Suchergebnisse

"Late Modernity/Postmodernity" published on by Oxford University Press.

Zygmunt Bauman's (1989) assertion that the Holocaust was engendered by the bureaucratic rationality of the Germans is challenged, arguing that his interpretation of the linkage between modernity & the Holocaust is based on a distorted understanding of totalitarianism. Further, Bauman is charged with identifying modernity in relation to an instrumental rationality. Bauman's spurious understanding of modernity is connected to Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno's (1972 translation) text that associates modernity with totalitarianism & Herbert Marcuse's (1960) treatment of the combat between dialectical & positivistic forms of reason in the modern world. Identified are seven essential characteristics of modernity, including universalized rights of citizens & capitalist rationalization. The search for an autonomous civil society is held responsible for the development of modern civilization & its defining characteristic -- the normalization of perpetual change. The conception of the modern city as promulgated by the Bolshevik Revolution is perceived as a response to Western culture. It is concluded that totalitarianism is the product of a form of anticapitalist domination rather than of instrumental rationality. J. W. Parker

"Modernity and Modernization" published on by Oxford University Press.

Karl Marx's work can be read as a set of complete answers, or as a compelling formulation of timeless problems. Favoring the second interpretation, the following constituent features of modernity are discussed as originally highlighted by Marx: (1) the inherent dynamism of modern society makes expansion & industrialization its main features; (2) modern society is rationalized; (3) modern society is functionalist; (4) science, rather than religion, becomes the basis for the accumulation of knowledge; (5) traditional customs are dismantled & traditional virtues lost while certain values become increasingly universalized; (6) the erosion of the canons of creation & interpretation; & (7) the pluralization of the concepts of "right" & "true." S. Karganovic.

Uses classical & current aesthetics theory to argue that analyzing liturgy serves as an effective route to understanding the problems of modernity, particularly the crisis of increasing social fragmentation. It is contended that modernity's refusal of liturgy, instead of generating secularization, creates a kind of perverse antiliturgical liturgy. Liturgy, because of its unique situation between the aesthetic & the political, represents a key to understanding the empty & fragmentary qualities of liberal individualization. Platonic readings of community are used to show how liturgy represents a political category because it fuses the realistic with the ideal. US capitalist society's near-religious refusal of liturgy defines the very structure of its cities (without cathedrals as center) & the very structure of its time (without a reflective hour in the day or a reflective day in the week). Modern society's use of spectacle to replace spiritual ceremony is also examined as a form of pseudo-liturgy. D. Bajo

Hannah Arendt's conception of modernity is reconstructed & critiqued to assess the soundness of her interpretive categories, arguing that her negative assessment of modernity was shaped by her experience of totalitarianism. It is shown how Arendt employed two hermeneutic strategies -- one derived from Walter Benjamin, the other from Martin Heidegger -- to reappropriate past experiences that might illuminate the present. Examined are key features of Arendt's conception of modernity -- notions of world alienation, earth alienation, the rise of the social, & the triumph of animal laborans (the working being) -- & three categories that Arendt used in her critique of modernity -- nature, process, & the social. By insulating the political sphere from the concerns of the social, Arendt was ultimately unable to account for two of modernity's most important achievements: the struggles for the extension of citizenship, & the redrawing of the boundaries between the public & the private. W. Howard

The writings of Weber and Taylor have some strong affinities. Both start from the anthropological idea that man evaluates his position in the world and constitutes the social world by values. Their analyses of values aim at an understanding of those intersubjective meanings that have constituted western modernity. But, at the same time, their anthropological starting point leads to different interpretations of modernity. Historically, both argue that rationalization (as instrumental rationality) is one of the most influential Kulturbedeutung of modernity. Weber's thesis of rationalization is, however, entangled in a paradox. Overemphasizing the rationalized elements of modernity, he fails scientifically to grasp certain counter-movements in modernity, such as individuation, subjectivity and new life forms. Taylor, investigating the moral sources of expressivism, shows that these life forms are an inherent part of modernity. Yet his method of articulating the sources of modernity is insufficient to transform it towards a causal explanation of behaviour in everyday life.

In this article I respond to the important questions raised by Roger Griffin and David D. Roberts by asserting the following points. First, that there is no justification to the position that the historical function of fascism was to establish the political hegemony of finance capital, as Marxist-Leninist scholars have maintained without providing a shred of evidence in support of their position. On the contrary, fascism was an epochal phenomenon which occured on several continents and had features which point to a declaration of war against bourgeois society, its power structures, its values and its way of life. It was a revolt generated by disgust for a world dominated by those whom Hitler called 'the worshippers of Mammon'. Second, that fascism was not at all an alternative modernity, but a violent and radical reaction which rejected all the values and institutions of the modern world, from individual freedom to the rights of man and citizen, from pluralist democracy to secularization. Third, that the history of fascism, like the history of communism, has shown that ideas are no mere fantasmagorical reflexes of the socioeconomic structure, as Marxist sociology claims. This was demonstrated by its political ideology, which was intent on revolutionizing the foundations of society and producing a new man, diametrically opposed to the 'bourgeois'.