The normative terrain of modernity

Abstract

This paper offers a conceptual framework that deals with modernity, conceived as a historical consciousness that comprises discourses of emancipation (progress, reason, etc.) that are tensioned in their effort at actualization. The paper discusses the main approaches of social theory with themes like instrumental reason, critique, the autonomization of market relations, the new and technique. Modernity is not only a description of the social structure, but rather it is embedded in an attitude regarding values and the historical pace of transformations. With the institution of a normative terrain where values are legitimated and tensioned in light of the historical experience, the impasses of an unfinished project remain on the horizon of the contemporary crisis.