Postmodernism: economic domination and the function of artDoes aesthetic creativity refer to or influence reality? Does art have the ability to heal society? These questions seem implicit in Walker Percy's understanding of literature and art in general. Literature is a process involved in thinking about communication; it is proposed as a moral guide to praise society and at the same time correct it. Literature represents and describes; presents readers with a method for articulating and solving society's problems. “So it is clear that redescribing a world is the necessary first step to changing it” (Rushdie18). Art, in a sense, creates its own political agenda. Percy pursues his diagnostic theory of literature by taking into account the fundamental relationship between language and life. Percy seems to answer the initial two questions asked with a resounding yes. However, the question of the impact of art on a society is not so simple to resolve. Not all people write or think about art with the same assumptions. To strike at the heart of the question “what is the purpose of art?” we must first identify, understand and appreciate some fundamental assumptions that interrogate the contexts, surrounding the political nature of art and the role of the artist in authentic creativity. I would like to frame my discussion within the apparent struggle between two ideological contexts: modernism and postmodernism. Using Percy's diagnostic theory of literature to facilitate discussion, we can examine how modern and postmodern assumptions attempt to shape the purpose of aesthetic creativity. Percy's approach to art is inherently modern. It is concerned with unity and truth and their achievement through the creative process. Modernism claims to speak of some form of ideological absolute, of a universal quality. All things ultimately move to reveal a unified whole, a universe steeped in Truth. Reason is the main tool of the modernist. It is privileged above every other human faculty. Reason allows humanity to possess knowledge, to know, to assimilate, to unify. Truth and knowledge are irremediably intertwined. The search for knowledge is therefore also the search for truth. Percy reflects this modern veneration for the power of human thought when he states that literature is essentially cognitive. Art is an expansion and extension of the mind. Art is therefore actively involved in the search for Truth.