Modernity: One, None, or Many? European Origins and Modernity as a Global Condition

Modernity:
One, None, or Many? European Origins and Modernity as a Global Condition




DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2002.01.12
Rubric: THESAURUS

For citation:

Wittrock B. Modernity: One, None, or Many? European Origins and Modernity as a Global Condition . – Polis. Political Studies. 2002. No. 1. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2002.01.12



Abstract

Originally published: “Daedalus”, 2000, vol. 129, № 1. The author substantiates a concept according to which modernity is not so much a new unified civilization, global in its extensiveness, unparalleled in its intrusiveness and destructiveness. Rather, modernity is a set of promissory notes, i.e., a set of hopes and expectations that entail some minimal conditions of adequacy that may be demanded of macrosocietal institutions no matter how much these institutions may differ in other respects. For, in both cultural and institutional terms, modernity, as the author demonstrates, from the very inception of its basic ideas in Europe, has been characterized by high degree of variability in institutional forms and conceptual constructions. It has provided reference points that have become globally relevant and that have served as structuring principles behind institutional projects on a worldwide scale. Thus, he believes, we may look upon modernity as an age when certain structuring principles have come to define a common global condition. The existence of this global condition does not mean that members of any single cultural community are about to relinquish their ontological and cosmological assumptions, much less their institutions. It means, however, that the continuous interpretation, reinterpretation, and transformation of those commitments and institutional structures cannot but take account of the commonality of the global condition of modernity.

 Full Text (электронная версия)

Content No. 1, 2002

See also:


Weber M.,
Russia's Transition to Pseudoconstitutionalism. – Polis. Political Studies. 2006. No2

Brinkman von A.,
Unauthoritative Laws (To the Psychology of Russian Executive Power) (Foreword by I.L. Belenky). – Polis. Political Studies. 2006. No1

Massing O.,
Domination. – Polis. Political Studies. 1991. No6

Aron R.,
An Essay on Liberties: A Universal and Unique Formula of Liberty Does Not Exist. – Polis. Political Studies. 1996. No1

Bruder W.,
Bureaucracy. – Polis. Political Studies. 1991. No5

 
 

Archive

   2024      2023      2022      2021   
   2020      2019      2018      2017      2016   
   2015      2014      2013      2012      2011   
   2010      2009      2008      2007      2006   
   2005      2004      2003      2002      2001   
   2000      1999      1998      1997      1996   
   1995      1994      1993      1992      1991