The ideas of postmodernism, which Peter J. Leithart lays out in his book Solomon Among the Postmodern has been a piece of work he has worked on throughout about two years. The ideas in the book started as a lecture series for Hillsdale College. Leithart’s teaches gained opportunities and opportunities to revise his teachings when he taught at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church. Before the publishing of this book many theologians revised and commented on Leithart’s work until he completed it for publishing in 2008. Leithart’s book is comparing and contrasting Solomon’s work, especially Ecclesiastes, to postmodernism. This book helps its audience to wrestle with the idea of Solomon relating to people even in a postmodernist society. Leithart builds
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Leithart takes the time to explain the timeline of thinking for things such as politics, society, art, economics, and other things that build a society. The renaissance was the first to set the pace and tone for a society. With renaissance came chaos because of religious disunity . Citizens could no longer handle the chaos and decided to try and tame the chaos by creating modernity. “Modernity was not only a response to religious war but a counter- Renaissance movement in effort to correct the errors of Renaissance” (26). Modernity tried to tame the chaos by putting up walls to separate different categories. An example would be putting up a wall to separate religion and politics. Modernity eventually locked and boxed people in making it not as successful as it hoped to be. Another movement started, once again, to fix the mistakes. Postmodernity was then born as, “another protest movement from within modernity. Virtually nothing about postmodernity is wholly new” (35). Even Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 1:9 “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Leithart would define postmodern as, “vapor’s revenge” …show more content…
People who live in a postmodernist society have an even harder time finding their identity because of many factors. Leithart mentions how all humans are temporal and everyone is constantly changing. He raises the question, if people are always changing is there any part of a humans being that stays consistent? It is hard for post moderns to identify the consistent thing because of the masks that are available for them to put on. Because of technology people are able to create a new person and hid their true self behind a computer screen. The resources that are available allow people to also change their outward appearances through surgery, medication, and enhancement mechanisms. People can completely throw away the person they were born as and start to reconstruct themselves completely this can even include the sex of a person. The technology enhancement can also reconstruct how people relate with one another. People today now have a many wide friendships, but very few deep connections with people. The communities and friendships the postmoderns have can also affect the self. People spend more time constructing their virtual self to impress those people. Leithart would sum this up by saying, “Postmoderns are self-conscious of the masks we adopt”
Leithart takes the time to explain the timeline of thinking for things such as politics, society, art, economics, and other things that build a society. The renaissance was the first to set the pace and tone for a society. With renaissance came chaos because of religious disunity . Citizens could no longer handle the chaos and decided to try and tame the chaos by creating modernity. “Modernity was not only a response to religious war but a counter- Renaissance movement in effort to correct the errors of Renaissance” (26). Modernity tried to tame the chaos by putting up walls to separate different categories. An example would be putting up a wall to separate religion and politics. Modernity eventually locked and boxed people in making it not as successful as it hoped to be. Another movement started, once again, to fix the mistakes. Postmodernity was then born as, “another protest movement from within modernity. Virtually nothing about postmodernity is wholly new” (35). Even Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 1:9 “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Leithart would define postmodern as, “vapor’s revenge” …show more content…
People who live in a postmodernist society have an even harder time finding their identity because of many factors. Leithart mentions how all humans are temporal and everyone is constantly changing. He raises the question, if people are always changing is there any part of a humans being that stays consistent? It is hard for post moderns to identify the consistent thing because of the masks that are available for them to put on. Because of technology people are able to create a new person and hid their true self behind a computer screen. The resources that are available allow people to also change their outward appearances through surgery, medication, and enhancement mechanisms. People can completely throw away the person they were born as and start to reconstruct themselves completely this can even include the sex of a person. The technology enhancement can also reconstruct how people relate with one another. People today now have a many wide friendships, but very few deep connections with people. The communities and friendships the postmoderns have can also affect the self. People spend more time constructing their virtual self to impress those people. Leithart would sum this up by saying, “Postmoderns are self-conscious of the masks we adopt”