Crisis of modernity in historical perspective

from impoverished experience to decreasing expectation of the new time

Abstract

This article analyzes in critical perspective the evolution of the condition of crisis that accompanies modernity since its consolidation – a structural problem, resulting from irrational logic, incapable of overcoming internal contradictions; therefore, it articulates the contributions of three thinkers who, in their time, faced the question under converging angles. Investigating the historical and philosophical aspects of the modern crisis, which is present, this study starts with W. Benjamin’s interpretation of the loss of experience in modern times, when information (impoverished knowledge) replaces narrative (once an instrument of reflection); still at the beginning, this article examines how this idea was later developed by R. Koselleck, who relates this concept to the bourgeois ideology of technical progress, with its inflated expectation. Then the focus turns to the contemporary times, exposing the update that P. Arantes (in dialogue with both) offers of this phenomenon in the post-globalization era: the period of the crisis of the new time, in which expectations for an effective social progress decrease.