''Modernity is that spark that demolished irrationality, paving the way for the light of rationality and science. '
Painting by Sallah Eddine Tahiri | C 2026 MrSalah.com
Modernity is the spark that demolished irrationality, paving the way towards the light of rationality and science. Modernity is a term that has to do with the Age of Enlightenment, as its starting point, when Europe and North America started having the darkness faded, moving from irrational thinking in the leadership of the church to rationality and logic in the leadership of science.
This was the result of different changes in the European mentality. Namely, that of rebellion against any personality or institution which confronts progress that had been appreciated the most as a value of
modernity and enlightenment. Yet, by the end of the twentieth century, modernity
seemed to be very broad and partially subjective in its view of the West as the
only progress-leading civilisation. This essay is to contextualise modernity
and post-modernity, exposing their pillars, and how the move was possible from
the first to the second one.
Contextualising Modernity
Modernity is the ensemble of social-political and philosophical-scientific changes witnessed in Europe since the mid of the eighteenth century (Stockl, 2007). It might be fair to say that modernity had its way constructed at first by the invention of the printer in 1436 by Johannesburg Gutenberg. The link between the printer and modernity was the wide distribution of thoughts, not only for the elite who were used to be targeted by any idea produced but also for the public.
The printing press has also contributed to the flexibility of knowledge transfer among different European nations, through translation. Later, modernity started clearing up with the English civil war in 1642, which was the result of a revolution against a whole traditional system in Britain. The British civil war by its success to democratise Britain has inspired other territories in Europe politically, economically, socially, and philosophically. Finally, there came the Industrial Revolution (1760) in Britain which erased the old structure of society, through its new class division. This revolution was succeeded by the French Revolution in 1789. That revolution was to make it clear that there are only three initial principles: equality, liberty, and fraternity.
The Pillars of Modernity
Modernity was established on various pillars. The main inclusive ones are regulation and emancipation, each of which contains three basics. Emancipation, literally, refers to the act of being free. Yet, the term in the context of modernity is to refer to the aspiration of a well and better-structured society in the future and the power of Man to change and have positive progress, through confronting the present experiences and looking forward to replacing them with more appropriate ones in the future. Emancipation constitutes three elements. The first one is the arts and literature’s expressive rationality. It signifies the end of art as a way to reproduce objects, and rather as a way of reasoning and expression. The second element is science and technology’s cognitive instrumental rationality. This implies the freeing of knowledge, generally, from any kind of irrationality or subjectivity. The third element is the rule of law and the rational moral practice of ethics (Harrington, 2000). That one was to address the development of laws regarding all Men's well-being.
On the other hand, regulation deals with the present contradicting emancipation, which is about the future. Regulation
contains also three basics. At the surface, comes the state (Hobbes). This
term sets horizons for what people can do in relation to the State and how they
are obliged to be linked to it as a democratic entity. Likewise, we shall encounter
the other basis which is ‘’the principle of the market’’(Adam Smith). It is
the main conception in the economic side of modernity, as a movement seeking the
establishment of a free market. Finally, there comes the concept of community (The
Social Contract by Rousseau). It refers to the very ancient relations
established between members of the same society which are governed by ethics
and morals through humanistic services exchange (De Sousa Santos, 2020).
Generally, modernity is the accumulation of all the Enlightenment values. Starting from liberty, equality, fraternity, rationality, democracy and positive progress. Those were the starting points, as they represented things that are seen as initial for the proper life of each citizen. Such is the free-market value which was to spread the most all over the world.
Some Modern Thinkers and Personalities
· Adam Smith: An economist thinker who built the
principles of the modern free market, namely the term ‘’the hidden hand’’.
· J. J. Rousseau:
An early
modern thinker who established mainly the theory of social contract which
explains the principle by which relations among people are maintained.
· Pablo Picasso:
A late
modern artist who has marked the use of art in its connotational way, away from
imagery. His most famous painting was Guernica.
· S. Dali: One of the leaders of Dadaism in the late
modern era. Throughout declaring war in art against physical war (WWI).
Critics of Modernity
Modernity has freed the world, at least the Western world, from irrationality and mythical thinking, yet, it was criticised. Karl Marx and Immanuel Kant were the main two thinkers to criticise Western modernity during its period.
Immanuel
Kant (1795) in his book Perpetual Peace, proposed the idea of ‘’Republics’’
rather than ‘’One Republic’’. Kant’s criticism was mainly on the deep structure
of Western modernity, which claims the superiority of the Western model and how
should all the other nations follow it. Kant stated that there can be actual different
federal republics, rather than only that paradigm produced by the Western
nations. This implies the fact that there may be several sorts of modernity,
depending on its context.
With a more precise study, Karl Marx (1867), in his book Das Kapital, confronted the modern political economy. Marx produced an accurate analysis of the capitalistic economy and its relation to politics. Those analyses were to come to the judgment that the Western model of economy, i.e., capitalism is based on the exploitation of both the local and external working class.
Contextualising Postmodernity
Postmodernity is an objective review and logical modification of modernism. The latter, notably, enlightened the world with its new rational and liber values. Nonetheless, modernism has brought about colonisation, savage capitalism, nationalism, and fascism. Thus, it had to come to an end and be rethought in the late twentieth century. Accurately, in terms of ideas, modernism was very broad and vague to the extent of falling into hasty generalisation in multiple cases. It was also pillared on grand narratives that are faced with little narratives in the postmodern era. Additionally, unlike modernism, postmodernity have thinkers from different perspectives and has got no specific pillars. This part will be devoted to the grand and little narratives, as well as some key thinkers of postmodernity.
Grand and Little Narratives
Grand, master, and big narratives (Grands Récits, Francois Leotard) are modernity-related terms which were based on knowledge totalisation. The abundance of religious mythical thoughts and their neglect during the modern era in Western society has left a big gap in people’s mentality. This has paved the way for the flourishment of new ideologies claiming to shape a universal knowledge with a general paradigm. White (1975) states that there are four main grand narratives of a big impact on Western society. These are Greek Fatalism, Christian Redemptionism, Progressivism of the Bourgeoisie, and Marxism. However, the most dangerous of all master narratives in the modern era was nationalism, namely Nazism in Germany. This fact drives us to deduce the role of past, race, and claimed sacred lands glorification in the rise of nationalism (Dozon, 2018).
Additionally, François Leotard in his book The Post-Modern Condition: A Report
on Knowledge, identified two Meta narratives. The first is that history is on
its road to emancipation and social enlightenment. The second is knowledge as
leaning toward generalisation. Those two meta-narratives as well as all the
others are but a production of the elite, since they are the only ones who own the
tools to have their discourse reached to those empowered or subalterns. In
other words, these narratives are authoritatively, reinforced on the population
as a sort of hegemony.
On the other hand, François Leotard proposes a new kind of post-modern narratives which are to be objective and nonhegemonic; these are little narratives (Petits récits). Micronarratives are not universal as grand ones. They rather focus on partial knowledge, as modernity sees knowledge as something which can never be complete. Thus, any claim of its perfection or even progress to perfection is a mere fallacious narrative that has nothing to do with rationality.
For a better understanding of Meta narratives, an example can be given from the paper written by Dhanya (2019). This paper was devoted to deducing the notion of grand narratives in the movie of Titanic. It has mainly emphasised the idea that Titanic: a new modern ship with the latest technologies that have been seen as perfect at that time had sunk in the end, declaring the fallaciousness of grand narratives.
Postmodern Thinkers
Edward Said
Edward Said was that person
with two conscious minds in one. He was born in 1953 in Jerusalem and then moved to NYC where he spent his full academic career as a
student and as a key thinker. Not only that but there was a third world in Said’s
mind. He, as an Arab Palestinian, was Christian and meanwhile knew everything in
detail about Muslims, since they were living in the same environment. The accumulation
of the previously mentioned conditions in Said’s life leaves no doubt about his relative objectivity in analysis, since he witnessed two main contradictory worlds. This has indeed given
value to Said’s works, especially his main one ‘’Orientalism’’.
Orientalism refers to all the different thoughts
constructed in the West about the East. In his book Orientalism, Said (1978) argues
that the occident or the West is producing a fake image of the East, namely the
Arab world. This image was transmitted by Western media and authorities during
their contact with Arabs since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Thereafter, this view itself set the stage for the colonisation of the Arab world
in the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Western discourse has
ended up filling the Westerners’ minds with the idea of the uncivilised, unsophisticated,
immature, terrorist, and sex-centred orient. Said later on adds the potential fact of the Orient
creating a reactionary action and transforming itself into that image faked by
the West.
Furthermore, Edward Said was influenced by Michael
Foucault’s writings, mainly the idea of discourse and difference. Foucault’s
discourse was the initial background for Said’s orientalism, due to the fact
that orientalism is a discourse by the West aiming to dominate a scale of subalterns. The idea of difference was also of relation, although not that
strong, to Foucault’s ‘’ La Différence’’. Said (1985) in his book Beginnings:
Intention and Method, states that difference is important in writing and is the
one producing a new creative literary beginning.
Michael Foucault
Michael Foucault was born in 1926 in France, benefiting from the
literature constructed by other French philosophers in the earlier generation. One of those was Jean-Paul Sartre, especially
in his ideas about human liberty and individual freedoms (Sartre, 1946). The
other influential French philosopher was the Marxist philosopher, Louis
Althusser. This thinker has played a vital role in Foucault’s understanding of
power and hegemony. Foucault was essentially marked by his unbiasedness and
objectivity for several reasons.
Foucault’s way of thinking was described by
no better than E. Said (1957) when saying, ‘’Foucault writes neither philosophy nor
history as they are commonly experienced’’.
Following the objective methods, Foucault declares that history is to be
studied only through archelogy. The latter does stand on deducing history from
antiquities and materials that belong to the historical period under study. Foucault
has, namely, conducted two studies using the archaeological approach. These are
History of Sexuality (1976) and Madness and Civilisation.
Foucault also
delved into the power of discourse as a means of hegemony. For Foucault, discourse is a historical term that shapes knowledge and meaning (Adams, 2017).
This might imply that the dominant discourse is what provides meaning to the
dominated group. The elite or those in power are the only ones with a high
chance of discourse domination over the others. Thus, the perception of those
in power is usually the same as the public’s.
Jacques Derrida:
Jacques Derrida is
another French postmodern thinker whose works were based on other French philosophers’
backgrounds. He was born in 1930 in Algeria. Derrida directed his efforts to
everything in relation to exposing the conceptualisations that featured human
beings through different periods, mainly the modern one. He tried,
overall, to deconstruct everything that has been seen as deterministic, structured,
or of a pure relationship.
Most of Derrida’s works
were on the critique of structuralism. Ones like Speech and
Phenomena (1967), Grammatology (1967), and Writing and Difference (1967). Derrida
argues that the relation between words and what they mean can never be pure and
ambiguity will always mark this relation. Saussure (1916) provides what he claimed
to be the underlying relation between words and their conception. He modulated ‘’Le
Signifié’’ the signified which means the conception or the material object
aimed to be transmitted by the utterance. On the other hand, ‘’Le Signifiant’’ means
the words used to express the signified. Derrida deconstructed this relation,
stating that the sign can never reach the extent to which it can signify a
specific conception or object meticulously.
Consequently, Derrida’s conception of other thinkers was not stable. He never stated that a thinker claims exactly what people interpret her/him like. He rather sees that thinkers can be understood differently, depending on the interpreter and his background. An example can be given from his statement that Marx’s ideas cannot be universally interpreted fairly.
Conclusion
In conclusion, modernity was pushed by the Enlightenment, producing a new objective perception of our reality. This was on different levels, politically, socially, philosophically, and scientifically. Yet, modernity, so as everything, has its part in some world disasters such as colonialism and nationalism. Those are what postmodernity is trying to erase, by using little narratives and microanalysis as the paradigm through which things are to be seen.
References
Arac, J., & Said, E. W. (1978). Beginnings:
Intention and Method. Comparative Literature, 30(2), 185.
https://doi.org/10.2307/1770184
De Saussure, F. (1916). Course in
General Linguistics. In Macat Library eBooks.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781912281732
De Sousa Santos, B. (2020). Toward
a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization, and Emancipation.
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA61002783
Derrida,
J., Allison, D. B., & Garver, N. (1967). Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on
Husserl’s Theory of Signs. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB08914929
Derrida,
J., & Bass, A. S. (1967). Writing and Difference. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA52717985
Foucault, M. (1961). History of
Madness. Psychology Press.
Foucault, M. (1976). The History
of Sexuality. https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/endsandbeginnings/foucaultrepressiveen278.pdf
Harrington, A. (2000). A kind of
fieldwork in our ongoing practices of enlightenment. History of the Human
Sciences, 13(4), 125–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/09526950022120818
Kant, I. (1991). Perpetual Peace: a
Philosophical Sketch. In Cambridge University Press eBooks (pp. 93–130).
https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511809620.007
Lyotard and the end of grand
narratives. (2001). Choice Reviews Online, 39(01), 39–0231.
https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.39-0231
Marx, K. (1867). Das. In Capital:
A Critique of Political Economy.
Michel Foucault: Discourse. (2017, November 17). Retrieved May
23, 2023, from https://criticallegalthinking.com/2017/11/17/michel-foucault-discourse/
Nelson, J. S., & White, H. V.
(1975). Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. History
and Theory, 14(1), 74. https://doi.org/10.2307/2504605
Paralogy of Petit Narratives: a Lyotardian
Reading of James Cameron’s Titanic. (2019). Journal of Research in
Humanities and Social Science, 7(4), 31–38.
Renard, J. (2018). Jean-Pierre
Dozon, La vérité est ailleurs. Complots et sorcellerie. Archives Des
Sciences Sociales Des Religions, 4, 272–273.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-archives-de-sciences-sociales-des-religions-2018-4-page-272.htm
Sartre, J. (1973). Existentialism
and Humanism.
Stöckl, K. (2007). Modernity and its
critique in 20th century Russian orthodox thought. Studies in East European
Thought, 58(4), 243–269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-006-9009-0