What is modernity? What burden of value and meaning does one of the concepts that has determined the course of thought –and in its name of action– in recent centuries give us, in making history? Etymologically it speaks to us of novelty, and this will be precisely the predominant idea in the history of thought. In this development, the inheritance of Judeo-Christian thought will give history an end, as a goal and as a meaning, leading us to understand it as a unit, like History. Understanding Modernity as a narrative confronts us, almost without any luck of continuity, with its crisis, at the end of the meta-narrative. This is presented as the essential characteristic of the modern condition. However, as it is conceived as one more narrative, postmodernism questions the origin of the legitimacy of knowledge and the very validity of a way of understanding the world, which will be relativized.
Keywords:
Modernity, Postmodern Theory, Narrative and Meta-narrative, History and Historiography, Theory of History
Author Biography
María José Henríquez Uzal, Profesora, Instituto de Estudios Internacionales, Universidad de Chile
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