Modernity in need of change
A recently published book offers different readings and perspectives of reality
A change of pace in order to keep pace – something that should affect us all, including those entrepreneurs and managers who really want to open up a new horizon for their companies, as we all need to start looking at the world with fresh eyes. This is why reading – with great care – Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world), written by Andrea Graziosi (professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples), proves very useful.
Graziosi’s book takes its cue from two events: on the one hand, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and on the other, the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine. He draws his conclusion by considering, first, the need to review our notions, our categories, and our interpretation of the past, as well as of the present. Covid and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, according to Graziosi, have all of a sudden brought under the spotlight the evolution and the crisis of Western societies and, in the process, have revealed how the categories we grew up with and used to interpret the 20th century – and our own lives – are now obsolete.
In other words, the author considers how much what we consider “Modern”, i.e. the “continuously evolving product of rapid transformation that began in Central-Western Europe about four centuries ago, needs updating – an update closely linked to scientific, technical and economic development”.
The book is subdivided into two distinct parts: the first hundred pages or thereabouts include a careful analysis of the concept of “Modern” and its evolution from World War Two until today, including the end of the farming world, individualism, the fall in birth rates and the extraordinary step forward in life expectancy, but also a decreased vitality in social systems and the coalescence of new reactionary movements, and then the difficult reassembly of plural collectivities in ethnic and racial terms. In the second part, however, Graziosi tackles “issues and prospects” related to the evolution of the notion of “Modern”, a notion that has shaped our lives until recently. Here, the author focuses on what we could do to rescue, through innovation and despite its current crises, a certain kind of Western world and modernity that nonetheless, despite all its flaws, succeeded in advancing freedom and human dignity more than any other known system, and he achieves this by focusing on the project – accomplished yet still ongoing – whose final aim is a united Europe.
Occidenti e Modernità certainly requires some careful reading and, perhaps, even further rereadings as events unfold.
Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world)
Andrea Graziosi
Il Mulino, 2023
A recently published book offers different readings and perspectives of reality
A change of pace in order to keep pace – something that should affect us all, including those entrepreneurs and managers who really want to open up a new horizon for their companies, as we all need to start looking at the world with fresh eyes. This is why reading – with great care – Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world), written by Andrea Graziosi (professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples), proves very useful.
Graziosi’s book takes its cue from two events: on the one hand, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and on the other, the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine. He draws his conclusion by considering, first, the need to review our notions, our categories, and our interpretation of the past, as well as of the present. Covid and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, according to Graziosi, have all of a sudden brought under the spotlight the evolution and the crisis of Western societies and, in the process, have revealed how the categories we grew up with and used to interpret the 20th century – and our own lives – are now obsolete.
In other words, the author considers how much what we consider “Modern”, i.e. the “continuously evolving product of rapid transformation that began in Central-Western Europe about four centuries ago, needs updating – an update closely linked to scientific, technical and economic development”.
The book is subdivided into two distinct parts: the first hundred pages or thereabouts include a careful analysis of the concept of “Modern” and its evolution from World War Two until today, including the end of the farming world, individualism, the fall in birth rates and the extraordinary step forward in life expectancy, but also a decreased vitality in social systems and the coalescence of new reactionary movements, and then the difficult reassembly of plural collectivities in ethnic and racial terms. In the second part, however, Graziosi tackles “issues and prospects” related to the evolution of the notion of “Modern”, a notion that has shaped our lives until recently. Here, the author focuses on what we could do to rescue, through innovation and despite its current crises, a certain kind of Western world and modernity that nonetheless, despite all its flaws, succeeded in advancing freedom and human dignity more than any other known system, and he achieves this by focusing on the project – accomplished yet still ongoing – whose final aim is a united Europe.
Occidenti e Modernità certainly requires some careful reading and, perhaps, even further rereadings as events unfold.
Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world)
Andrea Graziosi
Il Mulino, 2023