Genealogies of Modernity

Exploring stories of how we became modern. Asking what it means to be modern. Wondering about other possible modernities.

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

Interested in writing for Genealogies of Modernity? Learn more about our National Endowment for the Humanities-backed project here: https://t.co/TkJBOPUWa8

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

References to writing from @antoniospadaro, @JoshHochschild, @brentowell, @LukeCoppen, @CCamosy, @JosephVukov, @timhwang, @TomerPersico, @matthewwalther, @JohnSlatteryPhD, among others!

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

It’s encyclical time! At GenMod, we’ve been thinking about the genealogical components of Leo XIV’s "Magnifica Humanitas" and combing through commentary from the past week to pick out the very best work responding to the encyclical.

https://t.co/5PSGVAnAYE

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

we learn from Br. Nicodemus Thomas what it means that there is "More to Virtue than Justice."

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

https://t.co/ao3i4UJmPS
Justice is a giving to each their due. Modernity is, then, unjust toward justice—favoring it beyond proportion, at the expense of those remaining cardinal virtues (temperance, fortitude, and prudence). In this week's "From the Archives,"

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

"An ethic that is averse to instrumentality animates the thought of contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and can be seen in Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s 'It Was Just an Accident,' released in 2025."
https://t.co/PsgvuvYW53

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

Check out our latest essay, Kyle Sossamon's "An Ethics of Gesture in 'It Was Just an Accident'"
https://t.co/PsgvuvYW53

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

“This unifying symbol of a culture-to-be is the Singularity… it is the implicit metaphysical principle that orients a way of life mediated almost purely through screens and through the internet.”
https://t.co/xTze10we2u
@johnehrett

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

"In most areas, Machiavelli and Erasmus disagree, but both adamantly warn princes against flatterers. Though princes are rare in the present, warnings against flatterers may be more widely applicable than ever before because of AI." @estice
https://t.co/z1DfOEXEkc

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

infinitude of the isolated self: Singularity.

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

In this week’s “From the Archives,” we heed the prospective word of John Ehrett (@johnehrett) in his "Oswald Spengler and the Singularity," as he reads the stirring signs indicative of the becoming of a new prime symbol.
https://t.co/xTze10we2u

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

From the “Classical” dualism of form and indefinite, through the “Arabian” verticality of intensive infinitude and the “Faustian” horizontality of extensive infinitude, Ehrett’s Spenglerian inference bears us to the threshold of a Modernity whose prime symbol is the interior

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

Check out our latest, an excellent offering by @estice of @BlossomOrdinary, on genealogies of flattery from Machiavelli and Erasmus to AI
https://t.co/z1DfOEXEkc

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

Check out our latest-- from Emre Keser on "Monstrosity and Modernity" -- here!
https://t.co/BcykDrEmXY

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

"Monsters show that our critiques should target not only the process that turned nature into a mute object at the disposal of the human, but also the correlative process that reduced divine and supernatural forces to superstitions of the past."
https://t.co/BcykDrEmXY

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

"We can see our finitude not as a curse...but as a way that God entrusts to us a particular horizon—and entrusts us to that same horizon. This mutual entrustment frees us to receive ourselves in time with gratitude for our particularity."
https://t.co/Y5nnafJnrq

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

In this week’s “From the Archives,” Caroline Arnold reviews James K.A. Smith’s "How to Inhabit Time," highlighting the gift and task of our temporal seasonality and the positivity of our historical particularization.
https://t.co/Y5nnafJnrq
@james_ka_smith

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

Our April 2026 "Pathways" feature delves into some recent work in anthropology, particularly the discipline’s narratives of the emergence of modern humans.
Links to work by @BrianVillmoare, @Haraldssonfoto, @JMikanowski, and others.
https://t.co/t1veKSIcrJ

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

"[T]he decline of sickness funds and early community-rated plans transformed a system rooted in voluntarism and mutual aid within civil society into one driven by corporate profits and government compulsion and bureaucracy."
https://t.co/AuMgZ3EzJt @GRMartsolf

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

the specific becoming of the now-predominant commercial health insurance system for a judicious recollection of the solidarity-fostered institution of community “sickness funds” which it both erased and replaced—and that a just future may need to restore. @GRMartsolf

[Genealogies of Modernity @GenofMod]

Few features of the contemporary world are as dissatisfying and intractable as is the modern American regime of health insurance. In this week’s “From the Archive,” we turn to Grant Martsolf’s essay on the
https://t.co/AuMgZ3EzJt