New Humanism and Postmodernism
Postmodernism, which arose in the 1960s, addressed the deficiencies in modernity by saying that there is not just one approach to view the world, but rather a plethora of approaches, and that each individual life and thought has its own narrative mode and
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New Humanism and Postmodernism
Postmodernism, which arose in the 1960s, addressed the deficiencies in modernity by saying that there is not just one approach to view the world, but rather a plethora of approaches, and that each individual life and thought has its own narrative mode and authenticity. Nor is there simply one ideal, but rather there are many, each with its own value, and the formidable power of cyberspace greatly strengthens the mode of thinking and actions of post-modernism. Post-modernists immersed themselves in a struggle to root out the foundation of the ideology of modernity. The modern deconstruction movement that they mobilized has already had the effect of eclipsing all unilateral thinking based on power and compulsion, and at the same time causing everything to become fragmented and superficial and finally leaving behind a scattering of modernist thought and a noisily clamoring splintered world in which everyone’s story is just as convincing as the next and just as valid and equally deserving of acknowledgement. Post-modernists have razed the ramparts of the modernists to the ground; however they have not offered a blueprint for life going forward. In a world where there are no boundaries, and is full of chaos and disorder and is collapsing and falling apart, people have become wandering existentialist tribes, wandering around in a desperate search, vaguely thirsting for something to savor, something worth believing in, but also not understanding what that might be. Despite the fact that man’s spirit has freed itself of its old ideological fetters, nevertheless everyone is forced to search for their own path alone. Although late twentieth century post-modernism aimed at smashing all architectures of authority, still it did not suggest any new blueprints, nor did it plot out a new era. It merely analyzed all of the defects in modernity and exposed and comprehensively smashed the grand narrative of modernism. By the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, some scholars proposed a marriage between the
© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd and Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 D. Yue, China and the West at the Crossroads, China Academic Library, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1116-0_37
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New Humanism and Postmodernism
achievements of the first Enlightenment and post-modernism, calling for “A second Enlightenment”, with the aim of escaping the trap of modernity. Their advocacy roughly included the following few points:
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Transcend Homo-Centrism and Promote Ecological Consciousness
They believed that “Man is but one species in a cast of thousands. He is no better or worse than any other. He has his place in the ecological system and he only has value in so far as he contributes towards that ecological system”. The famous ecologist Thomas Berry argues that man is the center of the universe, that his heart is closely tied to the natural world and that his sacred duty is to be engaged with the universe and care for the earth and
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