Progression Towards Individualism

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Modernity as the Progression Towards Individualism
What has it meant to be modern over the past two centuries? There are many aspects of modernity to be considered, including a favoring of science, historical positivism, and even feudalism. However, at its core modernity is best defined as a push towards individualism. Individualism is the belief in the individual’s worth and his or her goals should always be pursued and preferences over the state or any other groups. However, not everyone supported modernity. Many prominent authors and thinkers of their time, including Karl Marx, Ivan Turgenev, and Hannah Arendt, criticized modernity in favor of keeping groups. Throughout the two centuries following the French Revolution, modernity became …show more content…
Nikolai Petrovich questions, “Doesn’t their superiority lie in the fact that there are fewer traces of class-consciousness and privilege in them than in us?” (67). Turgenev acknowledges the perspectives of the changing younger generation compared to the older generation. The younger people are less concerned with their class and social ranking than their predecessors. Turgenev goes on to say that not only are the next generation dramatically different than Nikolai’s, he asserts that they are even better than the last. Turgenev demonstrates the progression of individualism throughout the generations.
However, through Bakarov’s character, Turgenev represents a periodical criticism of modernity and living with personal identity. Turgenev writes, “For Heaven’s sake! A grown man of forty-four, a pater familias, living in the provinces and playing the cello!” (52). Here Turgenev demonstrates one of the criticism of modernity: disrupting the order and the way life has always been. Bakarov represents the more conservative side of Russians and those opposed to modernity, favoring social order and following what the group …show more content…
Arendt writes, “From a humdrum life without significance and consequence the wind had blown him into History...into a Movement that always kept moving and in which somebody like him--already a failure in the eyes of his social class, of his family, and hence his own eyes as well--could start from scratch and still make a career” (33). Eichmann’s desire for personal importance caused him to commit moral crimes and participate in true, evil acts. Joining the SS and the Third Reich promised him a way out of failure, and so he took it. The dangerous thought of self-importance over group benefit permeates modern times, with many people acting selfishly for personal gain. Eichmann could not live an unidentified, unremarkable life. Instead, his need for importance caused him to participate as a member of the SS willingly, and took orders without
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