Dawn of the Modern Age

Abstract

We may interpret the Middle Ages as a process in which individuality slowly emerged at the expenses of the communitas antiqua. This process unfolded rather harmoniously until the Tuscan civil humanism in the early fifteenth century, but later exploded in a rapid and irreversible escalation resulting in the Renaissance, the Reformation, the seventeenth century and the Enlightenment. The rise of modern political economy may be situated at some point along this lengthy cultural process.

Life in community enfolds all that is trustworthy and intimate in living closely together. Society is public: it is the world. On the contrary, from birth we find ourselves in community with our loved ones, bound to them for good or for ill. We enter society as a foreign land.

Ferdinand Tönnies