The Dark Side of Modernity

In this book, one of the world's leading social theoristspresents a critical, alarmed, but also nuanced understanding of thepost-traditional world we inhabit today. Jeffrey Alexander writesabout modernity as historical time and social condition, but alsoas ideology and utopia. The idea of modernity embodies theEnlightenment's noble hopes for progress and rationality, butits reality brings great suffering and exposes the destructiveimpulses that continue to motivate humankind. Alexander examines how twentieth-century theorists struggled tocomprehend the Janus-faced character of modernity, which looksbackward and forward at the same time. Weber linked the triumph ofworldly asceticism to liberating autonomy but also ruthlessdomination, describing flights from rationalization as systemic anddangerous. Simmel pointed to the otherness haunting modernity, evenas he normalized the stranger. Eisenstadt celebrated Axial Agetranscendence, but acknowledged its increasing capacity forbarbarity. Parsons heralded American community, but ignoredmodernity's fragmentations. Rather than seeking to resolve modernity's contradictions,Alexander argues that social theory should accept its Janus-facedcharacter. It is a dangerous delusion to think that modernity caneliminate evil. Civil inclusion and anti-civil exclusion areintertwined. Alexander enumerates dangerous frictions endemic tomodernity, but he also suggests new lines of social ameliorationand emotional repair.