What Is Modernity? A Phenomenological Approach to a Contested Concept
A Conversation With David Kretz
12.00–1.30pm | Friday, October 24
Elm Library, 31 Whitney Avenue
Against Engels and other skeptics, I will argue that the concept of modernity can be made sense of. Instead of treating it as a historical period, or as an ensemble of socio-cultural factors, the concept can be approached phenomenologically, focusing on the structure of modernization experiences as a distinct form of historical consciousness. This restores analytic value to a concept that has seemed to many hopelessly vague or bogged down in polemics.
David Kretz is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities, Yale University.
This event is open to all members of the Yale community. Lunch will be served.
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Modernity is a qualitative category, not a chronological one.
—Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia