Lecture 1: Historical and Conceptual Background
1. For over forty years a debate has raged around the question of
modernity making it one of the most sustained issues in contemporary cultural
discourse. If we look at the historical background to this debate, we can see a
range of causes that have conditioned our thinking about it. First of all, the
struggle for de-colonisation in the Third World after WW11 questioned the
hegemony of “western values” and especially their unacknowledged power agenda.
The result was that former assumptions that the West was the bearer of
historical progress began to fray around the edges. This is followed by the deflation of post-World War II
optimism in the West that began to emerge in the early seventies. Assumptions
about unending economic growth and boundless prosperity collided with the
reality of a series of system failures: the oil crisis, economic stagflation, and
the early signs of the depletion of nature. The master narrative of the 19th
century that viewed modernity in the image of the speeding train,
technologically sophisticated, sure of direction and capable or ever increasing
speeds towards a known direction, became more questionable. From this time, the
confidence of citizens of the contemporary west has been shaken and they have
become much more aware of losses, limits, risks and uncertainty associated with
this social project. However, at the same time, major elements of this
narrative have continued to play a key role in the social imaginary of future,
especially beyond the Western heartland of modernity. Its version of “progress” has been universalized along with the
attractions of technological advance and material prosperity; developing and
third world societies strive after material progress, technological advance and
even freedom. So the very real successes of the project have made it
irresistible to an increasingly globalised world that seems to present all
citizens with some identical and common problems and tasks.
2. Contemporary modernity therefore appears enigmatic: desirable but
also troubled and unsustainable. This also means that the future seems far more
uncertain than it might have in the past. This circumstance has been magnified
in your time by major shifts in geo-political world order and changing
political and cultural vocabularies (signatures from this can be the end of the
Cold War, the rise of post-modernism and the era of the so-called “war on
terror”). Nor is this uncertainty confined to world politics, ideology and
culture: it is also reflected in the life-world of every modern individual. The
technological and information revolutions, the greater mobility and dynamism of
the economy connected to globalization impact on us all in a way that makes the
question of modernity a crucial existential question. We have now been educated
by modernity to expect a dynamic and constantly social environment. Yet we
still need and desire orientation in the contemporary world. Each generation likes
to think of itself as being part of the future, breaking with that which is
decrepit and ossified in the present. But in an increasingly dynamic society
where tradition has less hold than previously, we are also compelled to
negotiate the present with far less certainty than our predecessors. We still
feel that we are aboard that train and we may doubt that it is possible to get
off or even put on the brakes, but we aren’t completely sure that we want to be
on it, we don’t know if we are heading in the right direction nor whether the
speed we are going might not be leading to disaster. So it is this uncertainty
and its perplexing combination of hopes and fears that surrounds our
contemporary reflection on modernity and provides it with such an enigmatic
appearance.
3. Before I say any more
let me insist that the concept of “modernity” is a dynamic theoretical
construct. There is an infinite number of ways to construct “modernity”. As
mentioned, modern social experience is alive and constantly changing, therefore
the topic is inexhaustible. There never will be a definitive account. All we
have is a series of influential and even paradigmatic attempts to theoretically
capturing the essence of such a society. The course you are about to embark
upon used to be called "Theories of Modernity" rather than "A
Theory of Modernity". Apart from the humble admission that I do not
possess my own theory of modernity, one might also assert that the very attempt
to discover an “essence“ of modernity is illusory because its object is
constantly changing. In the light of this concession, you can understand why I
have chosen to look at some of the great attempts to reconstruct such a theory.
This course gives us both an opportunity both explore some of the classical
attempt to construct such a theory, and to think about what are the features of
modern social existence? What is the general character of our experience? Or
can we talk about the general character of our experience at all? Is this
experience always so irreducibly individuated that it makes no sense to speak
of a general modern social experience? Against the background of this
inevitable pluralism, I will return to the 19th century and look
more closely at four paradigmatic attempts to theorize the then emerging modern
social world. Hegel, Tocqueville, Marx and Nietzsche are paradigmatic in the
sense of offering categories, questions and frameworks that have had an
enduring influence. These theories cannot provide us with all the ingredients
needed for a contemporary view but they do articulate some of the fundamental
tensions in modern societies and ways of thinking them through from our
perspective. But the very fact that their perspective is not our own, that we
now can see definite limitations in their ways of thinking about modernity that
they probably could not see, reinforces the sense that we have moved on and
have our own distinctive challenges. However, these theories can still serve as
theoretical trampolines to assist our own thinking about modernity.
4. I should also point out from the outset that the question of
modernity is much more our question rather than theirs. Some like Tocqueville
or Marx focus on specific institutional features like democracy or capitalism
as the key to interpreting the likely fate or modern societies. Others like
Nietzsche focus less on specific institutions and more on encompassing cultural
diagnosis picking out trends like "nihilism": the exhaustion of the
old values and a resulting sense of lassitude, indifference and disorientation.
Nevertheless, to use these thinkers for the purpose of thinking about modernity
might involve a certain interpretative violence. Yet, I think this can be
justified by the fact that their works have been judged insightful to the point
of shaping our own vocabulary and understanding of modernity.
5. The concept of “modernity” has a very long history indeed. It is
employed as early as the 5th century to distinguish the present, which has
become officially Christian from the Roman and pagan past. In the following
millennium, this concept recurs when the consciousness of a new epoch formed
itself through a renewed relation to the ancients--typically when they serve as
a model for imitation. The idea of the “modern” as involving a comparative
relation to the ancients as ideal dies only with the Enlightenment and the idea
of progress both in knowledge and socio-moral improvement. The idea of the
modern is subsequently transformed into an abstract opposition between
tradition and the present. Modernity is freed from all specific historical ties
and radically historicized as the new: that which innovates and challenges
traditional authority. The concept of modernity is here tied to the projection
into the future of a surplus of potential action that has recently entered
consciousness but is not acquired from the past. In this historically changing
understanding of the concept of modernity, we can see at least two main
connotations. One locates the concept of modernity in temporal terms. This is
the simplest and most familiar. Modernity is a period of time or epoch close to
or including the present although the boundaries are broad. At one polar
everything within the current epoch can be characterized as modern while at the
other the components of modernity may have quite distant temporal origins. In
philosophical terms, the designation "modern" often refers to periods
extending back as far as the Renaissance. The other connotation of the
modernity concept proposes a substantive understanding. Here modernity is a
distinctive way of thinking and being like rationalism, mastery of nature,
innovation, belief in progress connected to particular socio-political
institutions and practices. This notion of modern is exclusive and allows an
ideal-typical evaluative identification of certain features of social life that
have become prominent in modern times. We need to be careful in our use of the
concept of modernity not to confuse its various senses. This is easy to do
because the temporal regularly suggests the substantive: there is a pervasive
belief that the modern epoch was initiated by distinctively modern beliefs and
practices. The idea that the substantive is built into the temporal makes us
comfortable by engendering a vision of modernity as a coherent and integrated
whole. However, this may be an illusion that causes modern societies to appear
far more homogenous than they really are and truncates our own practical
options. After all, something may be modern in the temporal sense (religious
fundamentalism) but not in a substantive sense. At the same time, ideas and
practices can be substantively modern (democracy) yet pre-date the temporal
boundaries of the modern.
6. Having indicated the potentially broad temporal boundaries of the
concept of modernity, it may seem arbitrary to commence this course with
thinkers from the beginning of the 19th century onwards. Of course this is
true. However, I would argue that the beginning of the 19th century represents
a qualitative intensification of all the processes and dynamics that
crystallized into a recognizable "modernity" and this makes it a
historical watershed. Of the thinkers we will be looking at, “modernity’ seems
to designate a future/ present for which the old vocabularies of religion and
political philosophy are no longer adequate. These thinkers perceive a new
constellation of problems and complexity that demands a new paradigm, a new set
of conceptual tools and a new engagement with the dynamism of the newly
emergent bourgeois world. This claim gains some plausibility if we consider the
ideal-typical life-world of the 18th and the amazing transformation it
undergoes in the course of the 19th century.
7. The typical life-world of the 18th century was relatively secure and
stable even if life was hard and vulnerable to nature. At least nine out of ten
individuals lived on the land and rural production was predominately for
subsistence. At the turn of the 19th century one could expect to live and die
in the district of one's birth. Vocational prospects and life opportunities
were virtually predetermined by the family station in the social order. Artisan
production was largely confined to the peasant’s cottage or in the few small
towns. All non-domestic artisan production was highly regulated by guilds that
controlled all aspects of production. While bourgeois social relations and
attitudes were already widespread, they were not dominant. The typical European
life world was static, hierarchically ordered and culturally homogenous.
Authoritative tradition and religion only served to reinforced this life world.
The individual is embedded in a family, a community, a way of life, which had
existed before them and seemingly, would continue long after they died. The
difficulties of travel and communication insulated the local community from the
impact of external events. The absence of labour-saving machinery and power
made work much more arduous and generally more subject to natural cycles of
day, season and weather. Clearly, such a life seems quite foreign to the
experience of most of us: it involves a sense of time and distance very different
to the modern one. Nevertheless, in a few decades this life-world of the late
18th century dissolved under the pressure of the multiple revolutionary
processes (economic, political, social, technological and cultural). We know
that in 1950 12% of the world’s population was urbanized and now it is over 50%.
8. These processes have a long and complex pre-history but they
gradually converge to undermine the late feudal order. Firstly, the French
Revolution and its political aftershocks in the 19th century destroyed the
political structures of the Ancien Regime. The political monopoly of the
nobility built on a natural hierarchical order and graded ways of life was
broken. This political emancipation also assists a new bourgeois world. Massive
expansion of trade (world market) and the great advances in transport (steam,
railways) broke down earlier parochial isolation, created new markets, raised
the mobility and tempo of life, changed forever our concepts of individual,
work, time and space. This increasing dynamism and globalisation promotes
market mechanisms and technological innovation. Increasingly commercialized
social relations fostered innovation and rendered the control of the old codes
and regulations obsolete. Emancipation of the economy from political
constraints opened up careers to talent and money. The new social mobility also
generated a new task for individuals. Identity is no longer completely fixed by
birth and station. Increasingly this will be dependent upon self-choice and
self-creation. The new dynamism naturally also had a cultural dimension.
Innovation always represents an immediate challenge to tradition. The new
science and philosophy questioned both orthodox religion and tradition in the
name of reason and gave cultural legitimisation and impetus to the other
social, political and economic secularising processes detaching the state from
the church and general culture from its former religious underpinnings.
9. Just as in our own time, right from the start this dynamic ensemble
appears with two aspects captured in the idea of modernity as creative
destruction. On the one side is a vision of dynamism, challenge, liberation,
innovation and individualism. On the other, the same historical transition
signifies chaos and confusion, new levels of social dysfunctionality,
dehumanisation and cultural loss. Massive population increase imposed immense
strains on the existing social fabric and provoked mass migration and influx to
the newly burgeoning towns. The collapse of old communities and their life
forms under the impact of industrialisation saw increased social fragmentation,
new levels of concentrated squalor, hunger, despair and insecurity. The new
bourgeois industrial barons exploited cheap labour in dehumanising conditions.
In the new anarchy of early 19th century bourgeois society, old ways of life
rapidly disappeared and the weak lacked the support and protection of
traditional institutions and customs. Alcoholism, ill health and demoralisation
were a feature of the new industrial working class ghettoes. In the midst of
this social catastrophe, the old belief systems lose their capacity to explain
or compensate the new working class. Despite its achievements and the optimism
of its supporters, broad segments of the population experienced this initial
transition to modernity as a period of profound crisis. The insecurity of
political revolution and intensified social conflict is augmented by
disorientation, despair and hunger. These two faces demonstrate even then the
enigmatic face of modernity that today we know only too well, its immanent
contradictions, real complexity and opacity.
10. If we abstract from lived experience of this great historical
transformation the most striking features are as follows:
a. Capitalism. This entails
a combination of private property in the form of mobile capital, markets and
especially those for labour power. In early modernity, the economy emerges as a
quasi-autonomous subsystem. Market mechanisms are liberated from a whole raft
of regulations and increasingly determine production. From the mid 19th century
onwards, social and political conflict rages around the question of the
irrationalities of the market, its efficiencies, its social costs and its
justice given the manifest inequalities it accentuates. Recent events like the
Global Financial Crisis perpetuate questions about the overall rationality of
Capitalism and what needs to be done to regulate its worst excesses. However,
whereas once the question was whether one was for or against capitalism, today
this question has been largely replaced by concerns about the appropriate
extent of political interference and control within society and economy and of
what type? Of course, the
existence of capitalism as a pure market society corresponding to the
assumptions of classical economist must be viewed as an abstraction.
Nevertheless, the autonomisation of this subsystem is an ongoing dynamic
process that today assumes the shape of globalization where the economy is able
to, to a large extent, avoid political regulation. As the recent G20 discussion
of taxation demonstrates, governments around the world are still struggling
with this question. Where does the emancipation of the economic end? What
social costs are we prepared to accept and can it be effectively regulated without
stultifying its benefits? Or more radically, is there an alternative mechanism
for the efficient provision of goods and services?
b. Industrialisation/ Technological Innovation. The shift of production
away from the peasant cottage to the manufacturing town was intensified by
technological revolutions in the form of applied science. The automation of
industry with the increasing sophistication of technology produced a previously
unmatched material abundance. With these come deep antinomies. On the one hand
all the great emancipatory social possibilities associated with problem solving
and pushing back the limits of nature. Only in our time have we begun to see
the increasingly significant dangers of environmental degradation, resource
depletion and potentially of changing the very character of nature itself. By
the end of the 19th century science has replaced human labor as the primary
force of production and increasing living standards are dependent on scientific
innovation and sustained industrial exploitation of nature. However, clearly
the extent and limits of this development is one of the most pressing
contemporary issues both theoretical and practical? There are the questions of
sustainability, ecological damage and the identity of the human and other
species. Also, to what extent can science be left to follow its own logic?
Given its myriad potential impacts upon society, to what extent does society
have to impose limits and safeguards upon the evolution of knowledge and
technology? Today questions arise about the obsolescence of industrialisation
itself. This does not mean that manufacturing is disappearing from the
economies of modernity but rather that it is no longer is either the great
engine of growth that it was in the 19th and best part of the 20th century nor
the bearer of modern future directed fantasy. Quite the opposite! Today, the
imaginative future of western technology more often looks like Cormac
McCarthy’s The Road. Moreover, in the first world industrialization
has been replaced by the service and communications sectors that now define the
cutting edge of modern technological innovation. This has given rise to
post-modern theories that speak of “second modernity” and contrast this to the
now “obsolete” first modernity. And even if in its crudest versions this
contrast is an exaggeration, it underlines the shifting terrain of
modernity.
