The recent international discussion on "modern" and "postmodern" has been based on aesthetics or philosophy without unraveling the social conditions and correspondences of these terms. This book explores the evolution of Western societies in the last hundred and fifty years and shows how the collapse of the bourgeois way of thinking and living was accompanied by the formation of "postmodern" ideologies and attitudes. 

The analysis moves on multiple levels, embracing both the political changes that occurred during the transition from classical liberalism to mass democracy, as well as the changes brought about in social and personal life by modern technology, the modern division of labor, and youth movements. Special emphasis is placed on cosmological shifts, which are identified through structural analyses of modern literature, art, philosophy, and science. An introduction written specifically for the Greek edition examines the texture and fate of bourgeois culture in our country.