- Introductions
- Structure of seminars
- History and modernity
o Key questions
- Discussion
o What is modernity?
- Syllabus
o Structure of the course
o Assignments
➔ This week we will introduce ourselves, talk about the core questions of this course and about
the assignments and assessments
The European Union as a model signifying the end of history
The end of the cold war as the end of history
Attack on the world trade center signifying the tension between the west and the rest
The hold religion has on politics and people has often been underestimated
The end of history?
➔ What we may be witnessing is not the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such
o That is, the end point of man’s ideological evolution and the universalization of
Western liberal democracy
▪ Francis Fukuyama
The end of the end of history
Key questions
- What is history?
o There is a difference between history and the study of history
o What does it mean to think of things (societies, cultures, identities, values) as
historical?
▪ Evolution, progress, rationality
▪ The notion of history itself emerged historically
- Modernity is, more than everything else, the history of time
2
, oZygmunt Bauman
▪ Modernity is the time when time has a history
• Liquid modernity
o Who are we and how did we get to where we are?
o What is the process that made us what we are?
o History became a key notion in modernity
o We live currently in the age of history
▪ Foucault
• Everything (all fields of science) became to
be understood historically
- How is the notion of modernity and modernization bound up with a specific understanding of
historical development?
o Modernization as a way of developing
- What is modernity?
o What is modernity in the light of the historical understanding of itself?
▪ Can the notion of modernity be separated from the historical shape
modernization took in the western world?
➔ If people are not enlightened, it is because they are being deceived
o Condorcet
➔ Cultural pluralism
o Herder
What is modernity?
- Modernity refers to modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from about
the seventeenth century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide
in their influence
o Giddens
▪ Should modernity be a universal goal?
▪ Are there different notions of modernity?
▪ Should modernity not be a universal goal?
Discussion
- What is modernity?
o Modernity
o Enlightenment
o Secularization
o Adoption of liberal democracy
▪ Pretty late development
o Nation states
o Feudal system
o Rationalism
o Against barbaric, uncivilized
o Constitutionalism
o Magna carta
o Capitalism
o Industrialization
- What is modernization?
- Is modernization tied to westernization?
- Is modernization a good thing?
3
, - Are different parts of the world modern in different ways?
J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1844)
Age of revolutions
- Copernican revolution
o 1543
▪ Earth no longer at the centre
▪ Scientific revolution
• Galileo
• Newton
• Etc.
- Political revolutions
o Dutch revolt
▪ 1568
o Glorious revolution
▪ 1688
o American Revolution
▪ 1775
o French revolution
▪ 1789
- Reason over faith, dogma
- Hume
o The mere name of the king commands little respect
o And to talk of a king as god’s vice regent on earth, or to give him any of these
magnificent titles which formerly dazzled mankind, would but excite laughter in
everyone
o With the least shock or convulsion the kingly power being no longer supported by
the settled principles and opinions of men, will immediately dissolve
- Galileo
o eppur si muove
▪ and yet it moves
• He agreed with Copernicus
• Was threatened to withdraw his endorsement
• And yet it moves
o it is true even though you do not believe it
- Kant’s Copernican revolution
o Philosophical critique
o Authority of reason grounded in the subject
- 1602
o foundation of the Dutch east India company
▪ Capitalism
▪ Colonization
▪ First multinational cooperation
▪ Stock exchange
- Right
o The world’s first stock exchange in Amsterdam
4
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