The End of Ethics? Interface between Ethics and Postmodernism

The word ‘postmodern’ came into popular currency with Lyotard’s famous book, The Postmodern Condition. The term was probably first employed by Toynbee to designate the period following modernism. However, postmodernism cannot be restricted to a historical epoch; rather it should be understood as an attitude, and as such it can be shown to have existed even before modernism. Postmodernism defies all attempts at a precise definition. It is both “fashionable and elusive”. It is an emerging consciousness adopting a reactionary attitude to modernism and all its dogmatic claims. Some of these dogmatic claims are the centrality of the human person, the supremacy of reason, the objectivity and certainty of knowledge and the existence of universally valid truths. Today postmodernism exerts a lot of influence on all areas of knowledge. In this paper I shall deal with its impact on ethics.