The Bearing of Culture on an Inhumane Society

In this extended essay, the author examines the decline of the humane elements in modernist culture and their replacement by postmodern emphases on anti-humanism and the aggregated individual. At the heart of his thesis is a call for the concerted rediscovery of the Renaissance impulse that involves both a positive re-evaluation of the classical tradition and the search for a genuinely humane renewal of cultural standards. Apart from providing a fresh assessment of the modernist literary and cultural endeavour from Conrad to Beckett, the essay focuses especially on the split between culture and ideology, and the implications of this unhealthy bifurcation for the ways in which culture might manifest in societies of the future. Special attention is paid to the Leavis-Snow debate that culminated in the 'two cultures' controversy of the early 1960's and continues to influence cultural, philosophic and scientific dynamics today.