Postmodernism and the Search for Enlightenment

Ever since the explosion in relationships of power during the 1960s, the humanities have become a battlefield. What had previously been thought of as merely academic concerns have spilled over academic boundaries and attracted the attention of politicians, government officials, members of the media, and, ultimately, the general public. As a way of addressing this turmoil, Karlis Racevskis considers the legacy of the Enlightenment and re-evaluates modernity's claims for objective knowledge and the traditional model of reason. How relevant, he asks, are the Enlightenment ideals of freedom, democracy and equality in today's attempts to understand society and gauge the prospects for civilisation? What responsibility can or should intellectuals assume in promoting Enlightenment values? What, in the end, constitutes a humanistic education?;Drawing largely on the work of Foucault, Racevskis elucidates the philosophical and political problems at issue in the debate and the changes taking place in our ways of seeing ourselves and our relations with others. He shows how the theme of enlightenment has been a central component in the conflicts that have pitted modernists against postmodernists, Marxists against post-Marxists, and liberals against conservatives, and he juxtaposes the arguments in such a way as to place reason and enlightened action in a new perspective. One result of the upheaval, argues Racevskis, is a sense of renewed purpose and intensity in the study of the humanities that constitutes a fundamental reorientation in our ways of understanding society. Viewing the tension between the chaos of current theories and the comfort of traditional values not with horror, but with excitement, he suggests how postmodem criticism can be seen as a dynamic and promising development in the renewal and expansion of the liberal arts.;This wide-ranging book should have general appeal across a broad spectrum of disciplines - among them, literature and the arts, philosophy, social and political theory, and intellectual history.