vector 2_1.cdr - Universitatea de Arte "George Enescu"

namely, the idea of conveying contents by calling on an authority
(Octavio Paz). Consequently, it produces a mutation within historicity itself. It
seems as if we were facing a critique of history, understood as an appeal to the
past. In fact, from now on, the use of history becomes a far more complex
enterprise. History is open to progress and the future, as Fontenelle, as well as
other moderns from Turgot and Condorcet to Marx, assure us. Starting with the
18-th century, but especially with the romanticism, history is also recovered in a
different way, as a salient feature of human deeds (Hans Robert Jauss); later, it
will creep inside the human being, into his very structure and perception of the
world.
As to social modernity, the situation is completely different. It is defined
by the primacy of instrumental reason, oriented toward a goal. Max Weber, who
offers a detailed description of it, connects it with the decline of religion and
classical metaphysics. The situation amounts to a rejection of authority and
tradition, and its obvious consequence is the unreserved assimilation of the
doctrine of progress. The confidence in the possibilities of science and technique
grows larger. The same holds for the orientation toward pragmatism, the cult of
action and success (Matei Călinescu). The principle of social modernity is that
anything can be dominated through rational calculus. There are no more secrets
for the human being. The world is at his feet: he only has to know it, to dominate
it, and to transform it through technique. Society itself becomes manipulable,
and experiments in the name of the reason soon made their appearance. The
extinction of any transcendent, incalculable force enables an enormous process
of disenchantment of the world (Max Weber). Life itself becomes completely
instrumental, and the human person becomes a machine. Nietzsche describes
this process extremely eloquently: “The machine rules. Man becomes nothing
but a screw.” He repeats this idea on a different occasion (Human, all too
human): “Mankind mercilessly employs every individual as material for heating
its great machines: but what then is the purpose of the machines if all
individuals (that is to say mankind) are of no other use than as material for
maintaining them? Machines that are an end in themselves – is that the umana
commedia?” The weakness of the modern individual, adds the philosopher, lies
in the absence of a central axis of his own being. The anarchy of instincts and
passions betrays the lack of a style of living. Deprived of a center, the modern
looks for it outside himself. Thus, he prefers constant change and novelty. He
perpetually changes his mood; he discovers and stirs ever different instincts,
still unused. The rhythm of his existence grows faster.
Modernity is not born out of a simple divorce between art (culture) and
society, as Daniel Bell believes. This is only an aesthetic consequence of a
deeper conflict, the one between two modern projects which I have designated,
for the sake of simplicity, as aesthetic modernity and social modernity,
respectively. Their dispute becomes obvious when we think of their relation to
history. For aesthetic modernity, the emphasis upon the future and the present
led to a kind of retreat from contingent history. Conversely, the attitude induced
by social modernity amounted to a better integration within history, and
ultimately to its realization. By praising the unlimited self-fulfillment of the ego,
overwrought sensitivity and hedonism, aesthetic (cultural) modernity goes
against the discipline of a life governed by the principles of instrumental reason
(Daniel Bell). This is exactly how things happened historically: from the very
beginning, aesthetic modernity wanted to be a reply to a kind of society built
upon the principles of social modernity. The rationale of the former was to
deconstruct the expansionist tendency of the latter, to regain a few spaces of
freedom, in short, to diminish the harmful, overpowering intervention of
weapons of the opponent. Let us remember, for instance, that modern
architecture itself appealed to cold, instrumental rationality. The fact of dwelling
was subjected to the mechanical model of society; urban space thus created was, in
fact, perfectly adapted to the features of industrial society. The abolishment of
geographical and symbolic differences, typical of pre-modern traditions, is the
result of the universalism of Enlightenment, which also generated the
homogenization of social relations, as Chantal Béret notes. Important influences
also manifested themselves in the opposite direction. Modern utopias, either
aesthetic or literary, oriented human imagination toward an uncertain and confused
future, but also represented models of the “rational” organization of some modern
societies.
These influences, their mutual contamination and common roots all these
show how flexible modernity is. Capable of ever presenting itself in new guises, of
absorbing the ideas of its opponents (be it les anciens, or their late critics),
modernity exhibits not only a multitude of voices and colors, but also a strategy of
appropriation. Though divergent, its faces reinforce one another, when they want to
conquer new territories. While observing it, one has the sense of dealing with an
octopus. It stretches its tentacles all over the place and sends them away on a
mission of exploration, following in their wake covertly and unpredictably,
according to a scenario that only it itself knows. It searches every corner,
rummages through every recess in her proximity and discovers every niche,
bringing it under a common denominator. Therefore, it is spatial. A versatile
organism, just like the octopus, modernity always changes shape. It is totally
dependent upon the organ of sight, which is extremely subtle and developed. This
means that it is profoundly perspectival. One has the feeling that it watches through
a thousand eyes. That is why it generates panic.
Day after day, we are ever more invited to guide our lives according to the
products of the sciences that believe themselves to be increasingly efficient, and
follow the recipes of politicians who claim to be wiser and wiser. Two types of
universalism tend to enslave us completely. Up to what point can we construct our
lives outside the huge machinery of modernity?
Faces of modernity in a post-communist society
Is modernity already our “antiquity”? Do we relate to it in the same way as
the moderns related to les anciens? Do we have reasons to say we have overcome
it? This will, the will to transcend it, we do not lack. It is in fact the only certitude we
have for the time being. As to the rest, there is only a baroque extravagance, a
maze of critiques, of reversals and sudden returns. Habermas groups them in three
great categories. The emancipation from the imperatives of instrumental reason
through the extension of aesthetic experience (Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault,
Derrida), the return to pre-modern themes for the purpose of rethinking the
problems of ethics on these grounds (Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, Robert Spaemann),
and the limitation of modern science, politics, and art to their own spheres (the
early Wittgenstein, Carl Schmitt, Gottfried Benn) – these would be only the main
critical scenarios.
The encounter with modernity brings to the surface other positions as well,
much more explosive this time. These are local, dreadful life-and-death struggles,
fought face-to-face. After all, human options derive from the concrete context of
life. Isn't it the case that the very understanding of, as well as the act of taking upon
ourselves, our situation, from which we think, talk, and experience the world, could
extract us from the tentacles of this expansionist modernity? Couldn't this be the
only chance for us to resist the growing formalization of life, its transformation into
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