Tag Archives: modernity

Alfred Milner

From many points of view we live in a glorious time. I have little sympathy with those who wish they had been born at any, even the most brilliant epoch, in the past of the human race. The Many have now opportunities of study, opportunities of travel, opportunities of healthy enjoyment, which of old were denied to all but the Few. Human activity is expanding in all directions. Life is infinitely fuller, more varied, more interesting than it ever was. But on the other hand it requires more judgment, more balance of mind, more strength of character to make the best of it. Where one can do so many things there is a real danger of trying to do too many, and the end of that is that one does nothing well. Every age has its own special difficulties and dangers. The disease which specially threatens this generation is restlessness, distraction, dissipation of intellectual and moral power. […]

Success will rest with those who can preserve a calm judgement, who will not be bewildered by the multitude of things offered to them, but select with tremendous rigour, and who finally, having selected, will give themselves time to enjoy what they have chosen, and not let themselves be flurried out of the enjoyment and the benefit of it by the thought of all that they have been obliged to pass by.

Alfred Milner, Bustle, Oxford, 1897

Bruce Charlton & Peter Andras

In a nutshell, hunter-gatherers require coercion or persuasion to join the modern world, while peasants typically require coercion to keep them as peasants. It is probable that hunting and gathering is more humanly satisfying that modern life, but since it is not a viable way of supporting the world’s population, the superiority of modern societies over traditional societies seems to be decisive. Given that the realistic choice lies between traditional and modernizing societies, modernization seems clearly the more desirable option.

Bruce Charlton & Peter Andras, The Modernization Imperative, Exeter, 2003, p. 19

Juan José Sebreli

[L]o que se presenta hoy como post sólo es un pre. Jurgen Habermans […] sostiene que los posmodernos no hacen sino renovar los viejos ataques del prerromanticismo y del romanticismo del siglo XIX a la Ilustración y al Iluminismo.

Es curioso que esta corriente de pensamiento tenga su centro de difusión en París y sus principales representantes se consideren pensadores de avanzada, de izquierda, rebeldes y hasta revolucionarios, pero su fuente de inspiración es la vieja filosofía alemana de la derecha no tradicional. También Habermas observó la paradoja de que, cuando, por primera vez y como consecuencia de la derrota del nazismo, el pensamiento alemán abandonó sus tendencias antioccidentales y aceptó abiertamente el racionalismo y la modernidad, le llegó desde París, presentado como la última novedad, el retorno de las ideas autóctonas de las que trataba de alejarse. Los alemanes debían ahora volver a Nietzsche y a Heidegger, traducidos del francés.

Juan José Sebreli, El asedio a la modernidad, Buenos Aires, 1991, p. 14