CHAPTER 5

Modernity: The Idea of Progress

Keywords

Modernity Enlightenment Socio-economic order Scientific worldview Ethics

Modernity changed the lives of people in material but also in immaterial aspects of life, such as practices regarding birth, marriage and death, education, literacy, artistic expression and law and order. First in Europe, then spreading across the globe.

  • The changes are associated with humanism and Enlightenment. New organizational forms evolved from medieval state, church and market configurations: the liberal democracy with a capitalist economy and the socialist state with central economic control. Both experience(d) (an increase in) uniformity and standards; higher state taxes and revenues; and an ongoing search for national identity and representation in a globalizing world.
  • The changes appear to coincide with a value change towards secularity and self-expression. Outside Europe and its offshoots, they got and get their own social, political and cultural interpretation and implementation.
  • A prominent feature of Modernity is the idea of Progress, expressed in the scientific worldview with its empirical reductionism, rationalization and standardization, emancipatory ideals and planning and control. It deeply shaped the way in which the world is perceived and truth is established and legitimized.
  • Industrialism and Enlightenment got their ethical epression in liberalism, with its emphasis on individual freedoms, and utilitarianism, with a focus on individual pleasure and pain. These ‘industrial era ethics’ were challenged and complemented by an ‘enlightenment ethic’ in search of more universal foundations of fairness, justice and the well-being of the collective.

Test your understanding of this chapter by reviewing the study questions below.

Answer:

It was observed for data in the period 1970-20000 that major value changes occurred in large parts of the world:

  • from traditional to secular/rational;
  • from survival to self-expression.

Do you have personal experiences which exemplify such changes e.g. among older family members or when travelling abroad?

Answer:

A number of functions can be listed for the state, ranging from minimal to activist. Based on such a list, one can attempt to define and measure state effectiveness. Such an exercise suggests that (a proxy of) government effectiveness increases more or less linearly with government tax revenues as fraction of GDP. It can be interpreted as ‘progress’ towards the European welfare state of the second half of the 20th century. Nation-states with (very) low tax revenues tend to be ineffective or, in mirror view, an effective (welfare) state can only exist with an adequate taxation level.

There are outliers in such a graph. On the one hand, the welfare state can be confronted with excessive claims and large(r) but rather ineffective bureaucracies, both as part of complex socio-economic and socio-cultural processes. On the other extreme, states can be run by big corporations or religious institutions outside the state-as-such and turn out to be effective at relatively low tax revenues. Some (neo)liberal nation-states are 21st century examples.

Answer:

The ‘scientific worldview’ is is characterized by:

  • Empirical reductionism as method of inquiry (with the aim to generate context-independent statements and abstractions; elimination of religious superstition and distrust of personal knowledge; and separation between object and subject, and between fact and value;
  • a continuous process of rationalization and standardization in search of efficiency and productivity; and
  • a belief in predictability, planning and control of societal processes by bureaucrat-manager-experts.

Answer:

Although there is a broad array of ethical positions, most can be grouped in (neo)liberalism and utilitarianism. The first emphasized individual freedom from interventions by the group / state; the second stresses the utility of different actions for the individual as the ethical criterium of choice.

Answer:

Enlightenment ethics refers to the response of philosophers to the realization that ethics and morality could no longer be founded on God’s commands or on any authority with claims of divinity. Morality and ethics should be anchored in objective truth and logic, in an attempt to construct a universal theory about what is good and bad conduct. Core elements are:

  • reason is the basis for ethical principles and human dignity and rights are at the center of ethics (Kant);
  • equal basic liberties and social and economic equality of opportunity as principles of justice (Rawls).

Answer:

Besides the container and the passenger car, other ‘icons of Modernity’ are (high-speed) railways and motorways, electric power plants and transmission lines, chemicals and in particular plastics, airplanes and airports, and computers and internet.

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