy to the analysis of the structure of language. These trajectories of understanding the spiritual state of society find their development in postmodern philosophy.

Basic ideas of postmodern philosophy

The methodology of thought of postmodern philosophy is based on the principles of pluralism and relativism, which deny hierarchy and integrity and assume a kind of non-linear order of possible multiplicities.

Postmodern ontology is anti-ontology. The postmodernist destroys the concept of being, its place is taken by the category of language. Postmodernism is critical of metaphysics. Representatives of postmodern philosophy call it ontotheology, thereby emphasizing the transcendental nature of its categories, which postmodernists want to eradicate. The world is not a whole, but a multitude of fragments, between which connections are not always established. To characterize this situation, postmodernists offer the category “rhizome”. It is not linear, not complete, variable, and therefore opposes generally closed structures. In addition, the rhizome model describes human thinking and history.

Postmodernism takes a skeptical position towards truth and calls for a rethinking of knowledge and cognition as such. The result of this process is a position close to agnosticism. Postmodern philosophy is a reflection of disillusionment with rationality. Postmodernism, in addition, is characterized by anti-scientism. Science is an instrument of power and ideology; it has no objectivity attached to it. Examples of postmodern epistemology include the concept of deconstruction by J. Derrida and the archeology of humanitarian knowledge by M. Foucault.

Ethics is also present within the framework of the intellectual constructions of postmodernism. The person here is an immoralist, using the expression of F. Nietzsche, he is on the other side of good and evil. Postmodernist thinkers associate ethical categories with political ones.

Postmodernist thought is aesthetically colored, in it the border between literature and art is erased. In postmodernism, the boundary between high art and kitsch has been erased. The essence of all art lies in the use of quotation, a symbol of which is collage.

Note 1

In general, the philosophy of postmodernism was an understanding of the transitional state in the intellectual history of modern society.