HSS 431, 2023
Can we still be modern?
"We must be modern" wrote Rimbaud at the end of la Saison en enfer. We don't know whether the poet wrote this sentence with seriousness or irony, but it shows that "to be modern" has been understood for a long time as an injunction rather than a statement. With the Galilean rupture (17th century), and even more so with the Enlightenment, the idea took hold that breaking with the past, criticizing superstition, promoting novelty, thinking and acting according to a single reason were categorical imperatives.
Until recently, "being modern" didn't only mean a position in history, but also a promise of freedom and justice. Anyone who didn't want to be modern appeared as a conservative, a loser or a nostalgic: in all cases, they were suspected of not adhering to their own present, and therefore of turning their back on the direction of history.
Over the past few decades, a completely different diagnosis has imposed itself. In addition to the traditional criticisms of modernity (in liberating humanity, it also left it alone and idle), there have been concerns about the viability of the modern project. The typically modern idea that the world is what humanity makes of it has come up against the realization that the Earth is in the process of pulling down as a result of being transformed continuously, if not devastated.
Many believe that we were so blinded by the Enlightenment that we failed to see that, in striving to surpass ourselves, humanity was jeopardizing the very conditions of its subsistence. Anthropogenic global warming is the most spectacular sign of this reversal, but there are others. The feeling of a never-ending economic crisis, a marked distrust of technology that has become independent of our will, doubts about the notion of "progress, and the desire to rebuild community against the excesses of individualism are all signs of a divorce with the modern project.
Selective bibliography
Günter Anders, Le Temps de la fin, éditions L'Herne.
Ernst Cassirer, La Philosophie des Lumières, éditions Fayard.
Benjamin Constant, De la liberté des Anciens comparée à celle des Modernes, éditions Mille et une nuits.
Kant, "Qu'est-ce que les Lumières?", éditions GF-Flammarion.
Bruno Latour, Nous n'avons jamais été Modernes, éditions La Découverte.
Evaluation : Essay (4 hours)
Course language : French
- Teaching coordinator: Foessel Michaël