From Multiple Modernities to Multiple Monads

The Case for a Novel Conception of Modernity

on a Herderian Framework

Arta Moeini

Georgetown University

December 2013

1 | P a g e

Introduction

The source of everything is man’s unsocial sociability. That is to say there exists simultaneously in

mankind an unsocial, individual thrust which constantly seeks his own and a sociable element

safeguarding a communitarian spirit willing to even sacrifice himself for another. It is rather obvious that

these two elements are in deep tension with one another. We both want to make our own “individual”

marks on the world and at the same time we need today as we had needed in the past our fellow human

beings to not only survive but flourish given that we have not evolved to be “self-sufficient” and autarchic.

In fact, the question of how to reconcile these two opposing parts has proved a genuine aporia. It could

be argued that all political theory is in some level reducible to this dichotomy of the self vis-à-vis the

collective. Our social nature (culminating in formation of communities) appears as nature’s contraption to

create the necessary environment for our flourishing, while our sense of individuality acts as the engine

behind this flourishing driving it forward. It is the individual element that provides the spark for our

personal (and even collective) development because in it rests the fire of our originality and creativity that

inspire our agency. This originality can only come about (even if only in those truly exceptional amongst

us) by means of a spirit of free thinking. Classical and Renaissance authors instinctively understood the

vital and inescapable interplay between the two nodes of human psyche and the sheer importance of

finding a harmony and balance between these bipolar nodes—thus their clear focus on the virtues of

moderation and justice. The chief emphasis of the “ancients” hence is on finding the best means of

channeling man’s individuality so that it could work in tandem and harmoniously with his unavoidable

communitarian need and yearning. There is a realization here of the necessity of integrating these two

halves of the human psyche in order to attain a fulfilling existence for mankind. Now most would concede

that achieving self-fulfillment and harnessing individual’s potential requires the founding of communities,

that living a meaningful life does not come about in a vacuum but rather it is fundamentally inter-

subjective. Careful observers would also agree that essentially any “social” community must also be a

“normative” community to define the basis for membership or else it would be meaningless and disband

ex ante, meaning any community (in order to be classified as a community) depends on norms and ethics

(I.e. a set of absolute commitments) to sustain itself and cast itself as an objective horizon of values

according to which an affiliate subject mediates his/her behavior. It also means that these values must be

held in common by the members of group in order to be authoritative. It is thus only by means of a

comprehensive and shared value-system, signaling a common belief-system (Weltanschauung), that

ultimate integration of these two opposite longings of mankind (i.e. social and unsocial) comes about in

actuality, turning this duality into a synthetic unity. The central question then becomes how to derive

common values in a way that they be authoritative over the individual members of the community.

2 | P a g e

The ultimate question driving the above claims is “what is the source of normative authority”

does it lie with the individual or the community? It is this paper’s central contention that the way in

which philosophers of modernity attempt to reconcile this dichotomy of individual and community, in

other words their core assumptions in regards to human sociability and the genesis of shared normative

values, ultimately informs and triggers the formulation of entirely different conceptions of modernity

in their thinking, so much so that they could arguably be operating in separate paradigms. This is

portrayed by means of analyzing the philosophies of three German thinkers coming to terms with the

notion of modernity in late 18th and early 19th century circa the French Revolution (1789)—those are Kant,

Hegel, and J.G. Herder. The second more subtle point which nonetheless has vast implications is that how

these three thinkers specifically came to conceive the meaning of “modernity” is of direct consequence

in the contemporary scholarly debates on the topic for it has inadvertently established the parameters

for any discussion on the future fate of modernity as it has become increasingly problematized in coming

into contact with the non-Western world.

This question of what it means to be “developed” and “modern” and whether or not there are

any set criteria for being modern is of paramount importance as more and more nations across the globe

who undergo economic development in order to secure better standards of living for their population find

themselves compelled (almost as a primal reaction) to balance this (materialist) aspiration of theirs against

an even more fundamental desire to preserve their distinctive identities and ways of life, thus

experiencing firsthand many of the discontents of modernity. In this regard, I find Herder’s thought to be

particularly enlightening for he is the first to underscore the Universalist implications of Kantian thought

and reject it in its homogenizing effects as detrimental to authentic human experience, a hindrance to

genuine fulfilment of human potential. In offering the most systematic objection to Kantian ideas, Herder

alludes to a new conception of progress and modernity that is salutary (especially for non-Western

scholars coming to terms with modernity in light of the various “development plans” of their nations).

While conventional thinking on the question of “modernity” as a substantive socio-cultural program (that

must thus be emulated if one wishes to be considered “modern”) unavoidably equates “modernization”

with some level of “Westernization” which tends to make it (modernization) unattractive to many non-

Western governments concerned with protection of their “natio-cultural” identity and heritage, Herder’s

(monadic) understanding of development and modernity—as a “process” of cultural renewal that could

unfold very differently across cultural complexes (without a predetermined goal modeled after the

Western experience) actualizing sui generis “substantive” configurations of the “modern”—deserves

renewed attention. For non-Western scholars, I believe Herder’s vision is of great consequence for he

delineates the sole path that allows cultures to re-cultivate and rejuvenate themselves on their own

terms, and hence develop and progress in their own trajectories, without having to compromise

themselves and to become to some degree or other Western in the process. Moreover, the Herderian

philosophy encourages the Western thinker to appreciate the beauty of difference and diversity as a

prerequisite for (human) growth. Thus, recovering the often-neglected thought of J.G Herder specifically

on the question of modernity is a central aim of this project, one which I hope could contribute to bridging

the gap in the scholarly treatment of modernity among the Western and non-Western intellectuals.

3 | P a g e

KANT and the Conventional View of Modernity

Although as established above, the communal norms and mores have an originally necessary and

salutary function in bonding societies together, problem seems to arise with the occasional and gradual

hardening or rigidification of those values to the degree that they become not only unconducive (to the

self) but all-together suffocating. By severely handicapping man’s free thinking, these now-standardized

unyielding rules and customs extinguish in him the fire of agency and inadvertently make passive subjects

out of the members of the collectivity. At this juncture, the community has essentially lost its dynamism

and vitality, inherent to its continued growth and evolution. Now historically, perhaps the best systematic

expression of a culture’s normative standpoint is manifested in its (ethical) religion. It is important to note

here the fundamentally communitarian basis of religion, albeit of a special kind. Nonetheless, yearning

for a spiritual community, religion is intrinsically a derivative of the sociable quality in mankind and if fact

attempts to control the vices of man’s unsocial side. Employing the power of faith over the members of

their congregation, organized religions effectively checked against the unsocial problematic of mankind,

his “radical evil”, amour propre, individualism. In time, however, religious doctrine could become more

and more dogmatic and orthodox until it so petrifies the minds of its adherents to have completely

exhausted their activism and agency and thus enthrall/enchant the collectivity into passivity. This

happened partly due to a sort of supernatural transference of the normative—or what Weber calls the

emergence of a “transcendental anchorage for ethics”—where religions (given their spiritual

transcendental outlook) shift the source of normative authority out of this world placing it up in heavens,

and thereby putting it beyond the scope of human deliberation (norms can no longer be reviewed because

they are divinely sanctioned). Arguably, this is the very phenomenon that occurred in the West (under

Christendom). The Enlightenment I propose was first and foremost a reaction against this very orthodoxy

and passivity spawned by the church. Vilifying all (ecclesiastical) religion and specially Christianity, it

sought above all to recover this (normative) authority lost to heaven and bring it back down to Earth.

Enlightenment thinkers did just that by placing this authority in the rational thinking subject via the

“principle of subjectivity” (first espoused by Descartes) affirming the subject’s “freedom” of the will and

crowning him autonomous—law unto himself. In the West, the Enlightenment project emerged to liberate

the Europeans from their (mental) captivity and “ignorance”—encouraging them to think for

themselves—and to reendow them with agency. As such, the Enlightenment project must be viewed as

both an antithesis to Christian theology (as developed in the West) and reacting against it. As a reaction

against Christianity, the Enlightenment’s frame of mind is highly informed by Christianity and is deeply

connected to it. So much so that Nietzsche could not have been more correct in identifying the

Enlightenment with the Christian theology calling them “twins in spirit”; indeed, they are the two faces of

Janus.

Moreover, in its vendetta against the Christian church, the Enlightenment as a program did not

stop at dismantling just the orthodox theology to recover the lost individuality but essentially turned in

the complete opposite direction, the other extreme. It showed cold shoulder to the sociable part of

mankind which it saw as the original source for all evils (for it is our social element that requires the

4 | P a g e

institution of norms in the first place and it is the norms that turn rigid and dogmatic). Instead, it fully

attended to the unsocial nature of man. This paradigmatic shift sought a new social theory rooted in the

rational power of the individual which it conveniently found in the conceptual myth of the Social Contract;

the individual was now the original and prime source of authority and the organicism of community and

the sociability of man (let alone culture) became increasingly discounted and banished concepts, fading

into the intellectual background. The justification for the Enlightenment instinct to confer ultimate

authority unto the individual was man’s “reason”. And so, Enlightenment rationalism on which the

“modern” subjectivism depends comes to be the litmus test for all truth-claims. It was assumed that our

shared exercise of reason would permit us to independently extrapolate to the same general rules of

conduct (natural law). Accordingly, the certainty of the doctrine of the church (on the virtue of its divine

quality) came to be replaced with the certainty of “modern” science and Enlightenment rationalism

(owing to its rational quality), limiting the arena for true intellectual exchange and doctrinal plurality.

Perhaps no one thinker is more crucial to the development of the cultural program of Enlightenment and

the kind of modernity that eventually came to claim the Western way of life than its philosopher par

excellence, Immanuel Kant.

Reflecting the spirit of the Enlightenment, the Kantian project sets to above all provide a

justification for “morality” on secular grounds that would set it free from its traditional ties with

metaphysics and religion. Kant does this quite effectively in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

(1785), an intermediary work which marks the logical development of Kant’s arguments from Critique of

Pure Reason (1781) culminating in his later work Critique of Practical Reason (1788). In these works, Kant

founds the system of Transcendental Idealism and through which ultimately succeeds in presenting a view

of secular and rational morality by means of a philosophy rooted in non-traditional

(transcendental/experiential) metaphysics. In doing so, Kant traces his concept of Morality (Moralität) to

the idea of freedom (of the will) and autonomy and uses this “autonomy” to arrive at Morality as universal

law. Kant writes, “The idea of the will of every rational being as a will giving universal law… a will that is

itself the supreme lawgiver (thereby “autonomous”) cannot possibly, as such, depend upon some other

interests (which would make it “heteronomous”); accordingly, the principle of [autonomy deems] every

human will as a will giving universal law through all its maxim”.1 It follows that the definitive categorical

imperative Kant places upon his autonomous subjects is: Do that which is required by universal law

extrapolated from pure practical reason/the “will” (i.e. act always in a way so that your will/its maxims

conform to the universal law—as if it was to become a natural law). This universal moral law, Kant

contends, could and will be reached independently by all rational subjects applying their practical reason.

In this fashion, Kant devises a philosophical system under which the self is universalized with all mediating

forces brushed aside. In other words, in the Kantian system, the ultimate source of authority is indeed

transferred to the self/individual but as all individuals are defined only via their rational quality, they end

up being rather similar (ironically losing most of their personality/identity which is treated as conditional

and therefore trivial here) reaching the same moral conclusions/principles on their own so that these

principles are universalized into “law”—binding on all autonomous subjects. Being autonomous and free,

1 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, (4:432)

5 | P a g e

Kant maintains, man “is subject only to laws given by himself but still universal and that he is bound only

to act in conformity with his own will,” the original source for the universal moral law (by means of maxim-

universalization/generalization).2 For Kant, however, the highest principle of morality—the maxim with

greatest universal validity and hence the most absolute categorical imperative—is that “all rational beings

stand under the (universal) law that each of them is to treat himself and all others never merely as means

but always at the same time as ends in themselves” (morality as an end in itself).3

In such a way, Kant wants to demonstrate freedom/autonomy of the individual and morality

(which derives as the logical consequence of pure practical reason—i.e. will’s own lawgiving) 4 as

“reciprocal concepts”. 5 His main contribution is in devising a system to reconcile the principle of

subjectivity with that of public communal living and showing that they are not inherently incompatible

even if this system was to have no grounds in empirical reality what so ever and required turning all

individuals into one according to a uniform model of “rational being” stripping them of their very

individuality and difference. Kant defines laws of morality as “a priori synthetic practical propositions”—

which precisely because they have not originated in the realm of appearances in response to our desires

and inclinations, but in the intelligible realm and according to the principles of universal practical reason,

evoke a feeling of respect from all rational beings as “objective ends” making theoretically possible the

ideal of a “kingdom of ends”.6 As Kant states clearly, “A rational being belongs as a member to the kingdom

of ends when he gives universal laws in it but is also himself subject to these laws. He belongs to it as

sovereign when, as lawgiving, he is not subject to the will of any other…a rational being must always

regard himself as lawgiving in a kingdom of ends possible through freedom of the will, whether as a

member or as sovereign.”7 His sovereignty rests in his will being completely autonomous. And, it is this

very autonomy that inspires in him a feeling of respect and a sense of duty to the moral law (after all, he—

his will/ practical reason—is the origin of the law). This kingdom of ends thus goes hand in hand with a

lawful observance of universal precepts of absolute morality grounded on principles of practical reason in

which all humans share as rational agents (that is we must be able to extrapolate from our maxims

universal laws that apply equally for everyone in all cases so as to treat them as ends in themselves). Only

on the basis of this freedom and autonomy that they have as rational agents could human beings enjoy

an “inner worth” or dignity which in turn calls for them to innately and rationally respect both the moral

law and their fellow human beings as ends in themselves. This is the genesis of the abstract creed of

“human rights”, of cosmopolitanism, and of “the citizen of the world” jargon. Consequently, the Kantian

system of ethics claims to have succeeded where others had failed in finding a “supreme ground” for

obligation towards moral laws inside the “self” without relying on anything outside the self (particularly

2 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.40 (4:432) 3 (4:433), p.41 = a good will has to be good in and of itself when it acts according to the universal law considering humanity as the only end. We must always treat others as ends in themselves and never merely as a means implies not treating others in a way with which they themselves cannot/would not rationally consent/agree 4 Maxims universally applied as law 5 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.52 6 The universal standard of moral progress where universal moral law is common to all rational beings and our set ends are harmonized with our treating of others as ends in themselves and never merely as means. 7 (4:434), p.41-42

6 | P a g e

severing morality from religious authority) thereby completely internalizing and subjectivizing normative

authority by means of a secular conception of morality rooted in a novel transcendental metaphysics while

paradoxically inducing universalism by treating all “selves” as one and the same. For better or for worse,

it was the legacy of Kant and the Enlightenment that was to have the ultimate pull and weight in the

crystallization of “modernity” as an Idea in the West, recasting it in its image and claiming its soul.

Ironically then, for all its efforts to transcend religion, thanks to Kant and his theory of secular

rational subjectivized morality, the Enlightenment rationalism comes to advance in itself a new secular

religion for the disenchanted modern world, inevitably thrusting forward a universalistic, homogenizing

agenda, once more closing the door on a burgeoning human agency albeit for the sake of a new

“rationalistic” monism this time around (as opposed to the “metaphysical” monism that dominated life in

the Medieval Christian Age). In such a manner, “post-Enlightenment” Modernity in the West (for all its

claims to the contrary) becomes as totalistic and monistic as Christendom once was, utterly despiteful to

true difference (in both modes of thinking and ways of life) demanding more and more uniformity. In

hindsight, therefore, it appears that in the Modern experience of the West and its Enlightenment, the

pendulum of European Geist only shifted from one extreme (the collective) to another (self), never quite

capturing the essence of human agency, the reason for which must be sought on its absolute disregard

for the communitarian/sociable side of mankind. In the words of Habermas, “Modernity revolts against

the normalizing functions of tradition, [living] on the experience of rebelling against all that is normative.”8

It is clear that all that is normative essentially has a communitarian social character for the “norms” are

tied to collective life. Seeking the universal, Modernity’s aspirations are never geared at harmonizing and

balancing of the bipolar nodes of human existence. Quite to the contrary. Modernity is stuck in the

ancient—modern, old—new duality where the past signifies the “immature” and “irrational”

communitarian commitment of mankind and the novel heralds the enthronement of the unsocial element

in us (over and above our sociability)—the celebration of the unencumbered self and our equality in

sameness.

In the same spirit, the totalizing monstrosity that Enlightenment fashioned out of modernity built

upon the old “West-size-fits-all” story to make the claim that in it alone lies wisdom and progress, that it

(modernity) has in the West finally discovered the universal truths (as factual certainties) that the rest of

the world can now emulate. This is the principal attitude behind modernization theory and others which

espouse the notion of “convergence” as the final chapter of modernity. Drawing upon some of the central

myths of the Enlightenment, “convergence” theories advance the homogenizing and totalizing character

of the “socio-cultural program” of Modernity (to borrow Eisenstaedt’s terminology) emphasizing the

“progressive amalgamation of cultures” toward a common (modern) telos on the basis of the universal

“linear progress” of mankind worldwide as a species—as it has become evident in the Western experience

(of modernity).9 Using such lingo as “the end of history, these theories stress a uniformity, universalism,

and cosmopolitanism centered on the superior Worldview (Weltanschauung) of the Modern West.

Habermas and Fukuyama and the many others propagating such notions as “globalization” could be

8 Habermas, “Modernity Versus Postmodernity”, p.5 9 Dallmayr, “Truth and Diversity: Lessons from Herder”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1997), p.107

7 | P a g e

named as among the main proponents of these kinds of theories which is inherently tied to a certain belief

in Western exceptionalism.

Now even putting aside the question of practicality and implementation and the kinds of backlash

convergence theories have suffered in the non-Western world and “the will to power” for which they have

been denigrated and crucified in the post-modern and post-colonial literature, I believe convergence

theories must be abandoned for they prove defective in principle. Given its priorities, “Enlightened”

modernity in the West fails to find a new basis for reintegration and reconciliation of the unsocial self with

the sociable communitarian. This I believe is the principal reason behind modernity’s many discontents

(at least as it has crystallized in the West). Consequently, true freedom of thought remains in

“Enlightened” modernity as elusive as under traditional Christian Age. And so, modernity shows itself to

be inadequate on its own terms in the West since in the course of its development, it succeeded at best

to only momentarily reawaken the spirit of human agency, while in the long run, it failed to foster and

protect the very agency that arguably produced it. Contemporary to the Enlightenment movement but in

stark contrast to the Enlightenment views espoused by the likes of Kant, both Hegel and Herder believed

in the “natural sociability” of humankind which led them to interpret modernity very differently setting

different goals and aspirations for it. Their theories also leaves a lot more space for difference and is the

precursor to all “divergence theories” of modernity. It is to these thinkers we must now turn.

Hegel and Multiple Modernities

Writing during the disconcerting period that characterized the early 19th century Europe (In the

aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars), Hegel was among the first thinkers to

seriously and systematically contend with the concept of “modernity” as he sought a philosophical

explanation for the rather strange condition of his age (his Zeitgeist so to speak) and its dislocating

sociopolitical consequences. He thus offered the first systematic genealogy of modernity. Hegel

introduces his conception of modernity via his intricate and multilevel theory of Geist—in its development

in time and its (gradual) coming to terms with itself. In the framework of the Hegelian system, the Geist

finally becomes self-conscious of itself in modernity discovering its “Freedom”—Freiheit. As such,

modernity in the Hegelian perspective becomes equivalent to the Idea of Freedom which is also “revealed”

to be the central idea animating the Geist. In line with Kant, Hegel takes Freedom to be the true Universal

measure of “Progress”. Yet, more than just identifying Freedom as the basic Universal principle of

modernity in theory, Hegel was concerned about its actual implementation in practice—its full

realization—and in contrast to Kant he entertained the possibility that this ideal of Freedom could

manifest itself differently in different cultures (diverse expressions of the same general Idea).

In observing his contemporary Europe from his “anti-contrarian” lenses, Hegel already foresaw

many possible hurdles on the way to full actualization of the Idea of Freedom (at least in its Western form)

which if not remedied could produce discontents in modernity down the road, causing it to derail (at least

8 | P a g e

temporarily). Having identified the Idea of Freedom as the Universal (idea), he was taken by how this

Universal would manifest itself in the Particular—how it could become concrete—without unsettling the

human experience altogether—without it producing the kind of individualism and subjectivism that could

go against (natural) human sociability weakening human communities by undermining the normative

grounds for them: Here, he broke with Kant and sided with Kant’s nemesis, Johann Gottfried Herder (who

we will discuss later). Indeed, a critical part of Hegelian philosophy is devoted to harmonizing this (at long

last uncovered) Idea of Freedom (which is shown to be the central concern of the Geist) with the effective

reality of human existence as a communal being: this Hegel hopes to achieve through his notion of

Sittlichkeit, or the ethical totality of life shaped in a distinctive ways within various cultural communities.

What is most striking in Hegel is the way he interprets the principle of subjectivity and the idea of

Freedom to mean the natio-cultural self-determination—the Volkgeist (Minded cultural unit) is the only

milieu in which the principle of Freedom can actualize itself. This is because “from Hegel's perspective

individuals removed from public-ethical life are precisely unfree, since freedom is genuinely a public

category” and not a private, individualistic one.10 Hegel is an avid critic of social contract theory: If the

community is reduced to the sum of its individual members and is thus made secondary to the individual,

Hegel posits, “and if its specific end is defined as the security and protection of property and individual

freedom, then the interest of the individuals as such becomes the ultimate end of their association, and

hence membership in the state11 something optional. But the state's relation to the individual is quite

different: since the former is objective Spirit, it is only as a member that the individual gains concrete

objectivity, genuine individuality, and ethical life.”12 The principle of subjectivity in the Hegelian sense thus

finds its true objective realization in a higher subjectivity of a cultural whole—the Volkgeist/objective

Spirit—and calibrated according to the principles of ethical life or Sittlichkeit.

The advent of “modernity” and the Idea of Freedom Hegel hails as the long-coveted, although as

yet incomplete and imperfect, indication of progress. This self-consciousness of Geist and of its

quintessential Idea of Freedom, he describes as only the initial first step (likening it to the birth of a new

born and the foundation of an unfinished building) in the long path to full realization, actualization, and

maturation of Geist.13 This implies that although in modernity the Geist has discovered Freedom to be its

essence, history has not ended. Rather, finding the “correct” interpretation/application of the Idea of

Freedom, its right balance within concrete Forms of Life, will now be the central preoccupation of the

Geist going forward. This Hegel claims can only be done across cultural complexes which serve as the

objective test-subjects for the Geist.14 In effect, in “modernity” we have gotten only a general idea of the

Geist and its make-up, not a whole picture, and so our journey remains far from complete. This is why

Hegel consistently refers to the Geist as dynamic and active and never at rest. What we have is an

abstraction that still needs multiple (practical) manifestations (across cultures) in time in order to become

10 Dallmayr, “The Discourse of Modernity: Hegel and Habermas”, p.691 11 not in the restricted sense of government but meaning cultural community as a whole which also includes government 12 Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, Par.258 13 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Geist (1807), Preface. 14 The world in its plethora of cultures is a laboratory and the cultures are resources to the absolute Spirit/Weltgeist in its path to full actualization employing these cultures to experience what works and what doesn’t in the concrete realm.

9 | P a g e

actually concrete and allow us in depth comprehension of its full effects and its nuisances. It follows that

Hegel views “modernity” as just the beginning of a new chapter in the story of Geist. Also, as evidenced

by Hegel’s enthusiastic celebration of Periclean Athens and its unique Sittlichkeit, Hegel despises the

Enlightenment thinkers whose philosophy casts modernity in terms of the rejection of the past. In

contrast, Hegel urges his “modern” counterparts to always turn to the past for inspiration but apply its

time-tested historical lessons under the novel rubric of Freedom. In Hegel’s perspective, the Idea of

Freedom is a just a sketch of the building not building itself in its full actuality and detail.

Nonetheless, the Hegelian viewpoint, despite its strong culturalist and historicist tendencies

remains staunchly universalistic. Each Form of Life acts as a torchbearer for the progress of mankind as a

whole (Humanitat) and its eventual breakdown due to the internal paradoxes in its worldview only hands

over this torch of progress to a different culture. Put differently, Hegel believes the universal torch of

progress passes from “culture” to “culture”, without ever acknowledging the continuity within the specific

tradition of a cultural paradigm/cave. This implies that the picture of human progress (and modernity) in

the Hegelian conception is ultimately universal and monistic (that is human progress is realized only

through the self-consciousness of the Absolute Spirit or Universal “Mindedness” of itself only possible via

the many Particular “cultures” that unwittingly play a part in this story). This fundamental belief in

universality of progress along with Hegel’s deep pride in superiority of Western culture as the current

champion of this progress (by means of its Modernity) become the main sources of ambiguity in future

interpretations of Hegelian thought. Yet while it is true that in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) Hegel

claims that “Modernity” (understood in its Western form) marks the culmination of spirit/mindedness

(Geistes) in history being the age of the Spirit’s self-consciousness of Freedom, he sets the bar for

completion of progress much higher at the Geist’s absolute realization/attainment of Freedom, a point

often conveniently overlooked by future scholars of Hegelian thought. Following the logic of his own

theory, Hegel never seems to have any illusions that despite the West’s near-synthesis with the “modern”

project in the contemporary age, were West to “slip” another “culture” would be there to pick up this

“universal” (all-partaking) project of progress where the West left off and move it forward, embodying his

process of transcendence (Aufhebung).

Hegel is a particularly important figure for he is the first to shine light on “modernity” as a

“crystallized” concept (post-French Revolution) which could finally now begin to be studied and analyzed.

It is in Hegel’s thought that modernity becomes self-aware of its own emergence so to speak. To use

Dallmayr’s characterization, “Hegel inaugurates the modern discourse in its multidimensionality and thus

established the parameters for the continuation of this discourse by subsequent thinkers and schools of

thought. By erecting these parameters, Hegel also serves as the basic foil or backdrop against which the

later anti-discourse, initiated by Nietzsche and pursued by his heirs, is prominently profiled.”15As both a

critic and a defender of modernity and its Freedom project, Hegel, perhaps inadvertently and

anachronistically, also opens the door to the recently popularized idea of “multiple modernities”. In the

Hegelian formulation, the same underling idea/principle can and will have different expressions across

15 Fred Dallmayr, “The Discourse of Modernity: Hegel and Habermas”, Journal of Philosophy, p.684

10 | P a g e

the cultural universes. By claiming that there could exist different renditions of the universal ideal (i.e.

freedom) in modernity and that these manifestations could be actually conducive to the essential meaning

and self-discovery of modernity itself, Hegel is the first philosopher to give credence to the conception of

Multiple Modernities some two hundred years before the idea was explicitly expressed. As such, Hegel’s

philosophy must be characterized as “historicist universalism” and his view of modernity advances a kind

of “heterogeneous monism” which parallels quite nicely with recent theories of multiple modernities. But

could we imagine a “non-monistic” view of modernity? Interestingly, Hegel’s conception of modernity

marries the thought of Kant and his antithesis J.G Herder in order to find a synthesis prompting his own

philosophy. While a lot has been written on both Kant and Hegel’s views on modernity, Herder’s place in

this discourse has been marked empty. In the rest of this paper, I am going to try to recover the thought

of J.G Herder who I believe offers a “non-monistic” conception of modernity.

Herder and the Theory of Multiple Monads

As noted, Herder believed in the natural sociability of mankind on the basis of the “innate

relationship between human thinking and speaking” and thus focused on man’s “character as a

"gregarious creature, born to live in society" as the starting point of his philosophy.16 Many commentators

suggest “that Herder saw [cultural] nationality as an essential factor in the development of humanity and

regarded the welfare of the individual as inseparably bound up with the welfare of the group. Herder's

view, according to Ergang, was one which held that the individual could attain his highest self-

development only in the life of the group as a whole.”17 As Bernard asserts, "Following Hume, [Herder]

denies both a pre-political state of nature and the formation of civil society on the basis of a social

contract".18 Indeed, “Herder frequently expressed his deep-seated conviction that human beings can only

find their moral and intellectual orientation within the "whole" (Ganze), in the [set] "horizon" (Horizont)

of particular cultures, not in the cosmos or in principles generated by a universal faculty of reason.”19

Herder constantly speaks of the Volkgeist (Geist of a natio-culture) and “of each "nation" or

"people" in history having its own standard of goodness and perfection”. Cultures, in the Herderian sense,

possess the ultimate form of individuality and so like individuals they come to possess certain norms,

mores, and worldviews and so “form a reasonably recognizable whole” despite manifesting as erratic and

idiosyncratic at times.20 According to Herder, “each culture is a kind of self-contained, monistic whole

unto itself”, each “an "expression" (Aufierung) of a people living in a particular time and place, and each

springs from its whole” Life-form (Lebensart) and unique Worldview.21 This cultural self-expression, the

16 Fred Dallmayr, “Truth and Diversity: Lessons from Herder”, p.111 17 Royal J. Schmidt, “Cultural Nationalism in Herder”, 18 J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, 45. 19 Damon Linker, “Herder’s Reluctant Pluralism”, p.272-273 20 Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism, p.148-149 (From Spencer, p.87) 21 Ibid., p.273

11 | P a g e

continuous self-determined “reinvention” on the part of a community is the ultimate actualization of

authenticity, an exercise in which all members of a culture share. It follows that “man can only experience

happiness when he understands himself to exist within a unified, monistic whole, a cultural constellation

of norms, practices, and beliefs in which he can find meaning and purpose. Moreover, in order to confer

that meaning and purpose on the individual, those norms, practices and beliefs must be understood by

the individual to be true or accurate reflections of the world as it is in itself. Herder's pluralism describes

a world in which this is the natural state of affairs, with each particular culture happily believing in the

truth of its own meaningful and purposive norms, practices, and beliefs.”22 Yet interestingly, Herder points

out that when each cultural universe is “viewed from the external perspective occupied by Herder himself,

any given culture's norms, practices, and beliefs appear to be merely relatively true or true-for-them; they

are an expression of its overall form-of-life at a particular age of its development in history, not a reflection

of the world as it is in itself”; with this Herder fervently rejects both the notion of Universalism and that

of cultural superiority.23 In the words of Dallmayr, “All cultures have some intrinsic qualities and merits”

along with their imperfections and shortcomings. No one culture is perfect and “closer to God” for Herder

for they are all on a distinctive journey of self-development and self-actualization: there exist no

Favoritvolk so to speak—“chosen or privileged culture or nation” above the rest, “and certainly no room

for racial/cultural superiority.”24 Herder affirms, “No nationality has been solely designated by God as the

chosen people of the earth”. Weber concurs with this basic point while contending that there is no

universal basis of adjudication between cultures; he thus declares in “Science as Vocation”, “I do not know

how one might wish to decide 'scientifically' the value of French and German culture; for here, too,

different gods struggle with one another, now and for all times to come”25. Since the Volkgeist of two

cultures can never be the same, Herder rejected cosmopolitan rationalism—the notion that man is the

same everywhere—espoused by the Enlightenment as nonsensical. Basically, Herder devoutly contested

all Universalist doctrines for their dogmatism and aculturalism viewing them as threatening to flourishing

of cultures on which human advancement (Fortgang) depends.

Against the Enlightenment doctrine and its universalism, Herder vigorously championed cultural

and historical diversity which is also the basis for his philosophy of modernity. As an empiricist thinker,

Herder realized that each culture and nation is empirically different than another in its language, customs,

norms, values and spirit. Pointing to the organicism of cultures, Herder likens each Cultur to a plant in

which "the cultivation of a people/nation is the flower of its existence", insisting a "botanist cannot obtain

a complete knowledge of a plant, unless he follow it from the seed, through its germination, blossoming,

and decay”.26As he noted in his Yet Another Philosophy of History, "Every nation has its own inner-center

(Mittelpunkf) of happiness, as every sphere its own center of gravity" (Herder 1877-1913, 5:509).27

Accordingly, currents of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism are fully apparent in Herderian thought. He

22 Ibid., p.275 23 Linker, “Herder’s Reluctant Pluralism”, p.275 24 Dallmayr, p.106 25 Weber, “Science as Vocation”, p.15 26 Herder, Ideas toward a Philosophy of History of Man, p.38-41 27 Herder, Yet Another Philosophy of History

12 | P a g e

opposes the notion of linear progress and the kind of monistic teleology that characterizes Enlightenment

philosophy and often derides European sense of supremacy and entitlement toward the world. In a

pungent statement directed at the Enlightenment philosophers he writes,

“As a rule, the philosopher is never more of an ass than when he most confidently wishes to play God; when with remarkable assurance, he pronounces on the perfection of the world, wholly convinced that everything moves just so, in a nice, straight line, linear progression, according to his ideals of virtue and happiness. It so happens that he is always the ratio ultima, the last, the highest, link in the chain of being, the very culmination of it all!”28

According to Spencer, from Herder’s point of view, “it was simply the most ridiculous vanity for Europeans

to believe that all people in the world must live like Europeans to possess either culture or happiness.

‘Why,’ he rhetorically asked, "should the western corner of our northern hemisphere possess culture

alone?". Happiness, like identity, is an internal disposition that is intimately tied to the language and

culture of one's community. It is, at all times, historically specific.”29 In this way, Herder particularized (i.e.

culturalized) all standards of progress and development by valuing each culture’s distinctive

understanding of life and its meaning (its Volkgeist/Form of Life)as an end in itself. And “Just because

these standards differ, Herder argued, there is no concrete basis to presume their inferiority from the

outset, as was the general practice of his contemporaries”. Different cultures were quite simply different

animals, all of them necessary to the human ecology (it is senseless to say for example that a lion is

intrinsically more valuable than the lamb). So “only with a repudiation of the practice of judging cultures

on the basis of one's favorite Volk was it possible to appreciate the manifold diversity characterizing

humankind.”30 In Berlin’s interpretation, Herderian Idea of Progress (Fortgang) “essentially means "each

society, each culture develops in its own way",” having” its own benchmarks for progress as progress is

no longer universal” happening on the world stage.31 Ultimately, in his conception of modernity, Herder

opposed “both uniformity [of Kant] and chaotic indifference” of the likes of Weber and Nietzsche, rather,

He “subscribed to a kind of human advancement (Fortgang) that involved the unfolding of individual

cultural capacities [the Hegelian particular], in their diversity, to their highest possible level” each as a

self-contained whole encompassing and realizing a distinctive telos.32 Essentially, Herder believed in a

view of the development of mankind predicated on “the fundamental idea of ‘national individualities’”,

adamant “that the perfection of a natio-cultural type [cultural paradigm] was the way toward the

perfection both of the individual man and of humanity at large”.33

For all Cultures and Volkgeist, realizing this development is a struggle. Herder is the first thinker

to point to the internal contradictions that might arise within a culture, a notion Hegel uses in explaining

his conception of “historical dialectic”. He writes, “A nation may have the most sublime virtues in some

respects and blemishes in others, show irregularities and reveal the most astonishing contradictions and

28 Herder (ed. F.M Bernard), Herder on Social and Political Culture, p.214 29 Vicky Spencer, “In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction”, p.84 (See Also J.G. Herder, Sammiliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan 33 vols. (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1877-1913), XIV: 228) 30 Ibid. 31 Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, 1976, p.190-191 32 Dallmayr, “Truth and Diversity: Lessons from Herder”, p.119 33 Royal J. Schmidt, “Cultural Nationalism in Herder”, p.411

13 | P a g e

incongruities.”34 It would be a mistake to assume that Herder viewed Cultures as static and unchanging

however. Rather, Herder emphasizes dynamism and transformation as key to Cultural flourishing:

Volksgeist are always in a transient state in a quest to attain harmony. In fact, Herder identified this never-

ending quest for harmony and coherence within a Cultur in its eternal struggle with the forces of

breakdown and contradiction within it as the principal source for the evolution of its distinctive Volkgeist

and more generally of the advancement of cultures in history (even if their progress runs on different

trajectories). As Spencer puts it, “contradictions and conflict are indispensable forces in social

development” of a culture in the Herderian view.”35 “No people”, Herder declares, “remained or could

have remained as it was for a length of time; everything in the world has its period of growth, flourishing,

and decline; and finally, no two moments in the world are the same.”36 History is a saga of cultural

transformation, story of perennial metamorphosis so long as a culture is alive.

Many commentators on Herder make the mistake of “pressing him into the straightjacket of

Romanticism” seeing in his thought tendencies toward subjectivism and relativism, whereas his ideas are

markedly different and indeed opposed to Romantic thought. Herderian pluralism with his emphasis on

cultural exchange and importance of mutual influence also stands in sharp contrast to relativism. Herder

does speak of untranslatability and incommensurability of cultural universes but he never disapproves of

one culture passing judgment on the other. In fact, I would argue that is a significant part of his philosophy.

Berlin misreads Herder in equating this incommensurability with lack of communication, as though there

can be no contact between these cultural paradigms, no inspiration to be drawn, no civilizational dialogue.

Some things are indeed lost in translation, but that is the point of this intellectual exercise. Real exchange

brings to bear alternate vantage points which can help the culture in its own development of a new self-

consciousness. Moreover, Herder was vehemently opposed to dogmatic tradition—once it so petrified

the Volkgeist that it brought cultural progress to a standstill and undermined human agency: “tradition,

though in itself…an excellent institution of Nature, indispensable to the human race, but when it fetters

the thinking faculty both in politics and education, and prevents all progress of the intellect, and all the

improvement, that new times and circumstances demand, it is the true narcotic of the mind, as well to

nations and sects, as to individuals.”37 Cultural interaction serves as a kind of a vaccine against this sort of

stagnation (the greatest cultural ill) by constantly pushing for reevaluation of values in the face of the

incompatible normative perspectives of other cultures. Real plurality thus involves full expression of

cultural values and normative judgments (which is helpful in the stimulating the self-reflection of a

Volkgeist). It is in such a spirit that He so fervently proclaims: "Let the nations freely learn from one

another, let one continue where the other has left off."

Championing “the rights of indigenous cultures to pursue their own way of life free from colonial

domination, Herder positively promoted cultural interaction on the basis of mutual respect.” Yet, far from

being a traditionalist or a reactionary thinker, “Herder regarded an authentic life as one committed to the

34 J.G Herder and F.M Bernard, Herder on Social and Political Culture, p. 37 (See Also Herder, Sammiliche Werke, V: 506) 35 Vicky Spencer, “In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction”, p.87 36 J.G. Herder, Yet Another Philosophy of History, p.185 37 J.G Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on Philosophy of History of Mankind)

14 | P a g e

constant reinterpretation of traditions” based on the principles of creativity and agency which could result

in dynamic renewal of the Volkgeist and a salutary cultural regeneration.38 What Herder objects to is the

forceful imposition, installation, and exportation of one culture’s Life-form and value-system over

another—done in an uncritical, self-righteous manner undermining the autonomy and freedom of the

second culture. Consequently, his theory of Volksgeist does not mean that the Volks/cultures will be

completely isolated from one another in their “caves”. Herder not only admits that there will be a fair

amount of interaction, but also points to these interactions as having certain salutary and necessary

effects in producing flashes of inspiration in cultures. He is at the same time weary of cultural fusion,

homogeneity, and sameness (in the global context) that could erode different identities of cultures.

Indeed, Herder’s belief in cultural diversity means that he is equally enthusiastic about cultural exchange

and communication in the same way that two persons interact although in conversation they will still

retain their unique personalities. Overall, it is a colorful mosaic that he is after not a melting pot. He calls

for “Genuine friendship and brotherly love” among cultural wholes so that “far from being a mere

aggregate of pluralistic parts, the totality of human history” could be revealed as, in fact, a community of

communities.”39

Belief in free will and human agency plays a critical role in Herderian philosophy. Herder’s

philosophy of history reveals his recognition of free will and human agency as determining the course of

Providence in addition to the “natural” forces that influences Cultures and history. In effect, individuals

and cultures are protagonists in the (active) story of humanity shaping and affecting it constantly and in

process giving rise to our history. The purpose of this history however, will only be revealed at the end.

The Idea of Providence for Herder can only be affirmed through looking back. As we are (actors) in the

middle of this history as it unfolds, this opens the door to the promise of human agency and potentiality.

Future is always uncertain for we are at least partly responsible for bringing it about. For Herder, there

are possibly multiple providences and scenarios for human flourishing imaginable at inception of our

journey but only certain ones come to actualize themselves in reality in our combination with “nature”

and henceforth appear as crystalized and providential as we investigate the past. Put differently, Herder

advances only a post-facto historical determinism. This is a crucial point, for it means his philosophy,

contrary for what some of his detractors suggest, is not fatalistic and deterministic demonstrating deep

reverence for human freedom (although this freedom is always contextualized and never absolutely

boundless like rationalists believe).

While Herder’s teleology cannot be understood independent of his strong appreciation of human

choice and free will, it must be conceded that “we are, nevertheless, limited creatures, if not on the basis

of biological instincts, then, due to our situatedness within a particular cultural community” in which we

are socialized; in fact, without recognizing this very situatedness, our notion of freedom would be

meaningless.40 It is this interplay between choice and determinism shaping the course of human destiny

that Herder celebrates in his conception of Besonnenheit or “Prudence”. Consequently, “in rejecting the

38 Vicky Spencer, “In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction”, The Review of Politics (2007), p.83 39 Linker, p.285 40 Spencer, p.90

15 | P a g e

theory of final causes that portrayed history as a progressive chain of more perfect stages toward a single,

ultimate end, Herder instead developed an open teleology that stood as an alternative” to the (fixed)

Enlightenment teleological views prevalent in his Zeitgeist which saw the course of human destiny as

“definitive” and even “ahistorical”.41 Human potentiality is actualized “through history as the human

species collectively [but in varying paths] comes to possess greater knowledge and learn from the

advances made by other [cultural] communities” in an interactive fashion. 42 Underlying his entire

philosophy therefore is Herder’s absolute intuition that “every individual and Volk has its specific

interpretation of Humanität and [hence a distinctive] standard of perfection” and progress—a belief in an

open telos for each culture-being. 43Accordingly, in his writings, Herder speaks unequivocally of the

absolute right of humankind everywhere to cultivate and “form themselves [according] to that type of

Humanität which they [in their particular groupings] envisaged”. 44 Thus, Herder argues that “an

inauthentic life consists of the blind imitation of another culture.”45

Herder’s Culturalism (Nationalismus) means that Herder adopts a pantheistic view of modernity,

where the world is predicated on a pantheon of holistic culture in which all cultural communities are akin

to monads incessantly undergoing their distinctive process of self-realization. Under the standpoint of

“holistic pantheism”, modernity is not a substantive program but an internal process of cultural renewal

(sub-cultural) according to which culture-beings actualize full development of their potential. Herder’s

Theory of Monads sees Cultures as self-contained universes with unique constellation of values and

distinctive teleological trajectories shaped by their particular Volkgeist, but (in contrast to Leibniz’s

formulation) each Volkgeist is nonetheless open to cultural exchange and outside influence. In fact,

interaction with other Cultural communities could act as the stimulus for cultural growth, as a source of

inspiration to the Geist to become self-conscious and reflect back on itself ushering cultural revitalization

and rebirth—these period of cultural regeneration this author defines as “modernity” reflecting Herder.

The process of cultural reevaluation and renewal (i.e. modernity) is universal to all culture-beings/monads

but substantively-speaking and in terms of content it engenders different worldviews and “ways of life”

that are altogether particular to the context of the Cultur and its Geist. This serves as the theoretical

framework for a theory of multiple ever-engaging monads always in the state of becoming and realization

and coming to terms both with themselves and with the other cultures with which they come to contact.

In the same vein, “as humans are interpretative beings by nature, tradition” which encompasses the

totality of a Culture’s intellectual and existential heritage could not be viewed as “a dead artifact”—as

Enlightenment thinkers suggested—but the platform for “a living, active process” on which a Culture

depends for undergoing “a constant state of regeneration”. 46 Indeed, notions of Authenticity and

modernity in the Herderian sense, “presuppose a life committed to the reinterpretation and adaptation

41 Ibid, p.91 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Herder, Sammiliche Werke, XIV: 210 (From Spencer’s translation in “In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction”,p.91) 45 Spencer, p.102 46 Herder, Sammiliche Werke, XXXII: 27 (From Spencer’s translation in “In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction”,p.103)

16 | P a g e

of current practices” informed by the Culture’s unique Weltanschauung in search of Cultural reform,

reinvention, and renewal.47 This gradual “repatterning of life” on a macro, holistic scale during its modern

periods of transition is what truly manifests a culture’s individuality and creativity—culminating in its

national personality (and so the notion of individuality which Herder espouses consistently showcases a

communal national undertone).

Conclusion

This paper is principally informed by a critique of conceptions of “modernity” which associate the

notion with a distinct “substantive program” or at the very least a substantive parameter. I have hoped

to problematize the core presumption that there must be a criteria and/or a fixed content to modernity

(which could be universally adjudicating). Deciphering Herder, I believe, could offer us fresh and novel

insights with which to penetrate the nature of modernity. At the heart of the Herderian endeavor lie two

distinct but ultimately interrelated dissatisfactions with conventional views of modernity. One questions

equating “modernity” with Westernization and problematizes the understanding of “modernity” as a

uniquely Western development. The other examines the monistic conception of “progress” in the

traditional discussions of modernity and deems the existence of a universal standard of progress a

nonsensical proposition; it thus problematizing the finality of the “modern project”—the perception that

“modernity” stands as the quintessential endpoint in human history and that fundamentally-speaking we

have reached in “modernity” (and in the West) the pinnacle of human progress.

The new understanding of modernity emanating from Herder imagines Modernity as a generic

internal process of socio-cultural change and transformation against the status quo, of moving forward

through coming to new terms with the past, continuously occurring within the distinctive context of a

culture-being. It is truly a natio-cultural renaissance. It could and preferably should happen a number of

times within a cultural complex/Volkgeist reinvigorating it, and it has unfolded regularly across the globe.

From this standpoint, modernity, substantively-speaking, is meaningless and formless. Rather than finding

this problematic and inadequate, Herder celebrates it as conducive to the creation of a colorful cultural

mosaic of varying shapes and styles, each spawned by means of modernity taking a unique form/spirit in

a particular setting according to the realities of that cultural monad which allows it to conceive and

develop its own meaning (its own implications) in a multiplicity of ways, resulting in multiple distinctive

“outcomes”. In light of the fact that Herder conceives of diverse “standards of progress”—as per each

cultural unit—leading to manifold manifestations of each culture’s will-to-progress each with its own

sense of meaning, characterizing Herderian modernity as meaningless is rather misleading; multi-meaning

would be a more fitting term (although we can only understand the full scope and implication of this

meaning ex post facto). Modernity, understood thus, is simply the clay that could be molded differently

across different cultures to breed various idols yielding a polytheistic cosmos.

47 Spencer, p.104

17 | P a g e

If we accept Herder’s view, modernity emerges as a (generic) conceptual notion, where each

manifestation of the “modern” embodies only the latest version of the comprehensive across-the-board

evolution in the Form of life of a culture-being/monad in live present time so long as the transformations

remain active and in motion. Modernity is therefore routinized in the system of historical change in each

monad, as a theoretical apparatus with which to attain (in its Mind/Volkgeist) consciousness of the

ongoing developments. Once the wave of transformations congeals leaving us with a solidified picture of

things, when modernity has ceased to be in our present and has become a relic of our past and so when

modernity is no longer “modern” (contemporary) and has become anachronistic, we can look back to each

previously “modern” age and rename it anew according to the kinds of transformations it produced. As

such, in making sense of the historical/intellectual experience of a cultural monad as a holistic (human)

unit, one could recognize an intellectual trajectory and a pattern to the transformation of that monad by

means of tracking its various “modernities”, sequencing them to better conceptualize the monad’s

distinctive path to progress (along with the sui generis standards to that progress).

From the perspective of “holistic Pantheism” and the theory of “multiple monads” that derives

from it, the “modernity” that has developed in the West and which we currently inhabit and its

idiosyncratic system of thought is only the latest strain in the West of a larger systemic, almost mechanistic

phenomenon that is in ceaseless motion and repetition across various cultural monads (Iran, China, India,

etc.) finding expression in different epochs within them and constantly shaping and reshaping the cultural

landscape and social environments in these alternate cultural universes. As such, far from being the one

and only end to history privilegedly realized in the West and thus endowing the West with some inner

truths about the course of human existence as the proponents of convergence theories of modernity such

as Francis Fukuyama would have us believe, generic “modernity” becomes the everlasting story of human

progress expressed in terms of multiple monads across the cultural time and space, each idiosyncratic,

unique, and different on its own terms reacting to its preceding “modernity” and equally influencing the

formation of the succeeding “modernity” in the broader context of the culture-being (chain-like sequence

of modernities within the historical narrative of the monad). In this view, no two modernities could be

exactly the same. Each is sui generis given its distinctive genealogy and the inimitable conditions that gave

rise to its particular Worldview (Weltanschauung). Perpetually written and rewritten, history is the story

of this constant blooming, breakdown, dementia, oblivion, and then reawakening, rebirth, transcendence,

and regeneration of the Mind (Geist) of distinctive cultural “monads” (i.e. Volkgeist) occurring and

recurring ad infinitum on the basis of different rubrics of “progress” each culture possesses so long as that

“culture” breathes. Only in this way can the immense potential of humanity (Humanitat) be truly

unleashed in all its variance, depth, and sophistication as in a collage with each culture/Volkgeist

contributing its own painting to the mix. True human progress is reflected in just such a montage. Put

differently, each (cultural) monad is akin to a musician performing as part of the orchestra which is the human

experience in its full mysteries and possibilities. Each monad plays its own tune in the symphony while

simultaneously contributing to this holistic melody of human destiny. We might never discover the “conductor”

behind this harmony (or even if there is one) but one thing is for certain—Ultimate “progress” (realized in

the symphony’s production) can only be achieved as an ensemble requiring all the musicians to play their

distinctive instruments and offering their creative improvisations.