Perché non possiamo non dirci moderni. Saggio sull'attualità e i dilemmi di una categoria fondante

The thesis supported in this contribution is that it is not possible to think and define contemporaneity without building some kind of comparison with modernity. In the first part of the paper the analysis aims to build an ideal type of modernity: rationalization, subjectivation and sociocultural hybridization are the points of arrival of the analysis. In the second part of the paper, instead, we will draw attention to how the comparison with modernity is still at the basis of the articulation of the most important debates on the transformations in progress: digitalization, the consequences of climate change and the relationships between peoples and states of the global world. These three major issues can be related to four discourses: the weakening of modernity, the modernization of modernity, the decolonization of modernity, the re-traditionalization of first modernity. Main conclusion of the paper is that we are still modern. Consequently, the classical (modern) dilemma between “open” and “closed” society is also relevant