Post-modernism's heavy guns: An alternative critique of modernism

To be rational is the ultimate objective for today's administrative decision-makers. To call a captain of industry, a politician or a civil servant ‘non-rational’ or even ‘irrational’ is one of the worst attributes we can assign to her or him. But dissatisfaction with the notion of rationality is growing among practitioners and academics. Imre Lakatos, himself a high-priest of rationality and rationalism, did not, in a 1973 seminar, stop short of wishing ‘all occurrences of the word ‘‘irrational’’ to be expunged from his writings.’ Post-modernism is an off-spring of this unhappiness with the notion of rationality. Post-modernism sees enlightenment as a wrong way.