brookes77, Habermas

The Habermas reading was a little hard to understand, yet interesting because it has to do with our every day life. What is modernity? I thought a good example of a definition was “ Looking back to the ancients changed with the belief, inspired by modern science, in the infinite progress of knowledge and the infinite advance towards social and moral betterment”. (99) To me was a clear statement of what modernity is, it explains that at different periods in time different styles, genres, or art, beauty, science are modern, new, and different. As we advance as a whole, our theory of modernity advances. In reading some of the other posts on the reading, I made the same connection as “cmcstudent” made when thinking about modern fashion and how it directly relates to the word “avant-garde”. Modern fashion along with art has a avant-garde aura, that is shocking to some, risky, new and different, yet when it is exposed to the public sphere it just needs to be accepted by few leaders who are thought of to be “experts” in their fields.
When Habermas explains how “ instead of giving up modernity and its project as a lost cause we should learn from the mistakes of those extravagant programs which have tried to negate modernity.” I strongly agree with him here, I believe we can still support a modernized cultural, yet not go over board and become too trendy, forgetting our classy/classical roots. In all aspects of life, modern to us has become something ostentatious and as said before “avant garde”. Our culture has molded modernity into everything at the extreme, an example of this would be art and how everyone is an expert at art and how anyone can paint or draw anything (like throwing paint on a wall) and it can be thought of as art because of the fact that everyone is an expert. To me this notion is ridiculous and this modern aspect of art has gone too far and taken away the significance, classy parts of modernity that cause modernity to be remembered. It has become too generalized. I am sure there are many other themes in the reading but this discussion stuck out the most to me, but I look forward to further discussing the more unclear points of the reading in class.