Programme: Antiquity and Modernity in a European Context Type: PhD/Doctoral programme Academic degree: Doctor of Philosophy, Dr. phil. Duration: 6 semesters / 180 ECTS
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era), as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of Renaissance, in the "Age of Reason" of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century "Enlightenment".
We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.
With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears; The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.
Modernism is in essence a provincialism, since it declines to look beyond the horizon of the moment, just as a countryman may view with suspicion whatever lies beyond his country.
Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 67