Thoroughly Modern Modernity: The Evolution of the New and the Longing for the Old in the Development of Modern Thought

Recently the world has found itself in the grips of a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus whose variants threaten to undermine the progress we have made to combat this dread disease.  In other words, we have found ourselves besieged by something novel—something new—that is becoming newer all the time.  In many ways, what we have witnessed in the last year is an accelerated version of the way the concept of “the modern” has evolved over time.  What for one generation is “modern” becomes for succeeding generations hopelessly antiquated if not dangerously deranged as new variants of modernity first challenge and then replace older versions.

In this webinar, we will think about the way what I will call modern relational thinking undermined and replaced an idea of the absolute—often associated with but not identical to the divine—that held sway in Western thought until the middle of the seventeenth century.  We will ask ourselves what happened to the absolute and the certainty it generated once it lost its pride of place?  How did it change and adapt to modern ways of thinking?  How does our desire for the absolute fit within a modern understanding of the world that is always subject to change?

Grace Burton, Associate Professor, Spanish (Department of World Languages and Literatures) and Theater Department affiliated faculty, is a student of Early Modern Spanish theater, including the works of Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, and Miguel de Cervantes. Her work focuses on the intersection of painting, politics, and theater, and on Early Modern conceptions of nothing, be that nothing physical, mathematical, philosophical, or theatrical.