what is meant by the term .... " the modern condition"?

Question

Is this related to a specific philiosophic, cultural or academic study and if is so what are its arguments and how did they evolve ???

Many thanks in advance , Merv K

Answer 1

modernity is teh era after the industrial revolution i.e. teh era of technology. it is studied by all teh social sciences and often referred to by other academic disciplines. it is a social/cultural phenomenon but it has implications on philosophy and other things too.

the modern condition is one where people no longer directly produce anything but have machines doing most of teh work. this has left many people disenfranchised/out of work/without a reason to be perhaps. It has also led to a greater occurence of psychological and emotional problems as people are confused as to their role.

this is teh argument in criticism of the modern condition. there are pros of course. easier lifestyle, more leisure time, teh ability to travel abroad reasonably cheaply, less time/space barriers, easier communication across cultures etc etc.

perhaps you should assess what the pros and cons are of life around you and think what the modern condition means to your life. that will give you the best answer to your question as you will know exactly what you are talking about without preaching someone else's polemic.

Answer 2

The modern condition denotes the conditions of life in modernity. Modernity is a cultural, historical, political, technological movement that originated at different times in different places. What most people mean by modernity nowadays is a culture and mindset that was exported to the rest of the world (through various violent and nonviolent means) from the West during the colonial period. Though modernity is not necessarily a Western thing - people talk about distinct Chinese and Indian modernities, for instance.

Some of the qualities of modernity include:
- A political system based on nation states.
- A notion that states correspond to populations.
- Government rule, rather than rule by law, or rule by monarch.
- Great faith in science among the general population.
- Philosophy and science in search of truth, which is understood to be discoverable in the world.
- Art reflecting the pursuit of aesthetic truth.
- Mass media.
- Literacy.
- Economic and physical paradigms that assume that human minds and the universe are rational.
- Attitudes towards bodies summarized by biomedicine.

Post-modernity, on the other hand, can refer to:
- Loss of faith in nation-states.
- States with multiple or moving populations.
- The task of governance being taken up by non-governmental organizations and communities.
- Doubt about the conclusions of science.
- Philosophy and science that seek provisional truth or that deny the existence of truth altogether.
- Art that denies conventional restrictions.
- Customizable media.
- Literacy in meta-languages, like semiotics, computer programming, DNA.
- Paradigms that recognize the possibility of irrationality in the universe and in human minds.
- Attitudes towards bodies more about interchangeability of parts and mutability of the connection between body and identity.

The history of how modernity came about is different for each modernity that you might encounter. It's a mistake to try to root such a broad phenomena as modernity to any single historical event, but if I *had* to pick a few that might have seen to the advent of modernity, I'd choose: the rise of the nation-state in Europe (see Hannah Arendt), the birth of governmentality (see Michel Foucault), the Copernican revolution, and the Enlightenment. The advent of post-modernity might be tied to (and I'm pulling this out of my you-know-what): Futurism and Dada, pop art, the switch to an information economy in the West and much of Asia, the United Nations, the use of plastics, the discovery of DNA, multiculturalism, and organ transplants.

Answer 3

Those people above seem to like to hear (or see) themselves talk. The modern condition simply is a term that refers to post-industrialization. The period of time when people became more concerned with reflective thought than trying to spend all day eking out a subsistence.

Answer 4

"The modern condition" means the present day. An, example is "The modern condition of fans is an air conditioner.