Smiley Face - Habermas

What I found most interesting about Habermas's writing is his discussion about what is classical and what is modern. If you think about it we, our generation today is modern, well postmodern actually, but we consider ourselves more modern than 50 years previous to us. This concept of modernism suggests that the cultural definition of the word 'modern' changes over time. As much as people over time define themselves as modern, there is no clear distinction between these modern periods of time, not in the word modern that describe both.
Writers of the eighteenth century relied on the ancients, classical men, to classify themselves as in fact modern. As much as the modern writers of the early eighteenth century used the ancients as a means of promoting their own development in culture, they also relied on them for much of their source of knowledge. Furthermore, with the change in definitions between modernists and classics - where does the time period lie in which one moves from being a modernist figure to a classical one? The classics at one time were considered modernists, much like the writers of the eighteenth century and much like ourselves today. Samuel Johnson in his work "Shakespeare's Excellence" in "The Preface of Shakespeare" he discusses Shakespeare's move from being a modern to a classic, as he states that he may "begin to assume the dignity of an ancient." The time Johnson wrote this was a good hundred years after Shakespeare's time, therefore there is somewhat of a time period in which he could move from modernist to classic.
Overall, the constant use of the word modern has turned it into a word of meanings that can only be understood within the time period or culture it is being referred to as. One mus take into consideration that a certain amount of time must pass before the cycle of change occurs where the old moderns become the new classics to make room for newer modernists.