Modernism and Postmodernism: Objectivation of the Content of Phenomena

Abstract

The phenomena of modernism and postmodernism are studied. Modernism and postmodernism are analyzed in the context of the project Modern, which belongs to European culture and determines its development in the direction of modernization of history. It was found that the dynamics of the Modern project is determined by four phases of development, they largely coincide with the periods of formation of European culture: 14th –16th — the first phase of development of the Modern project (5th – 16th centuries — symbolic period of European culture); 17th – 18th centuries — the second phase of the Modern project (17th – 18th centuries — classical period of European culture); 19th century — the third phase of the Modern project (19th century – romantic period of European culture); late 19th – 21 st centuries — the fourth phase of the Modern project (late 19th – 21 st centuries — intentional period of European culture). This objectifies modernism and postmodernism as phenomena, the content of which is determined by the final phase of the Modern project and the final (intentional) period of European culture. Emphasis is placed on the possibility of interpreting modernism and postmodernism as one phenomenon — modernism-postmodernism. It is stated that postmodernism correctly defines the content of cultural and artistic life of the present, but does not explain the laws of cultural formation, bypasses the future development of culture and art, focuses on its concepts and resorts to semantic transformations of the idea of “afterˮ: afterpostmodernism, after non-classical thinking, theses such as postmodernism after modernism, etc. This explains the limitations and inability of postmodernism to cultural creativity. Comparing the semantic foundations of the theory of modernism and postmodernism with the concept of intentionalism of culture and art opens a new perspective in the analysis and ontology of modern and postmodern intentions and cultural and artistic life in general.