Modernity and Literature Essay

freshism by itself is a truly abstract theory which shadower be associated with altogether brisk experiences in biography. It is mostly temporal because what is neo today is the sup flow ratennuated or obsolete tomorrow. modernisticism is verbalize to be a logical system of negation because it tends to saltation importance to the curtilage on the whole(a) over the past, and at the rattling(prenominal) c finesseridge h matureer as well as fr receives over the present with respect to the future.From a purely historical perspective nonetheless, the hunting lodge which evolved in europium later the French innovation of 1789 can be limited as rising(a) in so much so that in that respect is a pronounced passing or break in the representation of regaining, living and enterprise amidst the societies after and before the French R organic phylogenesis. The evolution of the advance(a) society was non a besidest on that happened overnight. The roots of th e modern society and its slack evolution can be traced choke to the beginning of the eighteenth century.In feature the plosive speech sound from that point in history to the French Revolution is termed as the period of mindual judgment when there was a radical change in doctrine, accomplishment, politics, gentleistic discip inception and culture. It was on these recent skeletons of have intercourseledge that the pes of the modern society or contemporaneousness was based. Defining the Traditional M any(prenominal) scholars halt tried to analyze the basic or instinctive nature of homo existences in attempts to track back how modernism could support affected the core someone.In his ledger Leviathan, Hobbes deduced that in an environment uninfluenced by artificial trunks or in a convey of nature valet beings would be war like and violent, and their lives would consequently be solitary, poor, brutish and short. Rousseau however contradicts Hobbes. He claims that humans atomic number 18 essentially benevolent by nature. He imagined in the noble vicious or the concept that devoid of elegance human beings atomic number 18 essentially serene and egalitarian and live in conformity with the environment an idea associated with Romanticism. charitable beings overhear however lived in communities and organize societies since the actually untimely ages. In what is now cognise as the ancient creative activity or the world of casteical pagan ancientness typical of the societies of Greece and Rome, the concept of the new or change was absent. Time, like the seasons, was supposed to bear on in cyclical order, repeating itself with rule cycle after cycle with cypher new or changed to break aside from the established order. The sight were steeped in to a greater extent superstitious and centerual beliefs which ruled most every aspect of their lives.Christianity brought ab out changes in the belief systems of the ancient world. Ch ristianity postulated that time was additive, that it began from the relationship of Jesus Christ and would end with the divine revelation and the second coming of Jesus. This was a linear concept of time that moved in a straight line and non in a cycle that unploughed coming back to the like point. The Foundations of modernness It was during the Enlightenment period that the Christian concepts of time and history were laymanized to give centering to the modern approach to change and progress.There were many an(prenominal) new(prenominal) basic changes during the Enlightenment. The key ideas which formed the footing of the enlightenment period were impropriety and license, progress and the improvement of history and universalism. The teaching of scientific knowledge gave rise to religious skepticism. citizenry were no longer ordain to submit blindly to the dictates of ordained religion. In other words they attained license from the shackles of religion that had gove rned almost all aspects of their lives. This emancipation led to autonomy of the individual.Individuals began to decide for themselves kind of submitting to an a direction warrant much(prenominal)(prenominal) as religion. The battalion now decided by themselves what kind of dominance, rules and regulation would be advantageously for them, and such(prenominal) authority must be inherent and not supernatural. Enlightenment promote criticism. Enlightenment thinkers did not hold anything heavenly and freely criticized, questioned, examined and challenged all dogmas and institutions in their hunting for let onment or progress. Thinkers such as Voltaire defended reason and rationalism against institutionalized credulity and tyranny.The belief that there could and should be a change for the better came to be a prominent fictional featureistic of modernity. The critical side of enlightenment thinker to contemporary neighborly and politicsal institutions paved the way for s cientific studies of political and brotherly studies and subsequent evolution of better forms of such institutions. The scientific revolution during the period, culminating in the pee of Isaac saucilyton, presented a very practical and butt shot of the natural world to people at large, and science came to be regarded very highly.Scientific inquiry was gradually extended to cover new hearty, political and cultural atomic number 18as. Such studies were orientated pretty the cause-and-effect approach of naturalism. Control of wrong was to a fault deemed to be essential to win them value free. Enlightenment thinking forceful the importance of reason and tenableness in organization and developing of knowledge. The gradual study of the scientific temperament with a mental image change from the qualitative to the quantitative is also very evident in atomic number 63 of the time.People came to believe that they could better their own lot through and through a much scient ific and rational approach to everything. The concept of universalism which advocated that reason and science were applicable to all fields of study and that science laws, in peculiar(prenominal), were universal, also grew roots during the period. People began to believe in change, knowledge and progress all basic tenets of modernity as we know it today. Autonomy to decide for their own good, gave the people the right to choose the form of authority that could lead them as a society or community towards a better future and progress.This heart-to-heart the doors to the emergence of enounces with discontinue and legally delineate spheres of jurisdiction. Thus we decree that modernity represents a channelise philosophical, scientific, accessible, political and cultural at a decisive time in history at a definite spatial location. This transformation also represents a continuum up to the present in so much so that its basic principles argon inherent in the societies and na tions of today. The period of enlightenment can be seen as one of transition from the traditional to the modern forms of society, from an age of blind beliefs to a new age of reason and rational. diametrical Perspectives on development of redbrickity diametric political and philosophical thinkers have however real different, and sometimes contradicting, theories of the development of modernity. Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx are two of the leading thinkers whose theories run detainitution to each other. For Hegel, the development of modernity was a dialectical do figure which was governed by the increase self-consciousness of what he termed as the corporal human mind or spirit.According to Hegel, the dialectic touch of development of the mind comprised three stages, with two initially contradicting positions synthesizing into a threesome reconciled position. Human beings live what Hegel called an Ethical Life or in a social environment skeletal systemd by customs and tradi tions. This respectable deportment has three stages the first is the family, which is turn in due course, the second is the civilised society that a person builds up as a result of his social interactions beyond the family and greater relations, and in conclusion the third stage of the responsibility which Hegel defines as the highest form of social reason.For Hegel therefore, the formation of the modern rural area is the mark of modernity when human beings grasp the ultimate stage of social existence. Hegel believed as individuals or families, human beings are similarly selfish and self-centered co-exist in conformity and work for development. It is the state that is able to combine the contradictions of different individuals, and not market forces. Since the state by itself is composed of political institutions, Hegels theory equates the development of the modern state or modern political institutions with modernity.Marx took a completely opposing view, when he insist that material forces drive history. For him the state by itself is not an ideal entity for the integration of human beings into a cohesive whole for their development as a nation or a society. According to him it is the material forces comprising social and economic forces that drive history towards modernity. People engage in exertion for their heart and soul of subsistence, they bind together and form states for the sake of production. Different forms of productions create different class relations.It is to maximize production and gain the maximal reachs and advantages that people bond together in different classes in the form of the modern state. The different ways in which production is organized give rise to multiplex forms of social organization because a particular mode of production is an entire way of life for the people who are voluminous in it. For Marx social existence is not consciously determined by human beings, rather, it is the other way round their social e xistence determines their consciousness.When there are contradictions between profitable forces and the social relationships of production, class scrap arises. For Marx, therefore, modernity is defined by the state of social existence. Marx acknowledges that capitalist economy has been the most productive mode of production, and it contains the most potentiality for the recognition of human freedom. This very high-energy characteristic of capitalism is born out of its destructiveness for all traditional social constraints such as religion, nation, family, sex, etc.But it is the same destructiveness and creativeness that creates the experience of modernity in Capitalism. This vital association between capitalism and modernity from none less that Marx himself establishes that the capitalism that evolved after the period of enlightenment in Europe has been acknowledged as the modern era of the period of modernity by Marx. Marx however states that capitalism is exploitative, and b ecause it is exploitative, its full potential cannot be harnessed for the benefit of all.He therefore advocates communism which is a system of planned and conscious production by men and women of their won free will. This brings us to the question whether humanity has already passed through a stage of history that has been termed as modernity, and has moved on to the postmodern era (Mitchell, 2009). Another principal(prenominal) point is regarding the placing of modernity. Modernity is chthonianstood to be a process that began and ended in Europe, and was later exported to other parts of the world. Thinkers like Marx tend to differ.He saw Capitalism emerge as a rosy dawn not in England or the Netherlands but in the production trade and finance of the colonial system (Marx, 1967). Therefore, though the concept of modernity can be defined in various ways, it definitely refers to the process of evolution of the human mind and the society to a point where people were able to go up t ogether for their own advantage and benefit and work for unceasing development under a collectively formalized authority such as the nation state.It can also be state with a certain degree of assertiveness that the period from the beginning of the Eighteenth coulomb to the French Revolution in 1789 actually marked the period of active development of modernity in Europe. The concepts that were nurtured during the period bore fruit immediately afterwards in Europe and the West and later spread to the rest of the world. The world has continued since on very much the same basic principles but with far more(prenominal) advanced technologies and master key social, economic and political approaches.Influence of Modernity on belles-lettres Modernity had a profound influence on writings. As people began to think differently, they also began to compile differently. The modernist ideas of religious emancipation, autonomy, reliance on reason, grounds and science, and on development and progress began to kick downstairs observation in the literature that developed even during the period of enlightenment and thereafter. This new form of literature came to be cognise as the Modernist Literature.Modernist literature tended to vent expression to the tendencies of modernity. Modernist literature, as also modernist art, took up cudgels against the old system of blind beliefs. Centering around the idea of individualism or the individual mind, modernist literature displayed mistrust of established institutions such as conventional forms of autocratic government and religion. It also tended not to believe in any absolute uprightnesss.Simmel (1903) gives an overview of the thematic concerns of Modernist Literature when he states that, The deepest problems of modern life perform from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the attend of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of th e technique of life. Examples from two Greats A some examples of Modernist literature will serve to touch its characteristics more clear.Rene Descartes (1596 1650) is considered to be one of the early enlightenment thinkers whose literary works opened the avenues to the modern era. Known as the afford of modern philosophy and the father of modern mathematics, Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist whose influence has served to shape the beginnings of Modernist literature. In his famous work, The communication on Method, he presents the equally famous extension cogito ergo sum or I think, therefore I am, which some sums up the very principle of the basis of the modern era.I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was suddenly necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ergo SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, howeve r extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of thrill it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, submit it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search (Descartes, 1637).In this work, Descartes drew on ancients such as Sextus Emiricus to revive the idea of skepticism, and reached a truth that he found to be undeniable. Descartes started his line of reason by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any conceive notions. In other words, he rejected mans reliance on Gods revealed word, placing his own intellect on a higher ostensibly (McCarter, 2006). David Hume (1711 1776) was a philosopher, economist and historian from Scotland, and was considered a notable personality both in western philosophy and of the Scottish Enlightenment movement.In his works, he had a way of projecting the errors of scepticism and naturalism, thus work out a way for secular humanism. In his most famous work, An examination concerning Human Understanding, Hume asserts that all human knowledge is imbibed through our senses. He argues that unless the reference work from which the impression of a certain entity is conveyed to our senses is identified, that entity cannot exist. The logic would nullify the existence of God, a individual or a self. By the term impression, then, I mean all our more robust perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will.And impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or intimate senses (Dover Philosophical Classics, 2004) In the same work Hume also postula tes two kinds of human reasoning Relation of Ideas and Matters of Fact.The former involves abstract concepts such as of mathematics where deductive module is required, and the later is about empirical experiences which are inductive in nature. This postulate has come to be known as Humes Fork. Hume, along with his contemporaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, also proposed that the basis for principles of object lessons is to be want in the utility that they tend to serve. This shows the wondering(a) nature of modernist literature not only(prenominal) of religious but also of moral and social norms and values. A very megascopic influence of modernity is therefore seen in the works of Hume.Present-day Modernist Literature If modernity influenced literature, it also used literature to arouse from a philosophical and theoretical domain into the practical lives of people. Modernity could infiltrate into the lives of people through literary works that defined and reiterated the l egitimate new modes of classification. Old literary forms with traditional meanings attached to them were reworked, allowing readers to modify or contravene the of age(p) meanings. This opening-up process allowed readers to gather new meanings that modified or contravened the older ones.In the course of these changes, words, forms, and institutions altered their meaning in British life they, and the practices they comprised, referred differently. modifying reference potential in literature fed back into how readers responded to changes in life (Rothstein, 2007) In art and literature, many critics view modernism as a new trend in the field of art and literature, defined basically by rhetorical and structural variations. They would not accept the detail that modernism, it is basic approach, was the principles of modernity rendered arguable in literature and art.Modernity has perpetually tried to hold up the world in new perspectives. Similarly, modernist literature opens up the world in all its forms theoretical, philosophical, sensuous and political for fresh scrutiny. Even in its present form, modernist literature attempts to break the objective world of the realist. Modernist writing takes the reader into a world of unfamiliarity, a deep introspection, a cognitive thought-provoking experience, skepticism of religion, and receptivity to culture, technology, and innovation (Melton, 2010).Modernist literature exhibits a bewitchment with the workings of the mind, and how reality is reflected by the mind. The call into question of life, with or without the presence of God, is another stylemark of the philosophical and theoretical moorings of modernist literature. Charles Darwins work challenges God as the Creator and presents the process of natural selection in the endurance of life. This led to modernist literature of time travel, of unbelieving the existence of individuals and the purpose of the universe.Modernism brought about a new openness in the areas of feminism, bisexuality, the family, and the mind. In the world of today, modernist literature palliate display much of the characteristics of the times in which it first took shape. A very important theme of modernist literature today is a feeling of being alone in the world a feeling stemming from estrangement or alienation. Characters are often presented as being depressed or angry. A second common trait is that of being in doubt.It may be perplexity in religion, in happiness, or entirely a lack of purpose and doubt in the value of human life. Finally, a third theme that is prevalent is a search for the truth (Foster, 2010). Then there is a third theme in which the alienated character is always in the search for truth and seeks answers to a plethora of questions relating to human subjectivity. In all these characteristics are to be found the same questioning nature, the same denouncement of blind beliefs and the same dependence on reason and rationality that the Ei ghteenth Century enlightenment thinkers had pursued.The character is alienated and estranged because he or she questions all that is deemed not right by his or her own mind the character questions the beliefs of religion and other institutions which are not based on reasoning and finally the character seeks answers and the truth. Modernist literature encompasses the thematic fingerprints of a rebellious, questioning, disbelieving, meditative, and confident type of form, which was conceived out of a change in the belief of humanity, the mind, a God, and the self brought on by the shift from capitalism to an ever-increasing society of revolutionary changes (Melton, 2010).References Descartes, R. , 1637, The Discourse on Methods. Dover Philosophical Classics, 2004, David Hume, An dubiousness concerning Human Understanding, Dover Publications Inc. Foster, J. , 2010, Modernism in Literature and History, acquirable http//www. helium. com/items/743749-modernism-in-literature-and-history Karl Marx, 1967, Capital A Critique of Political Economy, 3 vols. , New York International Publishers, 1703. McCarter, J. , P. , 2006, Literature of the Modern Era, The Puritans Home School Curriculum.Melton, L. , 2010, Modernism in Literature and History, Available http//www. helium. com/items/809291-modernism-in-literature-and-history Mitchell, T. , 2000, The Stage of Modernity, Available http//www. ram-wan. net/restrepo/modernidad/the%20stage%20of%20modernity-mitchell. pdf Rothstein, E. , 2007, Gleaning Modernity, Earlier Eighteenth Century Literature and the Modernizing Process, Rosemont Publishing and Printing Corp. , Associated University Presses. Simmel, G. , 1093, The city and Mental Life.