From modernism towards post-modernism: Rationalism and the enlightnment era

Abstract

Modernism and post-modernism are predestined to have a common denominator. Spiritual precursors of post-modernism appear with the development of rationalism and the enlightenment era. It will have proven later on that post-modernists wished to impose themselves as a total opposition to modernism, but they could not avoid the fact that post-modernism originated from modernism. In the oeuvres of post-modernists it is woven the social and philosophical thought of Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Voltaire and later on, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Weber, which shortened the way from modernism toward post-modernism.