Understanding Modernity:A Perspective Based On The Experience Of Modernity

The thesis takes the experience of modernity as a thread,using the ideas of Baudelaire,Simmel,Benjamin and Berman on modernity as an entry point.On this basis,the thesis attempts to present a general vein of modernity experience and the dimensions of analysis.The thesis focuses on the following aspects: firstly,the picture of modernity and its current state of research.Modernity,as a movement of emancipation that spanned from the 14 th to the 17 th centuries,began with the demand of the emerging European bourgeoisie to free itself from the total manipulation of society by Christian theology,and reflected the thinkers’ diagnosis of the times in which they lived.The thesis takes an interpretive approach to the concept of modernity and introduces a hermeneutic ’experiential’ approach to re-examine the idea of modernity.At the same time,the state of modernity is examined in terms of descriptive modernity,metaphysical modernity,and postmodernist modernity.Secondly,the theoretical context of modernity experience.The lineage of the idea of the experience of modernity is explored in terms of the ideas of the originators of the concept of modernity and its successors.Baudelaire reveals the experience of alienation,melancholy,heroism and speed in the context of social change from the perspective of aesthetics.Simmel,on the other hand,reveals the cultural tragedies,life styles and fashionable experiences of modernity in urban spaces from the perspective of urban experience,emphasising the feelings of individuals who are the direct carriers of modern life and cultural organisms.From the perspective of historical materialism,Benjamin reveals the experience of alienation,the disappearance of spirituality and the experience of impoverished modernity caused by the arcade street and the emergence of mechanical reproduction.Berman reduces the basic patterns of the experience of modernity to the experience of space and time,the experience of self and other,and the possibility and danger of life.Thirdly,the analytical dimensions of the experience of modernity.The thesis develops the analysis of the experience of modernity in five dimensions: time,space,speed,ambivalent emotions and digital existence.The main dimensions include: the experience of time precision,multiple time consciousness and time anxiety in the dimension of time;the experience of spatial separation,spatial compression and spatial anxiety in the dimension of space;the experience of accelerated technology,accelerated social change and accelerated pace of life in the dimension of speed;the experience of emotional complexity,equalisation of intimacy and generalised anxiety in the dimension of ambivalent emotions;the experience of digitisation of life,digital identity,digital surveillance and digital symptoms in the dimension of digital existence.The experience of the digital dimension of life,digital identity,digital surveillance and digital syndromes.Finally,the experience of modernity as another dimension of modernity exists within a complex system of thought,offering possible paths to understanding modernity in the 21 st century.In the ever-accelerating Chinese and global contexts,the construction of a theory of the experience of modernity in China should be based on people’s existential experiences of realising the good life.People’s experiences of time,space,speed,contradictory emotions,and digital existential experiences provide the basic dimensions for structuring the paradigm of the experience of modernity.In summary,as an analytical concept,the experiential theory of modernity aims to explain the existential experience of modern individuals and to understand the lifeworld,providing a perspective for understanding the existential experience of modern people.