Mi a modernitás?

Modernity is driven by the spirit of enquiry, and thus it has had a destructive effect on all hierarchical and authoritarian societies since Hellenistic antiquity. Modern society is the only one not threatened by but fuelled by criticism. The dynamics of modernity first took shape in Socrates' writings, he revealed that what we believe to be righteous, beautiful and good, is not so. During the enlightenment, a decisive phase in the history of modernity, the concept emerged that all human beings are born free. However, the experience of the Holocaust and the Gulag indicate that we cannot believe in the illusion of the enlightenment that modernity naturally embodies the victory of Reason over barbarism. The revolutionary radicalism of capitalism breaks down the traditional order, but it also threatens that which it upholds. Its counterpoise is social democratic policy, which, contrary to capitalism, is conservative as it aims to vindicate the policy of redistribution. These two tendencies become alternately predominant. Important factors are scientific-technical progress, and changeable political orders. Totalitarian systems are also modern but are incapable of keeping the dynamics of modernity alive.