《现代性及其不满》读后感精选( 八 ) modernity|modern|debate|book|M

Beside untraditional figures, works that are traditionally regarded not central to the understanding of political thought are also contained, such as the play Mandragola by Machiavelli. In his analysis of Mandragola, Smith illustrated how Machiavelli altered the virtue of individual. Machiavelli exercised his morality not only in the political and the public, he also altered the virtue of the private life. The play Mandragola itself is a comic retelling of Roman history, the rape of Lucretia. By contrasting the image of Lucretia and Lucrezia, Machiavelli successfully established his own virtue for the private life. In the Roman history, Lucretia is the victim of the rape and committed suicide for the dishonor, which provided a chance for Brutus to show his talent, exile the Tarquinius family and build the Roman Republic. In his play, Machiavelli turned the story upside down. Lucrezia became an eager participant in the deception of her husband. The young Tarquin who dishonored Lucretia was replaced by Callimico who lived as an expatriate for twenty years to escape the wars. The ancient morality of the honor and dignity is replaced by a modern morality of pursuing only the happiness. The play itself showed a conspiracy, a theme that is the same to the famous long chapter on conspiracy in the Discourses. As Machiavelli dealt with public or political conspiracy in the Discourses, he dealt with the domestic conspiracy in Mandragola in the form of the play. Analysis of the play suggested that the play itself showed a hierarchy of conspiracy by attributing characters with different degrees of perceptions and capacity for manipulation. The play itself showed the “reborn” of Lucrezia: she who seems to be a passive figure who simply accepted governance of others deliberately chose the usurpation with Callimico. It is called a “reborn,” because the “reborn” of Brutus in the ancient Roman story is just a reveal of his nature and through the “reborn” of Lucrezia Machiavelli showed the virtue of Lucrezia, the Machiavellian virtue consists of audacious, bold and controlling. The coming of a new birth at the end of the play suggest the birth of modernity: it begins as an act of conspiracy, and the illegitimacy of its true parentage will not be noticed.
When it comes to the camp of discontents to the modernity, several works of one author or a group of authors are analyzed together. In chapter 12, the Apocalyptic Imagination: Nietzsche, Sorel, Schmitt, the arrangement of the argument is no longer around one specific work. The writing is alone the affinity of author’s theory: the nihilism, the critique of modern science and technology, and the critique of disenchantment and rationalization. Following this line, Smith linked Nietzsche, Lukács, Heidegger, Horkheimer and Adorno, Sorel and Schmitt. Although analyses of text still exist, more part of this chapter consists of the analysis of key concepts and their affinities.
3.Critic
The aim of this book, as stated before, is to revitalize the debate between the modernity and its discontents for the benefit of our times, because the author believed the modern project is at stake. While we admit that the author presented points from each figure successfully, the writing of the book lacked the sense of debate. This shortcoming is partly because of the inconsistency of the modernity and its discontents, but the research method author adopted also contribute to this problem.