The Origin and End of Modernity

Abstract

In this article, I suggest that post-modernism is in essence a return, under radically different circumstances and with a cultural inheritance from the modernist era (especially thè modernist' principle of freedom of the individual), to a kind of (post-modernist) medievalism. The view that the`trend of our times' is towards a`post-modern medievalism' is based mainly upon a consideration of the decline of the nation-state, the replacement of`absolute' with a kind of moderated' national sovereignty and the fact that the nations and regional assemblies of Europe are beginning to look increasingly like the duchies and baronies of feudal Europe.(An asterisk after a term indicates that it is being used in a gender inclusive sense.)

Momentos de transición. El organismo ruso y la intervención internacional

“…Yet the debate also contained reflections on the ordering of the world and its evolution that remain relevant today. For Trainor (1998), for instance, the modern era began with the end of the feudal, medieval era and post-modernism with the decline of the nation state and the decreasing importance of the individual as compared to the collective. He also characterises the…”

Scholarly Dialogue

“…Trainor (1998) distinguished this home from the unshakable foundation of modernism. But successful reform will require a type of symbolic home where a diversity of theories and ideas can flourish within a spiritual community of shared values and beliefs.…”

“…But successful reform will require a type of symbolic home where a diversity of theories and ideas can flourish within a spiritual community of shared values and beliefs. Trainor (1998) distinguished this home from the unshakable foundation of modernism. He described it instead as a home that offers a foundational faith in the connectedness of our ideas to the world and to each other.…”

State capacity and development in a post-modern age

“…It is becoming increasingly likely that in many of the world's poorest societies, the development models of old are inapplicable today simply because states lack the capacity to realize them -if ever they possessed it. Some International Relations (IR) theorists have begun talking of a new mediaevalism, which they posit is replacing the era of the nation-state presumed by all traditional development models (see, eg, Matthews, 1997;Kobrin, 1998;Trainor, 1998;Friedrichs, 2001;Aalberts, 2004). It is suggested that with the weakening of states attendant upon globalization, combined with the reassertion of power by sub-national units such as region-states (Ohmae, 1993) and municipalities on one hand and the emergence of transnational bodies such as the European Union and North American Free Trade Area on the other, citizens are developing loyalties to a plethora of new agencies.…”