5. Modernist revolts
Keyword(s):
New Type
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‘Modernist revolts’ traces the turn-of-the-twentieth-century rise of what philosopher John Dewey called a “new intellectual temper”: modernism. It was at this time that the idea of the intellectual enters American English as a term to identify a new type of modern professional thinker. To be an intellectual meant accepting responsibility to help other Americans accept a modernizing world of social change and dissonance while finding new grounds to negotiate their differences. The modernist thought they advocated came in a variety of forms: from new religious thought and philosophical pragmatism to progressivism and cultural pluralism.