The Exploration of the Three Waves of Modernity

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the spread of the arts and sciences during the enlightenment. On the base of the scene is a satyr rushing towards the fire, and beside the satyr is a description, “ satyr you don’t know it” (Rousseau). The satyr eagerness to rush towards the fire represents man using something they don’t have any knowledge of. The result of this lack of knowledge will lead man into exploitations and the corruption of their souls. Under Rousseau’s second wave of modernity, political man begins to treat history as the standard free from an insurmountable control of nature or God. Most importantly, history became seen, as a pliable anecdote of the human free will.

Freidrich Nietzsche brought upon the third and final wave of modernity. Nietzsche believed that the teaching of historicism in the second wave of modernity was untrue. Nietzsche declared that history is pointless. According to Nietzsche, the sole purpose of history is to empathize that history is pointless. Past philosophers saw the transcendent truth in history, nature, human nature, or religion. Nietzsche believed that there is no standard our transcendent truth. This belief is sceen in his statement of “ God is Dead” (Zarathustra Prologue 20). There is no transcendent truth in nature or any religion. In this third wave of modernity all ideals and value just relative and “human creations.” (Zarathustra 342) The Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, below, highlight’s Nietzsche’s teaching. If all values are relative that means there are no virtues and vices. In short, the virtues in are values that we hold in our society, have zero meanings in our pursuit for a just political order .If all values are relative and if religion, history, and nature are all pointless, what is left to direct modern man lives? The answer, according to Nietzsche, is free will. The purpose of modernity is to free human will from all insurmountable nature, history, and God, which comes to an apex in Nietzsche teaching of the Uber-man. Nietzsche’s Uber-man represents individuals who are part poet, part philosopher, and part saint that will take advantage of reality and will secure power to the role. According to Nietzsche, the Uber-man will shed the relative concepts of history, religion, and nature that society places on him and secure its right to the role. The Uber-man will also understand that the world is a blank canvas upon which he or she can enforce his or her own creative will, thus giving man something more tangible to guide their lives. At the end of the third wave of modernity, humans will now stand emancipated from God, religion, nature, and history, but from all forms of reason in itself. Thus leaving the creativity of human will to create all of its value.

Through the three waves of modernity, philosophers Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Nietzsche all held theories on how to attain an ideal state. Some saw their truth in the means in nature, some found their noble truths in history, and others found their answer being there is no truth. The purpose of philosophy is to take the teaching of all philosopher‘s and form your own opinion based on what you believe is important for an ideal society instead of blindly following someone else’s opinion.