Fragmentarization of Hope in the Postmodern Culture

Bogusław Kwiatkowski

The Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University , Poland

Abstract

The matter discussed in this article is a resultant product of a few issues: the postmodern culture, man’s pursuance and aspirations, which are synthetically defined as a hope, and finally, the matter of fragmentarization of the creation. First, the author explains the most important tendencies stuck in the postmodern culture, emphasizing the matter of deconstruction, and the aim to negate everything that was commonly accepted up until the present. This also means the principles of logics that have heretofore determined the man’s reasoning. All these issues result in dispersion of the human’s personality, and lead to the question of the vision of hope that is so typical to the postmodern human being. After pointing out the ambiguity of the idea of hope, the author carries on with a brief overlook of some religious ideas related to the postmodern culture such as New Age and discordianism. The author focuses on consequences of these beliefs in terms of the vision of hope that are closely related to the postmodern human being. Next, the author passes on to the matter of fragmentarization. He brings in it’s definition, and points out the way that fragmentarization determines the hope in contemporary world. The author doesn’t share the opinion the foregoing tendencies must establish the state of nonsense, and rational chaos that is typical to the discussed culture. This statement is made based on three premises: firstly, according to the Christianity the world is ruled by God, and it leads it to the eschatological pursuance, secondly, it depends a lot on the Christian’s commitment to the faith, and last, the postmodernism is not dominant although it incorpses more and more followers. In the end of the article there is a reference to the Benedict’s XVI Spe salvi encyclic, and an invocation to the Christian activeness in revealing God as the one and only true foundation of hope.