2 INTRODUCTION TO MODERNITY
documents which bear the mark of their era and yet go beyond the
provocation of fashion and the stimulation of novelty.2 Modernity dif
fers from modernism just as a concept which is being formulated in
society differs from social phenomena themselves, just as a thought
differs from actual events.
Our distinction between them will be confrontational, thereby
enabling us to discover how they relate and to extract the concept
which is taking shape within modernity, but which is as yet incom
plete. We will therefore think deeply about modernity considered
objectively and as an essence, stripped of the appearances and illu
sions of modernism.
In our opinion, this distinction is a necessary one. Modernism
has been in evidence for decades, maybe for centuries. From fashion
to snobbery, from illusion to image, this triumphant, triumphalist
consciousness of the new has altered its appearance while never actu
ally changing; it has a history. The modern world moves forward
preceded or followed by its shadows: multiple crises, ever more fre
quent and more profound, inextricable contradictions and
confusions, dramas and catastrophes. We owe the concept of moder
nity to the contributions of people who have tried to explore these
crises and confusions. The history of modernism cannot be written
without the history of the concept of modernity (and vice versa).
Moreover, at every time and in every circumstance, two conflicting
trends and two rival attitudes are brought face to face: cocksure con
viction and uneasy uncertainty, arrogance and fear. So that basically
no one is ever sure of anything, and it is not even clear whether the
dispute arises from the past or the future, from yesterday or tomor
row, from the lessons of history or of a possible world yet to come.
The first trend - certainty and arrogance - corresponds to modernism;
the second - questions and critical reflection - to modernity. The two
are inseparable, they are both aspects of the modern world.
This introduction to modernity does not presume to change mod
ernism, nor modernity itself. Its intention is not to complete the
theory or to exhaust the concept, merely to demonstrate that the con
cept and the theory are necessary. Its first goal is to formulate the
concept by demonstrating that for a long time the modern world and
modernism have been submitted to, accepted or rejected, but never
thought. As we map out the territory, we will try to present the theor
etical processes which, by radical critique, will unmask modernism
while bringing the concept of modernity to full term. In this way we
will reveal their movement and their theoretical and negative aspects
(the most 'negative' appearing sometimes as the most 'positive', and
vice versa - a point made not with the intention of confusing matters
INTRODUCTION 3
even before we start, but in order to specify the method: dialectic).
If we are to understand our era - and to call it complex would be
an understatement - it is absolutely vital that we construct a set of con
ceptual tools. In our view this conceptual apparatus is still far from
satisfactory, despite the efforts of various theoreticians (who call them
selves 'philosophers', 'sociologists', 'anthropologists', etc.), and
despite the fact that the theoretical base already exists in Marx and
Marxism.
As a matter of urgency we must clarify the concept of modernity
which is gestating in embryo in an already lengthy series of medita
tions by 'modern' thinkers on their times, on events and on
themselves.
Why the subtitle Preludes? Does it mean that what I am writing is
intended merely as an exploration or a series of explorations? No. It
means that the themes broached - elements of a general theory - will
be tackled only in a fragmented way. And consciously so: they will not
form a finished totality, a comprehensive picture or system. What is
more: the untimeliness of a comprehensive picture, the impossibility
of a definitive system and a complete totality for our times - these
themselves will be among the themes. Yet the themes will not be
treated in isolation one from the other. They will interweave and cor
respond, echoing and rebounding from one to another.
An opening prelude proposes inmy as a truer way of thinking than
modernism's enthusiastic (triumphant and triumphalist) conscious
ness, and thereby appropriate for the theory of modernity already
present by implication in the processes we will use to define it. We will
see that the thinkers of modernity who have contributed to the for
mulation of its theory since Marx were also ironic thinkers, using
irony as a method and as a form of reflected consciousness. Our irony
must be defined or redefined explicitly, and we will do this in terms of
the opening out of the field of possibilities in the modern world, of
their multiplicity, of the necessity of opting and the risk every option
involves. In a word: with reference to the aleatory in modernity.
Can the myth of Oedipus reveal the hidden depths of being, of
thought and of history? Do the seer who was blinded for trying to
solve the riddle and the blind man who in his wanderings became a
seer symbolize the philosopher, or even modern man and the mod
ern world? This theme is linked with a broader question: 'When we
modern men reflect on modernity, can Greece still offer us some
thing? In what ways can it help us to understand and to find our way
through the vast field of possibilities?'
Does the image of the new life, the countenance of that which is
possible, still mean anything? Myth, ideology, utopianism - might this