post-it note, Habermas

The relation between ‘modern’ and ‘classical’ has definitely lost a fixed historical perspective (from Habermas’s Modernity – An Incomplete Project).

 

This makes sense to me because we are learning about Post-Modernity as it is happening. We are in a post-modern class that defines post-modernity before the era is over. According to Habermas, this means that the words modern and classical have modern definitions because we use them to describe the present as modern. Modernity is characterized as a time that uses the very most up-to-date techniques. In post-modernity, the techniques that are modern utilize classic lines that are reminiscent of history. Things that seem old are new versions of classics. Antiques are no longer antiques, as we have discussed at great length in class. I believe that this stems from an devalued importance of old things in a society where being up-to-date requires that the old be dissgarded, almost forgotten so that all the new tech paraphernalia has enough time to be used before the next great thing is created. But the times that modernity has cast a shadow upon are making a comeback because the past is becoming valuable again to many who want to remember the world that they grew-up in before the race to uncover the next greatest YouTube video began. Modernity was yesterday when we were living in yesterday. Today is modernity because we live today. The same pattern will be followed tomorrow. But how do we know this time that we are in a post-modern world. Since when did the world become proactive in its ways so that naming an era in which we are a part of, they we contribute to, alongside the progress that is made in that same era? It is for this reason that Habermas sees modernity as an incomplete project. And why modern and classical as adjectives have lost meaning in defining the past when there are not modern words to describe our own actions.