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Modernity, a topic in thehumanities andsocial sciences, is both ahistorical period (themodern era) and the ensemble of particularsocio-culturalnorms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of theRenaissance—in theAge of Reason of 17th-century thought and the 18th-centuryEnlightenment. Commentators variously consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, withWorld War II in 1945, or as late as the period falling between the 1980s and 1990s; the following era is often referred to as "postmodernity". The term "contemporary history" is also used to refer to the post-1945 timeframe, without assigning it to either the modern or postmodern era. (Thus "modern" may be used as a name of a particular era in the past, as opposed to meaning "the current era".)
Depending on the field, modernity may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography, the 16th to 18th centuries are usually described asearly modern, while thelong 19th century corresponds tomodern history proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion tomodern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics.[1]
As an analytical concept andnormative idea, modernity is closely linked to theethos of philosophical and aestheticmodernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such asexistentialism,modern art, the formal establishment ofsocial science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such asMarxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated withsecularization,liberalization, modernization andpost-industriallife.[1]
By the late 19th and 20th centuries,modernist art, politics, science and culture has come to dominate not only Western Europe and North America, but almost every populated area on the globe, includingmovements thought of as opposed to theWestandglobalization. The modern era is closely associated with the development ofindividualism,[2]capitalism,[3] urbanization[2] and abelief in the possibilities of technological and politicalprogress.[4][5]Wars andother perceived problems of this era, many of which come from the effects of rapid change, and the connectedloss of strength of traditional religious andethical norms, have led to manyreactions against modern development.[6][7] Optimism andbelief in constant progress has been most recently criticized bypostmodernism while thedominance of Western Europe andAnglo-America over other continents has been criticized bypostcolonial theory.
In the context ofart history, modernity (Fr.modernité) has a more limited sense,modern art covering the period ofc. 1860–1970. Use of the term in this sense is attributed toCharles Baudelaire, who in his 1863 essay "The Painter of Modern Life", designated the "fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis", and the responsibility art has to capture that experience. In this sense, the term refers to "a particular relationship to time, one characterized by intense historical discontinuity or rupture, openness to the novelty of the future, and a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present".[8][failed verification]
TheLate Latin adjectivemodernus, a derivation from the adverbmodo ("presently, just now", also "method"), is attested from the 5th century CE, at first in the context of distinguishing theChristian era of theLater Roman Empire from thePagan era of theGreco-Roman world. In the 6th century CE, Roman historian and statesmanCassiodorus appears to have been the first writer to usemodernus ("modern") regularly to refer to his own age.[9]
The termsantiquus andmodernus were used in a chronological sense in theCarolingian era. For example, amagister modernus referred to a contemporary scholar, as opposed to old authorities such asBenedict of Nursia. In itsearly medieval usage, the termmodernus referred to authorities regarded inmedieval Europe as younger than the Greco-Roman scholars ofClassical antiquity and/or theChurch Fathers of the Christian era, but not necessarily to the present day, and could include authors several centuries old, from about the time ofBede, i.e. referring to the time after the foundation of theOrder of Saint Benedict and/or the fall of theWestern Roman Empire.[10]
The Latin adjective was adopted inMiddle French, asmoderne, by the 15th century, and hence, in the earlyTudor period, intoEarly Modern English. The early modern word meant "now existing", or "about the present times", not necessarily with a positive connotation. English author and playwrightWilliam Shakespeare used the termmodern in the sense of "everyday, ordinary, commonplace".
The word entered wide usage in the context of the late 17th-centuryquarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns within theAcadémie Française, debating the question of "Is Modern culture superior to Classical (Græco–Roman) culture?" In the context of this debate, the ancients (anciens) and moderns (modernes) were proponents of opposing views, the former believing that contemporary writers could do no better than imitate the genius of Classical antiquity, while the latter, first withCharles Perrault (1687), proposed that more than a mereRenaissance of ancient achievements, theAge of Reason had gone beyond what had been possible in the Classical period of the Greco-Roman civilization. The termmodernity, first coined in the 1620s, in this context assumed the implication of a historical epoch following the Renaissance, in which the achievements of antiquity were surpassed.[11]
Modernity has been associated with cultural and intellectual movements of 1436–1789 and extending to the 1970s or later.[12]
According toMarshall Berman,[13] modernity is periodized into three conventional phases dubbed "Early", "Classical", and "Late" by Peter Osborne:[14]
In the second phase, Berman draws upon the growth of modern technologies such as the newspaper, telegraph, and other forms of mass media. There was a great shift into modernization in the name of industrial capitalism. Finally, in the third phase, modernist arts and individual creativity marked the beginning of a new modernist age as it combats oppressive politics, economics as well as other social forces including mass media.[15][citation needed]
Some authors, such asLyotard andBaudrillard,[citation needed] believe that modernity ended in the mid- or late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namelyPostmodernity (1930s/1950s/1990s–present). Other theorists, however, regard the period from the late 20th century to the present as merely another phase of modernity;Zygmunt Bauman[16] calls this phaseliquid modernity, Giddens labels it high modernity (seeHigh modernism).[17]
Politically, modernity's earliest phase starts withNiccolò Machiavelli's works which openly rejected the medieval and Aristotelian style of analyzing politics by comparison with ideas about how things should be, in favour of realistic analysis of how things really are. He also proposed that an aim of politics is to control one's own chance or fortune, and that relying upon providence actually leads to evil. Machiavelli argued, for example, that violent divisions within political communities are unavoidable, but can also be a source of strength which lawmakers and leaders should account for and even encourage in some ways.[18]
Machiavelli's recommendations were sometimes influential upon kings and princes, but eventually came to be seen as favoring free republics over monarchies.[19] Machiavelli in turn influencedFrancis Bacon,[20]Marchamont Needham,[21]James Harrington,[21]John Milton,[22]David Hume,[23] and many others.[24]
Important modern political doctrines which stem from the new Machiavellian realism includeMandeville's influential proposal that "Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits" (the last sentence of hisFable of the Bees), and also the doctrine of a constitutionalseparation of powers in government, first clearly proposed byMontesquieu. Both these principles are enshrined within the constitutions of mostmodern democracies. It has been observed that while Machiavelli's realism saw a value to war and political violence, his lasting influence has been "tamed" so that useful conflict was deliberately converted as much as possible to formalized political struggles and the economic "conflict" encouraged between free, private enterprises.[25][26]
Starting withThomas Hobbes, attempts were made to use the methods of the new modern physical sciences, as proposed byBacon andDescartes, applied to humanity and politics.[27] Notable attempts to improve upon the methodological approach of Hobbes include those ofJohn Locke,[28]Spinoza,[29]Giambattista Vico,[30] and Rousseau.[31]David Hume made what he considered to be the first proper attempt at trying to apply Bacon's scientific method to political subjects,[32] rejecting some aspects of the approach of Hobbes.
Modernist republicanism openly influenced the foundation of republics during theDutch Revolt (1568–1609),[33]English Civil War (1642–1651),[21]American Revolution (1775–1783),[34] theFrench Revolution (1789–1799), and theHaitian Revolution (1791–1804).[35]
A second phase of modernist political thinking begins with Rousseau, who questioned the natural rationality and sociality of humanity and proposed thathuman nature was much more malleable than had been previously thought. By this logic, what makes a good political system or a good man is completely dependent upon the chance path a whole people has taken over history. This thought influenced the political (and aesthetic) thinking ofImmanuel Kant,Edmund Burke, and others and led to a critical review of modernist politics. On the conservative side, Burke argued that this understanding encouraged caution and avoidance of radical change. However, more ambitious movements also developed from this insight into human culture, initiallyRomanticism andHistoricism, and eventually both theCommunism ofKarl Marx, and the modern forms ofnationalism inspired by theFrench Revolution, including, in one extreme, the GermanNazi movement.[36]
On the other hand, the notion of modernity has been contested also due to its Euro-centric underpinnings. Postcolonial scholars have extensively critiqued the Eurocentric nature of modernity, particularly its portrayal as a linear process originating in Europe and subsequently spreading—or being imposed—on the rest of the world. Dipesh Chakrabarty contends that European historicism positions Europe as the exclusive birthplace of modernity, placing European thinkers and institutions at the center of Enlightenment, progress, and innovation. Latin America's version of modernity is a prime example of a contradiction to European modernity. During Europe's imperial conquest, ultimately created a dominant version of colonialism that the world would associate with modernity, Mexico provided an alternative version of modernity that contradicted the brutal and harsh nature of colonial Europe.[37] This narrative marginalizes non-Western thinkers, ideas, and achievements, reducing them to either deviations from or delays in an otherwise supposedly universal trajectory of modern development.[38] Frantz Fanon similarly exposes the hypocrisy of European modernity, which promotes ideals of progress and rationality while concealing how much of Europe’s economic growth was built on the exploitation, violence, and dehumanization integral to colonial domination.[39] Similarly, Bhambra argued that beyond economic advancement, Western powers "modernized" through colonialism, demonstrating that developments such as the welfare systems in England were largely enabled by the wealth extracted through colonial exploitation.[40]
In sociology, a discipline that arose in direct response to the social problems of modernity,[41] the term most generally refers to the social conditions, processes, and discourses consequent to theAge of Enlightenment. In the most basic terms, British sociologistAnthony Giddens describes modernity as
...a shorthand term for modern society, or industrial civilization. Portrayed in more detail, it is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as open to transformation, by human intervention; (2) a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society—more technically, a complex of institutions—which, unlike any preceding culture, lives in the future, rather than the past.[42]
Other writers have criticized such definitions as just being a listing of factors. They argue that modernity, contingently understood as marked by an ontological formation in dominance, needs to be defined much more fundamentally in terms of different ways of being.
The modern is thus defined by the way in which prior valences of social life ... are reconstituted through a constructivist reframing of social practices in relation to basic categories of existence common to all humans: time, space, embodiment, performance and knowledge. The word 'reconstituted' here explicitly does not mean replaced.[43]
This means that modernity overlays earlier formations of traditional and customary life without necessarily replacing them. In a 2006 review essay, historian Michael Saler extended and substantiated this premise, noting that scholarship had revealed historical perspectives on modernity that encompassed both enchantment anddisenchantment. Late Victorians, for instance, "discussed science in terms of magical influences and vital correspondences, and when vitalism began to be superseded by more mechanistic explanations in the 1830s, magic still remained part of the discourse—now called 'natural magic,' to be sure, but no less 'marvelous' for being the result of determinate and predictable natural processes." Mass culture, despite its "superficialities, irrationalities, prejudices, and problems," became "a vital source of contingent and rational enchantments as well." Occultism could contribute to the conclusions reached by modern psychologists and advanced a "satisfaction" found in this mass culture. In addition, Saler observed that "different accounts of modernity may stress diverse combinations or accentuate some factors more than others...Modernity is defined less by binaries arranged in an implicit hierarchy, or by the dialectical transformation of one term into its opposite, than by unresolved contradictions and oppositions, or antinomies: modernity is Janus-faced."[44]
In 2020 Jason Crawford critiqued this recent historiography on enchantment and modernity. The historical evidence of "enchantments" for these studies, particularly in mass and print cultures, "might offer some solace to the citizens of a disenchanted world, but they don't really change the condition of that world." These "enchantments" offered a "troubled kind of unreality" increasingly separate from modernity.[45] Per Osterrgard and James Fitchett advanced a thesis that mass culture, while generating sources for "enchantment", more commonly produced "simulations" of "enchantments" and "disenchantments" for consumers.[46]
The era of modernity is characterised socially by industrialisation and the division of labour, and philosophically by "the loss ofcertainty, and the realization that certainty can never be established, once and for all".[11] With new social and philosophical conditions arose fundamental new challenges. Various 19th-century intellectuals, fromAuguste Comte toKarl Marx toSigmund Freud, attempted to offer scientific and/or political ideologies in the wake of secularisation. Modernity may be described as the "age of ideology".[47]
For Marx what was the basis of modernity was the emergence of capitalism and the revolutionary bourgeoisie, which led to an unprecedented expansion of productive forces and to the creation of the world market.Durkheim tackled modernity from a different angle by following the ideas of Saint-Simon about the industrial system. Although the starting point is the same as Marx, feudal society, Durkheim emphasizes far less the rising of the bourgeoisie as a new revolutionary class and very seldom refers to capitalism as the new mode of production implemented by it. The fundamental impulse to modernity is rather industrialism accompanied by the new scientific forces. In the work ofMax Weber, modernity is closely associated with the processes of rationalization and disenchantment of the world.[48]
Critical theorists such asTheodor Adorno andZygmunt Bauman propose that modernity or industrialization represents a departure from the central tenets of the Enlightenment and towards nefarious processes ofalienation, such ascommodity fetishism and theHolocaust.[49][page needed][50] Contemporary sociologicalcritical theory presents the concept ofrationalization in even more negative terms than those Weber originally defined. Processes of rationalization—as progress for the sake of progress—may in many cases have what critical theory says is a negative and dehumanising effect on modern society.[49][page needed][51]
Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of disaster triumphant.[52]
What prompts so many commentators to speak of the 'end of history', of post-modernity, 'second modernity' and 'surmodernity', or otherwise to articulate the intuition of a radical change in the arrangement of human cohabitation and in social conditions under which life-politics is nowadays conducted, is the fact that the long effort to accelerate the speed of movement has presently reached its 'natural limit'. Power can move with the speed of the electronic signal – and so the time required for the movement of its essential ingredients has been reduced to instantaneity. For all practical purposes, power has become truly exterritorial, no longer bound, or even slowed down, by the resistance of space (the advent of cellular telephones may well serve as a symbolic 'last blow' delivered to the dependency on space: even the access to a telephone market is unnecessary for a command to be given and seen through to its effect.[53]
Consequent to debate abouteconomic globalization, the comparative analysis of civilizations, and the post-colonial perspective of "alternative modernities",Shmuel Eisenstadt introduced the concept of "multiple modernities".[54][11] Modernity as a "plural condition" is the central concept of this sociologic approach and perspective, which broadens the definition of "modernity" from exclusively denoting Western European culture to aculturally relativistic definition, thereby: "Modernity is not Westernization, and its key processes and dynamics can be found in all societies".[11]
Central to modernity is emancipation from religion, specifically the hegemony of Christianity (mainlyRoman Catholicism), and the consequent secularization.[citation needed] According to writers like Fackenheim and Husserl, modern thought repudiates theJudeo-Christian belief in the Biblical God as a mere relic of superstitious ages.[55][56][note 1] It all started with Descartes' revolutionarymethodic doubt, which transformed the concept of truth in the concept of certainty, whose only guarantor is no longer God or the Church, but Man's subjective judgement.[57][58][note 2]
Theologians have adapted in different ways to the challenge of modernity.Liberal theology, over perhaps the past 200 years or so, has tried, in various iterations, to accommodate, or at least tolerate, modern doubt in expounding Christian revelation, whileTraditionalist Catholics,Eastern Orthodox andfundamentalistProtestant thinkers and clerics have tried to fight back, denouncing skepticism of every kind.[59][60][61][62][note 3] Modernity aimed towards "a progressive force promising to liberate humankind from ignorance and irrationality".[63]
In the 16th and 17th centuries,Copernicus,Kepler,Galileo, and others developed a new approach to physics and astronomy which changed the way people came to think about many things. Copernicus presented new models of theSolar System which no longer placed humanity's home, Earth, in the centre. Kepler used mathematics to discuss physics and described the regularities of nature this way. Galileo actually made his famous proof of uniform acceleration infreefall using mathematics.[64]
Francis Bacon, especially in hisNovum Organum, argued for a new methodological approach. It was an experimental-based approach to science, which sought no knowledge offormal or final causes.[citation needed] Yet, he was no materialist. He also talked of the two books of God, God's Word (Scripture) and God's work (nature).[65] But he also added a theme that science should seek to control nature for the sake of humanity, and not seek to understand it just for the sake of understanding. In both these things, he was influenced by Machiavelli's earlier criticism of medievalScholasticism, and his proposal that leaders should aim to control their own fortune.[64]
Influenced both by Galileo's new physics and Bacon,René Descartes argued soon afterward that mathematics andgeometry provided a model of how scientific knowledge could be built up in small steps. He also argued openly that human beings themselves could be understood as complex machines.[66]
Isaac Newton, influenced by Descartes, but also, like Bacon, a proponent of experimentation, provided the archetypal example of how bothCartesian mathematics,geometry andtheoreticaldeduction on the one hand, andBaconianexperimental observation andinduction on the other hand, together could lead to great advances in the practical understanding of regularities innature.[67][68]
One common conception of modernity is the condition of Western history since the mid-15th century, or roughly the European development ofmovable type[69] and theprinting press.[70] In this context the modern society is said to develop over many periods and to be influenced by important events that represent breaks in the continuity.[71][72][73]
After modernist political thinking had already become widely known in France,Rousseau's re-examination of human nature led to a new criticism of the value ofreasoning itself which in turn led to a new understanding of less rationalistic human activities, especially the arts. The initial influence was upon the movements known asGerman Idealism andRomanticism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern art therefore belongs only to the later phases of modernity.[74]
For this reasonart history keeps the term modernity distinct from the termsModern Age andModernism – as a discrete "term applied to the cultural condition in which the seemingly absolute necessity ofinnovation becomes a primary fact of life, work, and thought". And modernity in art "is more than merely the state of being modern, or the opposition between old and new".[75]
In the essay "The Painter of Modern Life" (1863), Charles Baudelaire gives a literary definition: "By modernity, I mean the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent".[76]
Advancing technological innovation, affecting artistic technique and the means of manufacture, changed rapidly the possibilities of art and its status in a rapidly changing society. Photography challenged the place of the painter and painting. Architecture was transformed by the availability of steel for structures.
From conservative Protestant theologianThomas C. Oden's perspective, modernity is marked by "four fundamental values":[77]
Modernity rejects anything "old" and makes "novelty ... a criterion for truth." This results in a great "phobic response to anything antiquarian." In contrast, "classical Christian consciousness" resisted "novelty".[77]
Within Roman Catholicism, Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius X claim thatModernism (in a particular definition of the Catholic Church) is a danger to the Christian faith. Pope Pius IX compiled aSyllabus of Errors published on December 8, 1864, to describe his objections to Modernism.[78] Pope Pius X further elaborated on the characteristics and consequences of Modernism, from his perspective, in an encyclical entitled "Pascendi Dominici gregis" (Feeding the Lord's Flock) on September 8, 1907.[79] Pascendi Dominici Gregis states that the principles of Modernism, taken to a logical conclusion, lead to atheism. The Roman Catholic Church was serious enough about the threat of Modernism that it required all Roman Catholic clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors and seminary professors to swear anOath against modernism[80] from 1910 until this directive was rescinded in 1967, in keeping with the directives of theSecond Vatican Council.[citation needed]
Of the available conceptual definitions in sociology, modernity is "marked and defined by an obsession with 'evidence',"visual culture, and personal visibility.[81] Generally, the large-scale social integration constituting modernity, involves the:[citation needed]
Quotation fromHusserl 1931,[page needed]:But there does seem to be a necessary conflict between modern thought and the Biblical belief in revelation. All claims of revelation, modern science and philosophy seem agreed, must be repudiated, as mere relics of superstitious ages. ... [to a modern phylosopher] The Biblical God...was a mere myth of bygone ages.
When, with the beginning of modern times, religious belief was becoming more and more externalized as a lifeless convention, men of intellect were lifted by a new belief, their great belief in an autonomous philosophy and science.
The essence of modernity can be seen in humanity's freeing itself from the bonds of Middle Ages... Certainly the modern age has, as a consequence of the liberation of humanity, introduced subjectivism and individualism. ... For up to Descartes... The claim [of a self-supported, unshakable foundation of truth, in the sense of certainty] originates in that emancipation of man in which he frees himself from obligation to Christian revelational truth and Church doctrine to a legislating for himself that takes its stand upon itself.
... a cluster of issues surrounding the assessment of modernity and of the apologetic task of theology in modernity. Both men [Rahner and Balthasar] were deeply concerned with apologetics, with the question of how to present Christianity in a world which is no longer well-disposed towards it. ... both thought that modernity raised particular problems for being a believing Christian, and therefore for apologetics.
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