Postmodernism

In the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, an approach called a postmodernism has provided a different perspective on how humans think.

Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality.

In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one’s own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.

As mentioned, postmodern philosophy questions (and often rejects) the idealized view of truth and of knowing inherited from past philosophical traditions. To the postmodernist, thinking is a dynamic, ever-changing function that depends upon an individual’s interpretation of the world they live in.