“With varying content the term “modern” in its Latin form “modernus” again and again expressed the consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new.”
The term “modern” reappears at various epochs in human evolution, often referring to a sudden revitalization in knowledge, understanding, and culture. Often, ages are divided in two— there is only the past and the present, the Ancient and the Modern.
Habermas asserts something interesting. “Modern” is a comfortable word, it assumes a difference between what is now and what was then. Specifically, Habermas points to the phenomenon in which the past is perceived primarily in extremes whereas the present is perceived as a rejection of the “barbaric” characteristics of the past.
Furthermore, modernity is defined as something disconnected from religion, and instead heavily involves itself on pertaining to art, morality, beauty, and science. Essentially, modernity is seen as a rebirth of those ideals that relate to “” procedural reality”.
Habermas also asserts that the relation of modernity to classicism has lost its meaning. In this sense, it is easy to agree to him— if modernist has existed a thousand times before, what differentiates the “modern” of today to the “modern” of yesterday. Does the modern then ironically relate to the occurrences, the philosophy and the culture of the past?
My questions of modernity and the semantics of it stem from my curiosity of what I would call this epoch. America, to the untrained eye may appear modern, as it is an industrialized country that seemingly venerates morality, beauty, and rationality. However, despite this time being the most “modern” that has ever occurred, the current era seems to be a slip into the past. Religious fanaticism and amorality and missing truths permeate the culture, normalizing it.
My own observations lead me to believe that the lofty ideals perhaps this nation once upheld are actively reversed to instead venerate. A populist, capitalist and truthless world. Are we modern? I think not.
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