Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Moderne: Fehlen eines Bezugpunktes der Selbstbestimmung; Bestimmung von einem Bruch her

Kurzinhalt: the absence of any defining transcendent event by which the meaning of the age is constituted; all that remains as its defining feature is the consciousness of break

Textausschnitt: 67a Almost from the beginning, the modern world has been a problem to itself. The self-consciousness of its designation as "modern" seems to invite speculation and uncertainty. By contrast, the medieval world had no such concern about its own meaning. "Middle ages" meant quite simply the period between the advent of Christ and the end of the world. It had nothing to do with our perception of the medieval as the period sandwiched between the ancient and the modern. Nor was it assimilated to the "dark ages," a conceit invented to reassure the enlightenment of its modernity. Secure in its status as the age between the definitive opening of revelation and its final consummation at the end of time, the medieval world could turn its attention to the task of living out its transcendent faith within the pilgrimage of time. It is only with modernity that the problem of the meaning of an age surfaces. A break has occurred that constitutes a new era within time, and attention naturally focuses on the meaning of this novel development. The question becomes so pervasive that we might regard the search for the meaning of modernity as its defining characteristic. (Fs)

67b There is nothing unusual about our contemporary discussions of the nature of the modern or the postmodern world. Consciousness of epoch is a permanent preoccupation of modernity. What renders the debates interminable is the absence of any defining transcendent event by which the meaning of the age is constituted. Instead, we have a succession of immanent protagonists and events that rival one another in the unending struggle to define the meaning of the age. In place of a pivotal transcendent irruption, we have an endless stream of mundane irruptions that seek vainly to imprint their stamp on an age that ceaselessly flows away from them. There is a comic quality to the futile effort to command the tide of reality, but it is also susceptible to more deadly connotations. The impossibility of constituting an epoch of meaning from any mundane perspective has even today scarcely been recognized. The reason, however, is obvious. As soon as a fulcrum for the lever of meaning is located, the point from which control is to be exercised recedes away from us. Only what is outside of time can continuously provide the meaning of time without diminution. This is why, despite the intense consciousness of modernity as an epoch, it fails to identify any stable event from which its meaning can be derived. It is perpetually reviewing itself in search of the key that will unlock its meaning. Neither Renaissance nor Reformation, Enlightenment nor Revolution, have been capable of persisting as the overarching definition. Modernity, which began with the intense consciousness of epoch, seems fated to see itself evaporate in the flow of time itself. Nothing we do can save the modern self-understandings from their successive dissolution.1 (Fs) (notabene)

3.Kommentar (13/12/05): Interessant die Analogie zwischen Epoche und Mensch der Transzendenzvergessenheit.

68a All that remains as its defining feature is the consciousness of break. It is different from the medieval. The curious consequence of this structure is that the very effort to establish the distance of the modern world from its predecessor leans all the more heavily on the latter for its self-definition. Is it possible to be modern without consciousness of the medieval past? The contrast is indispensable. By establishing its independence from the framing context of revelation that constitutes the medieval order, the modern world fixes its contours. Modernity is rooted in the claim to the self-sufficiency of reason, outside of a revelatory context, as the source from which order can be created in the world. Revelation does of course continue, but now it is reached from the perspective of the individual subject whose assent of faith becomes the exclusive focus of attention. The perspective of finite subjectivity is primary. All evocations of an overarching meaning, whether spiritual or political, must first receive the assent of free individual judgment. Institutional carriers of meaning, including even the Church, have their authority mediated through the exercise of free subjective assent. In a world whose comprehending meaning has shattered, the only irreducible bedrock is the consensus emergent from individual rational inquiry. (Fs) (notabene)