This course is about literature and modernity. Let’s begin by defining some terms, particularly what I mean by "modern."

There are probably two associations that we commonly make with the term "modern" that I would like to set aside for the duration of this course. They are 1) "modern" means "now" and 2) it’s good to be "modern."

A. "Modernity," "Early Modern," "modernism."

In discussing Western civilization, historians use the term "modern" to designate post-Medieval civilization; so we may say that the set of attitudes that we call "modernity" begins in the Renaissance, i.e., in the 1500s, the sixteenth century, more or less (it depends a little on what country you’re talking about: the Renaissance begins earlier in Italy than in England, for example).

It didn’t happen like a light being turned on, of course. The formation of the set of cultural attitudes that we call modernity was not complete until the end of the 18th century (the French and American revolutions are convenient markers), so we call the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries together "early modern."

Which means that the 19th and 20th centuries are just plain "modern," up until the mid-twentieth century (1960s, 1970s?), when we become "postmodern."

So here’s a time line, if you like, although things aren’t really this precise: Early modern: 1500-1789 Modern: 1789-1970ish Postmodern: 1970ish—

There’s a complication that I’m omitting for the time being, which is something called "modernism" or "high modernism," taking place during the first half of the 20th century, or maybe the late nineteenth century through the first half of the 20th. The term is definitely related to the "modernity" that I am discussing, but has a somewhat special definition which I’ll get to, but not today.

First, I’d better say what all this is supposed to be, rather than just when.

B. What is it?

Let me begin by telling you how I got interested in this stuff. As you may know, it’s fairly common to refer to contemporary culture as postmodern. The term goes back quite a few years, being first used systematically in architecture, if I’m not mistaken, but let’s say that the term really came into common use in the 1970s.

OK, what is the postmodern? Good question, but if the post-modern is something that follows the modern, you really need to decide what "modern" means first, or at least simultaneously. This is how I got interested: everyone was talking about the "postmodern," and I asked myself, post-what?

On a little more personal level, my life is now long enough to have a "historical dimension" (that’s a thrill, believe me); I was born and a good part of my education took place before anyone decided that there was such a thing as postmodernism. In other words, I was born under "modernity," and now many people are saying that the prevailing Western cultural attitude has changed. And in fact, I can recognize a lot of attitudes that seem to have changed in my lifetime: things that I and my classmates thought when we were undergraduates that undergraduates in my classes today don’t seem to think.

For example: when I was in my teens, there was a company whose advertising slogan was, "Progress is our most important product." Everybody knew exactly what was meant be "progress." Not technological progress, but the general expectation that life would get better as the years roll on, because people (i.e., "society" or even "government") would manage their affairs better and better. It’s not that we didn’t think that there might be war or natural or manmade disaster, but even so, over the long haul, progress would take place. I am not so sure that as many people believe that today; I asked a class of mine last year whether they believed in progress, and, without being in total despair, most of them agreed that they and their contemporaries don’t have the broad faith that I claim that I and my peers had. I don’t mind saying that when I held certain attitudes as a young person, I thought (or rather assumed without thinking) that those ways of thinking were universal or "natural." Now that attitudes seem to be changing, I can’t think that anymore, and I recognize that my attitudes were in fact specific beliefs, ideas, not held by everybody.

OK, so what is it? Let’s start with 3 things:

1. Change.

Perhaps the most obvious thing is that modernity begins when people think of themselves as engaged in a process of change; there’s a difference between "modern times" and what went before. You’ll say that people have always thought that, and you’d probably be right, but changes in the Renaissance were so dramatic and happened with such frequency (the discovery of the New World, the fragmentation of Christianity into Catholicism and Protestantism, the concept of the Copernican revolution—a heliocentric solar system—all within the space of 50 years!) that I doubt very much that a European of the Middle Ages, say, in 1300, had the same sense of living in a changing world as his counterpart of 1600.

2. Collapsing order.

OK, here’s something a little more specific: something that characterizes modernity is the feeling that some traditional order (of many possible kinds: a moral order, a value system, an institution such as the Catholic church, a body of knowledge such as the Ptolemaic solar system) is no longer valid. Things have changed (this why it’s essential to be aware of change in the first place), and the old ways of making sense out of life don’t work any more. Now, there are at least a couple of conclusions that one can draw from the observation that traditional order doesn’t work any more: 1) that’s bad; 2) that’s good. In my understanding of modernity, the feeling I have is that people think that it’s bad in the sense that we need a new order to replace the old one, but that it is only natural and inevitable that old orders should give way to new, because change is natural. You might regret the passing of the old order because it was especially pleasing to you, or, on the other hand, you might approve of the passing, thinking that it’s high time that we got on to a better way of making sense out of the world, but it’s not the "modern" spirit as I am defining it to say that what we need to do is reverse the change or stop things from changing. The modern mentality is very closely associated with the idea of departing from tradition.

Now, there are some good illustrations of this in our public discourse today, debates that illustrate what I’m talking about and also show that this way of thinking is not universal. One of them is the interpretation of the Constitution that I mentioned in the Introduction on the syllabus. A couple of years ago, I read an exchange in the Los Angeles Times that made me think of all this stuff. The conservative columnist Cal Thomas (who also has a talk show on CNBC) wrote a column about President Clinton’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer. He argued against Breyer because, he said, "Breyer is clearly part of the Harvard [Law School] sociological approach, which believes the law is something that should be fitted to the wishes and needs of contemporary culture, not to an absolute fixed standard to which people should be made to conform for their own and the country's welfare." (Cal Thomas obviously thinks that the law should be an "absolute fixed standard") A reader had written a letter rebutting Thomas, saying, "In America, we do not claim that our laws come from on high, that they are divinely inspired 'absolutes' to which all citizens must 'conform.' As human society evolves, so must its laws." My thought to myself was that "Harvard" and "America" being used in place of "modernity."

A very clear case in point is the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." People who are opposed to capital punishment have argued that it is "cruel and unusual," but people in favor of it reply that the Constitution elsewhere makes clear reference to capital punishment as though it were not unusual, so the clause can’t possibly be used to ban it. But then you get to the question that I am raising: do we expect ideas of what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" to change over time or not? The modernist view is that they do. Does that make Cal Thomas not modern, at least as far as that idea goes? --yes. Does that make him wrong? --not necessarily: when I say that something is "modern," I don’t mean that it’s better. In fact, the idea that "modern" is better is itself a "modern" idea, and the point of my story is that not everybody is modern or has to be. The basic message of this course is that the attitudes that we associate with modernity are not universal or "natural" ways of thinking, they are in fact attitudes and ideas associated with a particular period in Western civilization—a period that is perhaps coming to a close, witness the fact that people seem increasingly (at least, that’s how it seems to me) not to agree with those attitudes and ideas.

There a couple of interesting things about this notion of change and collapsing order: 1) if orders change, it means that there’s more than one way of making sense out of the world; 2) there are a couple of different conclusions to be drawn from the observation that there are multiple orders (multiple value systems, say): a) they’re all wrong but one, b) there are multiple valid value systems. Over time: what’s valid in the 18th century isn’t necessarily valid today; over space: what’s valid in one culture isn’t valid in others. We’re going to find both kinds of thinkers in modernity: Descartes, for example, when he notices that his professors have different opinions about everything, concludes that it’s because they’re wrong, simply, and that he will find the way to be right and thus to eliminate all this contradiction. Other modernists will take a more relativistic approach, and conclude that there are legitimate different perspectives.

3. Individualism

The third element that I will mention is individualism. In many respects, modernity holds that the search for a new order is to be made on an individual basis; that the individual searching alone, often within himself, is the one most likely to come up with some new truth. We will see quite a lot of this in the stuff we read. Descartes, for example, will start from the observation that so far as the sciences are concerned, our ancient authorities (Aristotle) and our institutions (universities) got things wrong, and that the way to get things right was through the exercise of individual human reason. The political revolutions of the 18th century make individual freedom the cornerstone of the political system. Protestantism, for that matter, is a form of Christianity that gives the individual direct access to God without going through the institution of the Church.

One of the interesting things about individualism these days is that our increasing contact with other cultures makes clear to what extent individualism has been a peculiarly Western value. As the globe shrinks and different cultures become more and more in contact with each other, it becomes increasingly apparent that the set of values I call "modernity" is very much a European and North American phenomenon. The classic mistake of Western governments in thinking about political systems in Africa, for example, is to assume that everyone wants to give high priority to individual freedom; in fact, in most African cultures, the group, the collectivity, is more important than the individual.

About a year ago, I saw another article in the Los Angeles Times that caught my eye. This was an interview with Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore. (You’ll remember that a couple of years ago there was a lot of press in the U.S. about Singapore because of the American kid, Michael Fay, who was caned for spray painting cars with graffiti, and the point was usually made that Singapore doesn’t have much in the way of individual liberties, but you can walk the streets alone at midnight without fear of mugging, or drive-by shootings, etc.) Anyway, he (Yew) says some interesting things: "Americans believe their ideas are universal—the supremacy of the individual and free, unfettered expression. But they are not. Never were. In fact, American society was so successful for so long not because of these ideas and principles, but because of a certain geopolitical good fortune--an abundance of resources and immigrant energy…" The interviewer asked him at one point whether it isn’t true that certain successful American business practices are the result of the American values of individual liberty and free expression, and Yew’s answer is quite direct: "No, it is not. The top 3% to 5% of a society can handle this free-for-all, this clash of ideas. If you do this with the mass of people … you’ll have a mess."

Anyway, these are some of the ideas that we will be playing around with.