抄録
The aim of this essay is to make clear the nature of Romanticism and postmodernism as the most fundamental criticism of modernization. Behind the process of modernization is the idea of enlightenment, that is, the belief in the perpetual improvement of human life through reason liberated from tradition and convention. Romanticism criticizes the Enlightenment on the basis of the limit of reason as the means to control human desire, offering instead imagination as the power of the mind to create something of absolute value, while postmodernism criticizes both the Enlightenment and Romanticism, asserting their reason and imagination are mere fictions, but staying in the position of offering no positive values.
