challenges of MODERNITY

TIME

Clocks and Chronometric Time - Empty and uniform devoid of

any intrinsic sense of significance. Homogenous, empty time
(Taylor, 2007)
Clock-time linear, homogenous and irreversible; any given
moment of time is gone forever, being unremittingly replaced
by new identical moments that themselves disappear.
Calculated time according to the planning, quantitatively
reckoned. Time is money. a commodified time. Linear
conception of time, a time frame in which the future can be
understood as an open horizon. Progress geared towards
technological production
Fragmented isolated contingent now points, linked together
not via the configuration of a meaningful narrative, but in
infinite linear progression towards an open future. Partial
disintegration of the thick web of inferences that weave past,
future, and present together in a dynamic unity.

Secularization - Disenchanted time-consciousness, temporality

succession of homogeneous irreversible now points,
calculated, quantification, neutralization of time,
commodification of time, speed; Time is not only strictly
quantified; it is viewed as a scarce resource, easily lost, to be
fervently seized upon and conquered.
Experience of transitoriness. Modernity is the transient, the
fleeting, the contingent (Baudelaire). Irretrievable past the
future an open horizon - A past that is gone forever to a not
yet actualized future. The present a simple portion of time
that passes and throws us mercilessly into the future.
Time like space becomes something like a container
indifferent to what fills it. Modern time can emerge as a time
of repetition, a perpetual reproduction of identical temporal
units, that, with the invention of the chronometer, calculation,
coordination, exactitude, technological development, research
as well as in our orientation in and to nature in general. Time
understood by analogy with or even becomes a function of,
space; for just as physical space is abstract and measurable a
container indifferent to its content so now is time, and
duration becomes a matter of mere quantifiable length, with
the length of time being understood in terms of standardized
temporal succession. Conception of lived everyday time as
inherently quantifiable- that is as essentially an indefinite
repetition of commensurable unities.
Progress linked to Providence amounts to a linear conception of
time
Rise of the exact sciences, industrial technology, technological
innovation.
Physicalist, objectivist naturalist clock-based understanding,
conception, interpretation of time.
Natural scientific world view becomes possible through the
temporal concepts and their objective reality. Representation
of time according to a principle of successive instants with a
similar weight.
Seventeenth century scientific revolution universalized a
homogeneous conception of time to be valid for all being.
History seen as the progressively unfolding of events leading
into the present. Teleological account of progress,
determinism; Towards a fixed utopian state in the future;
historical master narrative; The present is an accumulation of
the past and the future the necessary result of all the
accumulated moments of history. (Marx, Comte). Non-
teleological account; History is advancing without a final
destination; history becomes an endless interlacing of the
repetitive and the irreversible a permanent renewal.
Time when understood as the steady transformation of
potential future into actual past by reference to a dynamic
human perspective fixated on the present, time brings
everything to an end in every single moment; it may seem to
dissolve the world into an infinite dust of instants.
Fragmented isolated contingent now points, linked together
not via the configuration of a meaningful narrative, but in
infinite linear progression towards an open future. Partial
disintegration of the thick web of inferences that weave past,
future, and present together in a dynamic unity.
Thus time sheds its qualitative, variable, flowing nature; it
freezes into an exactly, quantifiable continuum filled with
quantifiable things (the reified, mechanically objectified
performance of the worker, wholly separated from his total
human personality): in short it becomes space. Lukacs
Dead or meaningless time, a time to be overcome in order to
achieve the actualization of the end to arrive at the moment
of satisfaction.

Neuzeit permanent renewal, drastically accelerated the tempo of

change. Change becomes more rapid and the present as what
distinguishes the past from the future becomes progressively
condensed.
Time provides an essential condition of possibility for every
being; time is also destructive. Things suffer through time
Aristotle, time wastes things away, andthere is oblivion
 owing to the lapse of time Periods: Italian Renaissance
German Reformation French Revolution
Transient world generating anxiety Clock time repetitive
perpetually repeats moments of time that are identical with
another. However unlike forms of repetition such as for
example rituals, that retrieve the past, the individual moment
of clock-based time is a mere passing and therefore also a
form of loss: this individual moment will never return.
Time when understood as the steady transformation of
potential future into actual past by reference to a dynamic
human perspective fixated on the present, time brings
everything to an end in every single moment; it may seem to
dissolve the world into an infinite dust of instants.