Post-Intellectualism and the Decline of Democracy: The Failure of Reason and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century - Softcover

Donald N. Wood

Softcover

ISBN 10: 027595661X ISBN 13: 9780275956615

Publisher: Praeger (UK), 1996

Synopsis

Our society's institutional infrastructures—our democratic political system, economic structures, legal practices, and educational establishment—were all created as intellectual outgrowths of the Enlightenment. All our cultural institutions are based on the intellectual idea that an enlightened citizenry could govern its affairs with reason and responsibility. In the late 20th century, however, we are witnessing the disintegration of much of our cultural heritage. Wood argues that this is due to our evolution into a ^Upost-intellectual society^R—a society characterized by a loss of critical thinking, the substitution of information for knowledge, mediated reality, increasing illiteracy, loss of privacy, specialization, psychological isolation, hyper-urbanization, moral anarchy, and political debilitation. These post-intellectual realities are all triggered by three underlying determinants: the failure of linear growth and expansion to sustain our economic system; the runaway information overload; and technological determinism. Wood presents a new and innovative social theory, challenging readers to analyze all our post-intellectual cultural malaise in terms of these three fundamental determinants.

About this title

About the Author

DONALD N. WOOD is Professor of Radio-Television-Film at California State University, Northridge. He is author of Educational Telecommunications (1977), Mass Media and the Individual (1983), Designing the Effective Message (1989), and co-author of Television Productions: Disciplines and Techniques (1978, and Sixth ed. 1995).

Edition details

• Publisher: Praeger (UK)
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 027595661X
• ISBN 13: 9780275956615
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320