Modernity: A Definition

“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the [modern]epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

- Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto,1848

The term “modern” is most easily described as something that is created in response to previous ways. It describes an intention more so than a specific manifestation of that intention. What is modern now, in 2004, is much different from what was modern 2000 years ago. But just because we have moved further along in time, to more advanced technology and thought, does not mean that which preceeded us is no longer modern. Each movement, idea, practice that can be described as modern must be looked at in its own historical context. The chariot was a modern development in the time of the Greeks, however now it is outdated by our modern technology: airplanes. However, both the chariot and the airplane were modern because they are new and innovative with respect to what came before them. For it is certain that in hundreds more years, our airplane will be as outdated as the caveman’s wheel. To understand modernity, one must grasp what Marx and Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto in 1848: “all that is solid melts into air.” As quickly as one thing is new and modern, it is irrelevant and outdated. But as long as a piece of art, a work of literature, a sheet of music was created in response to old ways, it is modern when considered in its historical context.