Current Debates on Modernity. Prospects and Horizons

Abstract

In this paper I would like to defend the concept of modernity. Although modernity cannot be understood anymore as a universally valid normative horizon this concept seems to be a vehicle that contains experiences and expectations that almost all human beings on this planet share, despite all differences expressed by their visions and imaginaries, critiques and even their rejections of modernity. “Modernity”, thus my thesis, names a discursive field on which reflections on our current entanglement of human affairs on a global scale are coming together. In a normative sense “modernity” expresses a new “world-consciousness” and the acknowledgment of the necessity to translate the multiple experiences and expectations with and within the processes of modernization.