PetiteEtoile, Habermas

From what I understood of the Harbermas reading, there were two thoughts being evaluated. One was the way a society becomes 'modern' or moves forward. In one way, societies completely abandon the past in an attempt to move forward into the new and seemingly better ways of the future and becoming 'modern'. Other societies became modern by taking what had already been discovered or created in the past and reinventing it into a newer better version of the past. And other societies have simply taken the progress of the past and added upon it, creating more and more layers and adding depth. The question that is derived from the first process is if something becomes classic or old, and we simply throw it aside for new ideas, than wont those new ideas some day also be old and thrown aside? So then is there even a point to creating new modern thought? He also discussed the different spheres of science, morality, and art and how they affect society. If they becoming extremely specified, so the experts in these subjects become increasingly more knowledgeable in them, than the gap between that information and the general public becomes greater and greater. But if one tries to disrupt those spheres, for example say that everything and anything can be art and everyone is an artist and everyone is an art expert, than there really is no art or art experts. And if art becomes so abstract and so out there and so undefined, that we are back again to the beginning problem that the general public will not understand it nor see the beauty in it. What I believe his conclusion was to that issue, was that art should reflect some sort of personal experience. Therefore, when even a common person who has no education in art sees an art work, they can understand it and connect with it because they too have had such a personal experience or one close to it or know someone who has. It is a very interesting argument that I had yet to consider personally. That as the experts become better and better in there areas the general public becomes more and more detached, so that we would have two separate worlds of the knowledgeable and the unknowledgeable.