Modernity

A Characterization of Modernity

Modernity – like individualism (see http://philossophy.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/individualism/) and coevolving with it – is a socio-economico-political phenomenon that gradually began after the Middle Ages subsided and the light of the Enlightenment promise of “progress” – through reason, science, and technology – began to shine upon Europe. (Caution should be taken that there are distinctions between the terms “modern era/age”, “modernity”, and “modernism”. While these terms are essentially inter-related, they are conceptually distinguished.) The vacuum that was caused after the atrophy of the religious and socio-economico-political institutions of the Middle Ages, called for a new system to fill the void in Europe. Modernity is a paradigm shift in human thinking and human relations that ushered in the advent of secularization, industrialization, capitalism, and the rise of the nation-states. This shift in human thinking and relations produced unprecedented socio-economico-political, ethical, and cultural conditions that have drastically restructured our lives. In essence, modernity is not a cutting-edge technology, state-of-the-art plasma TV, newest microwave oven, latest fashion of clothing, or the like; these are merely products of modernity. Fundamentally, modernity is our post-traditional way of being; modernity is the post-Medieval human consciousness that has left no human institution untouched in the Western societies. And, some scholars are of the conviction that the philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650) was the zygote of this new consciousness. This article is an attempt to selectively and briefly characterize the complex phenomenon of modernity through Max Weber’s concept of “disenchantment”, Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of “passion” and “despair”, Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of “death of God”, and Karl Marx’s concept of “alienation”.

Franz Kafka and Max Weber

§1. Disenchantment

Max Weber (1864–1920), a German sociologist and one of the first major scholars who systematically examined the phenomenon of modernity, suggested that the Middle Ages, with all its disquietude, was somehow enchanted. (A dictionary definition of the word is “to attract and delight”, from Latin word in-cantāre, “to sing”). Notwithstanding all the disconcertment and brutality extant in the Medieval era, Weber felt that generally there was something qualitatively human about it. Life of a meager serf meant something in the grand scheme of things. Everything under the sun signified a purpose and had an aspect of sacredness. Or, to employ the terms coined by Martin Buber, “I-Thou” mode of relation – as opposed to “I-It” – characterized the human relations and the relation between man and nature. In contrast, Weber thought that the modern Western societies have lost, to borrow Buber’s concepts again, the “I-thou” mode of relation, which has been supplanted with “I-It” mode of relating to one another and to the natural world. This is the “disenchantment” of the modernity, according to Weber. In other words, quantitative – as opposed to qualitative – relations have become the dominant norms in the modern Western societies since the rise of science, industrialization, and capitalism. According to Weber, this is a world where scientific understanding is valued over belief, where technology is believed to solve most, if not all, socio-economic problems, and hence where everyday activities and social processes are instrumentally quantified and rationalized toward goals. This is a world where rules and procedures are often emotionlessly, indifferentially, and apathetically followed machinelike.

One can think about how we robotically follow rules and procedures from the moment we wake up every morning: conforming to our morning routines with a clock hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles, dragging ourselves to the workplaces where we are faced with additional rules and procedures, and then after work dealing with bureaucratic institutions that generally reject or sanction us if we do not conform to their particular set of rules and procedures. Weber’s understanding of modernity entails “rationalization” and bureaucratization of the modern lifestyles and social institutions. Unilateral Ratio-nalization permeates the modern lifestyles and social institutions. The modern consciousness relates to itself and to others by quantifying, rationalizing, standardizing, proceduralizing, and reifying them. Modernity is a state of being whereby life is principally and disenchantingly lived in terms of quantities, standards, procedures, and bureaucracies – many of which are blindly unperceptive or intentionally disregardful to the ever-changing human conditions.

Søren Aaby Kierkegaard

§2. Passion and Despair

Danish philosopher Søren Aaby Kierkegaard (1813-1855) had his own peculiar way of characterizing modernity (a term that might had been an anachronism in his time). He insisted that we lack “passion” (cf. Weber’s “disenchantment”) in our lives; we even lack passion when and if we commit suicide! We lack passion both when we live and when we die. In his The Present Age, he wrote:

“Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection [cf. Weber’s “rationalization”], without passion. . . . In fact, one is tempted to ask whether there is a single man left ready, for once, to commit an outrageous folly. Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.”

To accentuate the significance of passion in life, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard makes a curious contrast between a “Christian” and a “pagan”. First, he portrays the Christian who habitually, formulaically, and with great objectivity worships – as a matter of course – the one and the only true God. Then, he depicts the pagan who inwardly and with “all the passion of infinity” worships – as a matter of infinite commitment – an idol that we know is undoubtedly false. Then, he inquires, “where, then, is there more truth?” In a crafty manner, he concludes, “The one prays in truth to God although he is worshiping an idol; the other prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshiping an idol.” The essential distinction between the two men is that the Christian’s worship is a matter of what (i.e., quantitative/rationalized action), while the pagan’s worship is a matter of how (i.e., qualitative action). As is prevalent in the present age, the Christian lacks a “qualitative” state of being.

Kierkegaard also signalizes the modern age with “despair”. In his The Sickness unto Death, he portentously states:

“there is not one single living human being who does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbor an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or a something he does not even dare to try to know, an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety about himself. . . . a sickness of the spirit that signals its presence at rare intervals in and through an anxiety he cannot explain.”

We, Kierkegaard thought, suffer from despair even when we are not aware of it. Later, in the book, he idiosyncratically expresses that “actual” despair is the sickness in which one experiences “the hopelessness of not even being able to die” – even when one wishes it! In a very profound but discombobulating manner, he writes:

“This concept, the sickness unto death, must, however, be understood in a particular way. Literally it means a sickness of which the end and the result are death. . . . [However,] Christianly understood, death itself is a passing into life. Thus, from a Christian point of view, no earthly, physical sickness is the sickness unto death, for [physical] death is indeed the end of the [physical] sickness, but [physical] death is not the end [from a Christian point of view]. If there is to be any question of a sickness unto death in the strictest sense, it must be a sickness of which the end is death and death is the end. This is precisely what despair is.

But in another sense despair is even more definitely the sickness unto death. Literally speaking, there is not the slightest possibility that anyone will die from this sickness or that it will end in physical death. On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this inability to die. Thus to be sick unto death is to be unable to die, yet not as if there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness is that there is not even the ultimate hope, death. When death is the greatest danger, we hope for life; but when we learn to know the even greater danger, we hope for death. When the danger is so great that death becomes the hope, then despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die.”

This passage, in a true-to-life tone, epitomizes the fall of the human spirit or the lack of passion in the modern age. Our modern state of being is despair, for what is worse than death than not being human? Ironically, the cure for this despair, metaphorically speaking, is to die!

Friedrich Nietzsche

§3. Death of God

Perhaps, an introductory approach to convey how German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) metaphorically (or maybe too literally!) characterizes modernity is through his often misunderstood concept of “death of God”. In one of his picturesque aphorisms from his Gay Science, Nietzsche, with an acute sense of despair, and hope, writes:

“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’ –As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? . . . Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? . . . Are we not plunging continually? . . . Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? . . . Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. . . .

‘How shall we comfort ourselves . . . What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? . . . Must we ourselves not become Gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us – for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.’

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; . . . ‘I have come too early,’ he said then; ‘my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way . . . it has not yet reached the ears of men. . . . –and yet they have done it themselves.’ . . . ‘What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs . . . of God?’”

“Death of God” implicates the impossibility of our belief in God, either consciously or subconsciously. Of course, “Death of God” contains many facets, and it can be multifariously construed in terms of its direct and subterranean outcomes for the entire Western civilization. For Nietzsche, the “death of God” is pregnant with unending significances and consequences, as they have been dismally unfolding and will grimly continue to unfold in our time and thereafter. How much has to fall? How much do we have to lose? What decadence do we have to bear now that the foundation of our moral edifice has decayed? Nietzsche, in his Gay Science, continues:

“The greatest recent event – that ‘God is dead,’ that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable – is already beginning to cast its first shadows. . . . But in the main one may say: The event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension. . . . Much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means – and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it; for example, the whole of our . . . morality. . . .”

Karl Marx

§4. Alienation

Although German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883) may not had consciously utilized his concept of “alienation” to specifically characterize modernity (a term that may had been an anachronism in his time), there would had been no other way around it! “No other way” because capitalism, as an upshot of consciousness of modernity, was one of his burning issues. Marx was a keen observer of how the Industrial Revolution and capitalism radically changed our lives and the course of history. He believed that the modern economic relations have created a battleground where everybody ruthlessly pursues her or his own private interests. This is a battle of all against all, not excluding the subtle economic tensions existing between family members.

Consider an average American laborer (or worker), who works one or two jobs that are often monotonous, meaningless, and self-humiliating – although the laborer may not be conscious of her or his own woeful situation. The moment the laborer leaves home and hits the road to go to work, the war of all against all nauseatingly manifests itself right there on the road! The laborer labors eight hours or more per day, for five days or more per week. While at work, the laborer has to deal with work conditions that are often hostile and dehumanizing. So, the laborer grows weary and numb at work. Inasmuch as the laborer’s job is the principal source of her or his livelihood and welfare, the laborer’s job defines, regulates, and proceduralizes the laborer’s life both in and – outside of the workplace. Inescapably, the laborer will be socially defined by her or his job and income. Since we popularly value labor by the wage it makes, the less money the laborer makes the less the life of the laborer is valued, unfortunately. Verily, the laborer is chained to her or his job, which by and large pays enough to keep the laborer alive to return to work. After leaving the workplace with a sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction, do you suppose the laborer will be in a favorable spirit to go home and meaningfully interact with her or his spouse and children? In all likelihood, her or his spouse is already experiencing the same wretched conditions. So, the couple, feeling unfulfilled and being physically and mentally drained, expediently resort to buy junk food for everyone, rather than enjoying a healthy meal which can cost more time and money. (As Marx put it, “The less you eat . . . the greater becomes your treasure . . . your capital. The less you are the more you have”.) Hence, the poor labor conditions of the couple – which is the same labor conditions under which millions of other Americans find themselves – pave the way toward the degradation of their psychological and physical health, for which the healthcare industry is awaiting with open arms! Later, after some hours of watching their favorite television programs, the couple may suddenly feel that they can find a sense of fulfillment, or even a sense of identity, by going to a mall and shop! Tragically enough, there are those who think that shopping is a great “therapy”, which is in fact a poor substitution for the “happiness” they seek. As long as the legal and political structure of capitalism keeps the working class depressed and spiritually impoverished, the shopping therapy will continue and the wheels of our economy will turn!

Here, my point is that, as Marx thought, our present economic conditions (of which the labor conditions are an integral part) create a social setting that the more one participates in it – the less human one becomes. As he expresses it in his Paris Manuscripts:

“Money . . . transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy.”

In the case of the American laborer and his or her spouse, their jobs – or more specifically, the prevalent economic conditions – deprives them of their health, self-identity, and meaningful relationship with one another, with their children, and with their coworkers. In his Manifesto, Marx wrote that the capitalists as “leaders of whole industrial armies” have overturned the traditional human relationships of the feudal age, leaving no other relationship “between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’” Furthermore, under capitalism, the institution of family itself has become a monetary unit, wherein members of family relate to one another monetarily. Capitalism, according to Marx, has unscrupulously turned family and social values into monetary values. As he puts it, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned. . . .” Since in capitalism capital is of utmost value, other values – such as love, marriage, family, friendship, decency, mercy, honesty, fairness, truth and so on – become subservient to the value of money and property.

Marx fundamentally construed humans as adventurous and creative beings, with faculties geared toward externalizing their creativity through productions of cultural artifacts, such as tools, buildings, artworks, literature, science, and etc. However, under the modern conditions, specifically under capitalism, laborers’ work products have become alien to them because, according to Marx, their productive activities are done in servitude to the money-God, rather than in serving their own human potentials and fulfilling their own creative nature. Therefore, per Marx, the history of human creative production has been a history of alienation from our creative nature. In his essay entitled “The Jewish Question”, he writes:

“Money is the jealous one God of Israel, beside which no other God may stand. Money dethrones all the gods [cf. Nietzsche’s “death of God”] of man and turns them into a commodity. Money is the universal, independently constituted value of all things. It has therefore deprived the whole world, both the world of man and nature, of its own value. Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and his being. This alien being rules him and he worships it.”

For Marx, the modern commercial world, particularly under capitalism, is a religion of money worship, which disunites and alienates (estranges) members of society, including family members, from one another. In accordance with his Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844, human alienation takes on four forms:

1) Alienation from work products: The money economy of capitalism alienates the worker from her or his work products, which exist as things estranged and indifferent to the worker who creates them, and which also exist as objects of pleasure for somebody else.

2) Alienation from productive Activities: The money mania of capitalism alienates the worker from her or his productive activities – activities which are turned into “forced labor” because the activities of the worker are not of personal interest to her or him, who is compelled to perform them just to keep alive.

3) Alienation from human qualities: The modern money economy alienates the worker from her or his fundamental human and social qualities, such as love, sympathy, kindness, leisure, and etc.

4) Alienation from fellowmen: At last, capitalism alienates the worker from her or his fellow men. Marx called this “the estrangement of man from man”, whereby we all compete against each other.

§5. Modernity and Beyond

Take a very close look at the picture of the donkey above. The donkey suspended in air metaphorically signifies two simultaneous and pathological states of being within the U.S. capitalist system: the state of American workers burdened with work, and the state of American consumers burdened with consumer goods – and debts! How can one authentically exist and live under these miserable conditions? What is the pathos of these pathological states of being? In one word, sadomasochism: the pathology of afflicting ourselves with pain and inflicting pain unto others. In this manner, most relationships are pornographic in the sense that we reduce others to their use value.

Modernity is symptomatic of the complexity of meaning of our lives, of finding our way in the minatory maze of the modern societies. Modernity is indicative of humans having been reduced to something non-human: a driver’s license, a social security number, or some kind of identification card – without which one cannot get a job, cannot withdraw money from bank, cannot rent or buy a house, and cannot get services such as water, electricity, and gas in order to sustain one’s social existence. Amidst this hyper-complexity, the mass media – as opposed to one’s own reason – serve as a misguiding thread running through the maze, entangling the self ever more with the shadows and appearances that one takes as real. In the labyrinthine modern societies, we no longer raise our children; we have delegated the task to the television programs, video games, the Internet, and iPods to guide our children not out of the labyrinth, but through it. The modern societies, which are presumably inspired by the Enlightenment confidence in human reason, is the very embodiment of Plato’s allegorical cave – where shadows and images take on a life of their own, where our chains of ignorance ornament the self that is lost!

The modern world has been instrumentally rationalized more than ever. This “instrumental rationality” refers to misguided and ill-proportioned quantification of our lives and values through the unilateral and impersonal applications of science, technology, medicine, legislation, economics, commodification, commercialization, governmental bureaucracy, and mechanistic religion. How many people are out there who everyday quantify the calories they consume, their weight, their time in and out of work, their money, and their options in life? The ongoing quantification of our lives and values has created a dire situation whereby people are becoming inhuman, becoming “docile bodies”, to use the concept used by Michel Foucault. Under such system, people have been degraded to mere utility, no more or less than how we utilize a hammer. Moreover, our values have been depreciated to mere utilitarian means in service of the instrumental rationalization of our existence and our world. In this manner, our lives have become measurable, predictable, and manipulatable. This vicious system has life of its own and feeds on itself. No one dares to stop it, but to blindly comply with it.

Some scholars argue that now we are reaching (or already have reached) a new consciousness, the “post-modernity”. Or, one may refer to it as the post-apocalyptic world, whereby the world will not be interesting enough anymore! Apathy is the keyword – being disinterested, being emotionally and mentally menopaused. One will not be able to differentiate humans from machines, as it already seems to be the case.

Dear reader, for a more thorough understanding of this article, I suggest you read my previous article:

http://philossophy.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/individualism/

(Due to the complexity of the phenomenon of modernity and its far-reaching consequences in terms of the contemporary societies, this issue will be revisited in almost all of my future articles in this blog. This article has merely scratched the surface.)

Dear reader, please feel free to make a critique of this article. I look forward to learning from you!

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