ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some matters of definition, since these terms — 'Modernism', 'Postmodernism and 'Deconstruction' — are used with very different senses in a range of different contexts so there is a need for clarification. Epistemologically speaking, postmodernism works out as a deep-laid scepticism about the possibility of knowledge and truth, the possibility of a constructive, cooperative enterprise aimed toward truth at the end of enquiry. There are three main aspects of postmodernism, and they have to do with epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. Epistemology has to do with knowledge, with the scope, that is to say, the powers and the limits of humanly attainable knowledge. This is 'philosophical' Postmodernism and it extends into ethics and politics, as well as into other areas like epistemology and philosophy of language. So aesthetics – in Immanuel Kant's philosophy – is the place where all sorts of problems are raised and receive not so much a definitive solution as a farreachingly suggestive and speculative treatment.
