title, what title?

Caravaggio is my favorite painter. Painting in the beginning of the era known as "Counter-reformation," Caravaggio is known for his realism, his use of light and shadow and the dynamic scenes he depicts in his pictures. He was definitely a contemporary artist, in the current sense of the word. Whereas his contemporaries were still painting angels and prophets in heaven in the Renaissance style, Caravaggio chose his models from the slums of Rome, and painted Biblical scenes in contemporary Rome. This struck a chord in the illiterate masses, whom the Catholic church were trying to "protect" from the influence of the Reformation coming from the Teutonic world. Not similar to contemporary artists of today, he was very popular among the masses. There was something very "modern" in Caravaggio's attitude and style, that I could feel and see in his paintings, and was not able to name. Yesterday, I started reading Michael Focault's review of Kant's sho...

In my humble opinion, Kafka's Das Schloss is the best embodiment the human condition in the age we call modern. Coming from a land, who is trying to come in terms with its modernization project, it has been a constant intellectual quest for me to understand what modernity exactly means, and why of all the places it started in Europe. The classical explanations put almost all the time Europe in a special place. Modernism could only have started in Europe. And they choose a property of Europe of their ideological liking, and try to demonstrate it only existed in Europe. This is, in my opinion, a reversal of scientific method. So the lead essay in this months CATO Unbound discussion series by Stephen Davies a fresh wind in my face. It explains the modernity as an emergent phenomenon that is in some way contingent, rather than a result of Europe's special place. This also brings the question whether or not the term Western Civilization makes sense anymore.. I recommend this articl...