Transition from Modernity to Post-modernity

Abstract

The era of enlightenment is known as "mother of modernityâ€. It has promoted human rationality, scientific development, and human supremacy and paves the way for the decline of religious understanding of the society. The rise of human rationality, materialization of industry, invention of printing press and rising trend of democratic principle, emerging market economy and technological development are characterised as modernity. The idea of modernity is first stage of human era where human beings were treated as supreme authority of their spheres. With modernity, the concept of nation/state emerged which has the credit to organise the world, promote the rights of the individuals and pay its emphasis on the construction of the democratic society, participatory politics and free individuals. But modernity is criticised by scholars like Perry Anderson, who argue that modernity has actually created another layer and made society absolute. It has inserted empirical documentation and rejected the persons' observation, including local reality. With these critiques, post-modernity emerged which has questioned the foundation of modernity. It advocated for 'bottom to approach' unlike modernity. The main objective of this paper to analysed the main tenets of modernity and discuss the actual principle of post-modernity. This analytical paper concludes with the major critics of post-modernity by taking the author's understanding about modernity and post-modernity.