As Wilber (2000) explains, modernism contributes to differentiation of art, morals, and science spheres which were regarded as undifferentiated sphere in pre-modernism. However, modernism includes some inherent limitations. From the modernism perspectives, the dominant belief is that it is possible to describe scientifically and logically all phenomena including subjective experiences. Furthermore, most modernists tend to believe that our reality is objective, and our world is based on materials.
As opposed to modernism, postmodernism came to the forefront. In a word, postmodernism is an antithesis of modernism, attempting to overcome the limitations in modernism. Also, a distinguishing characteristic in postmodernism is a relative worldview. In that sense, postmodernism is sometimes called as relativism.
As for the contribution of postmodernism, Wilber (1996) demonstrates: “the great postmodern discovery was that neither the self nor the world is simply pregiven, but rather they exist in contexts and backgrounds that have a history, a development” (p. 60).To put it in another way, postmodernism created a large philosophical map which embraces almost everything by acclaiming subsistent values in it. Therefore, the relativistic attribute in postmodernism is able to allow for the inclusion of additional paradigms.
Although postmodernism had a positive influence on many fields (e.g., philosophy, architecture, literature, music, etc.), it also includes innate limitations. In regard to this point, Mcintosh (2007) contends:
Postmodernism’s pathological fusion is found in the way that it fails to differentiate between the healthy aspects of the previous stages―aspects that we want to carry forward into the future and include―and the immature and pathological aspects of the previous stages that we would do well to leave behind. (p. 59)
In other words, the potential weakness of postmodernism is that it can’t discern positive aspects from negative ones in previous stages. As a consequence, postmodernism tends to fall into an undesirable situation to include a flood of values without careful consideration.
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