Neomodernism is a term that has at times been used to describe a philosophical position based on modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 but addressing the critique of modernism by postmodernism

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

. It is currently associated with the works of Ágnes Heller

Ágnes Heller

Ágnes Heller is a Hungarian philosopher. A prominent Marxist thinker at first, she moved onto a liberal, social-democratic position later in her career...

 and Carlos Escudé

Carlos Escudé

Carlos Andrés Escudé Carvajal is an Argentine political scientist and author, who during the 1990s served as special advisor to one of Argentina's most distinguished Foreign Ministers - Guido di Tella...

, and is strongly rooted in the criticisms which Habermas

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...

 has leveled at postmodern philosophy

Postmodern philosophy

Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical direction which is critical of the foundational assumptions and structures of philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily influenced by phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism, including writings of Georg Wilhelm...

, namely that universalism

Moral universalism

Moral universalism is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality, or any other distinguishing feature...

 and critical thinking are the two essential elements of human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 and that human rights create a superiority of some cultures over others. That is, that equality and relativism are "mutually contradictory".

History

Soon after the modern movement

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

, reactions were formed based in the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

 and Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...

. The reaction took on the name of existentialism

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

, and was characterized by the phrase "existence precedes essence

Existence precedes essence

The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence...

". Existentialism was followed by postmodernism

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

, which embraced Nietzsche's critique of the will to truth, which is the standing characteristic of modernism. Neomodernists maintain that truth still exists in a universal form and directly refute existentialist and postmodern viewpoints that the essence of an existent is formed in the observer's bias. Neomodernists stand against the discrediting of the concept of authorial intent in postmodern hermeneutics. Instead, they state that a text written in simple terms can only have the meaning that the author intended, rather than finding that even the most straightforward text can have multiple interpretations.

Ágnes Heller

Ágnes Heller's work is associated with Moral Anthropology and "probing modernity's destiny for a non-predatory humanism that combines the existential wisdom of ancient theory with modern values."

Neomodernism accepts some aspects of postmodernism's critique of modernism, notably that modernism elevated the world view of dominant groups to the status of objective fact, thereby failing to express the viewpoint of "subaltern groups," such as women and ethnic minorities. However, in her view, neomodernism rejects postmodernism as:

• Unscientific: the ability of science to generate useful knowledge cannot be waved away as "scientism
  Scientism
  Scientism refers to a belief in the universal applicability of the systematic methods and approach of science, especially the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints...
  
  ".
• Journalism: as not giving any explanation as to how or why things happen.
• Local: as being unable to recognise patterns that occur across time or location.
• Unverified: as lacking any validation process, and therefore proceeding by fad and hierarchy.

Victor Grauer

In 1982, Victor Grauer attacked "the cult of the new," and proposed that there had arisen a "neo-modern" movement in the arts which was based on deep formal rigor, rather than on "the explosion of pluralism." His argument was that post-modernism was exclusively a negative attack on modernism, and had no future separate from modernism proper, a point of view which is held by many scholars of modernism.

Other uses

The neomodernism has been cited in the law as applying to an approach which granted economic rights to indigenous peoples, but without restricting them to their traditional economic activities.