French philosopher Francois Lyotard wrote in the last century that humanity would be going trough very odd times, as the great narrations, like Marxism, Hegelism, Positivism and enlightement to begin with, have failed in their original purpose, that was to explain in an omnicomprensive way reality and finally answer radical question on the real purpose of men.
On the other side, he thinks that a number of “dangerous” thinkers demolished these ideals: Soren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, all destroyed hegelian and proto burgeuoise thought, revealing the mask behind social relations, behind man’s relationship with God, behind the man itself. However, it was Friedrich Nietzsche that really killed the grandfather of all ideals, enlightement.
Nietzsche enhanced that there were no pure facts but only interpretations: therefore no objective truth was possible, but rather a number of truths elaborated by a number of thinkers in a small world. The stage of the world that abandons the ideal modernity to reach a more realist view of the world is called by Lyotard, “the post modern condition”.
Post-modern thought is disillusioned with every kind of grand ideal, and proposes a more cautious view of the world, in which prevails cynism and individualism, opposed to enlightement’s cosmopolitism and altruism.
Truth is, that post-modernism destroyed every value only to open the doors of philosophy to nihilism, to which Nietzsche himself was aware of. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he’s very clear that after destroying decadent values, one must rebuild from the ashes and make positive out of our insatiable will to power, that is what really makes us human.
In an heroic attempt as it was never seen before, Nietzsche outlines the end of man, and the beginning of the ubermensch, or the men after the men.
In the following years after the pubblication of Lyotard’s masterpiece, counter-movements began to rise and to inspire a new generation of thinkers that would actually enact a general renaissance of modern thought opposed to post-modern thought.
While the currents are diverse and eterogenic, it is possible to find a number of common traits, shared between them.
The perspective to return to Enlightement advocates activity, tolerance, prosperity, freedom of thought, optimism, trust and dialogue against post modern cynism, passivity, stagnation, isolation, pessimism and one sided thought.
- Intentism: when a text is to be interpretated, a key aspect is the "intention" of the author, or his interpretation if you prefer. So, if there are still multiple interpretations, one must always take note of the author’s idea itself.
- new sincerity: rather than to destroy values and leave nothing but pure nihilism, one must actually create from the ashes. The very truth is not that there is no truth: but that there is truth in a way we must side with values that share common traits, in order to define the very mathematical conditions of truth itself.
- Meta-modernism or post-postmodernism: values that must be granted to a functioning system of values are faith, trust, dialogue, will to act, performance and sincerity. Happiness is beneficial to everyone, and beneficial to everyone is charity. Indeed, the core value is the responsibility to take action.
- remodernism: the place in which men take action in history. Then, the importance of history is not in the chronology but in the protagonists. History always proceds from the worst to the best. It would be rather naive to denounce the worst of our time but to not admit the benefits of our society. There is still time and possibilities for improvement, so history cannot go from bad to worse.
- Transmodernism: postmodernism cannot declare the end of history, as itself can be considered as a moment in time and still subject of transformation. So, while it is not possible to have the end of history, we can still have the end of postmodernism. The era in which we are living is something like a trans-modernism, that is a time of transition, as the noun suggests.
If we really want to return to enlightement’s ideals, then we must return with preparation and in particular with conscience, for it will never be a remake nor a sequel, but perhaps a spin off that I propose to call, in my humble opinion, enlightementism.
