Modernity typically denotes "a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period", in particular, one marked by progress from agrarianism via the rise of industrialism, capitalism, secularization, the nation-state, and its constituent forms of surveillance (Barker 2005, 444). Conceptually, modernity is related to the modern era and to modernism, but is a discrete concept. In context, modernity can denote association with cultural and intellectual movements occurred between 1436 and 1789 (for some thinkers until 1895), and extending to the 1970s, or later (Toulmin 1992, 3–5).
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The term "modern" (Latin modernus from modo “just now”) dates from the fifth century, originally distinguishing the Christian era from the Pagan era, yet the term became linguistic usage only in the seventeenth-century, derived from the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns — debating: “Is Modern culture superior to Classical (Græco–Roman) culture?” — a literary and artistic quarrel among the Académie française in the early 1690s.
From these usages, modernity denoted the renunciation of the recent past, favouring a new beginning, and a re-interpretation of historical origin. Moreover, the distinction, between "modernity" and "modern" did not arise until the nineteenth century (Delanty 2007). Some schools of thought believe that modernity ended in the late twentieth century, when post-modernity replaced it; yet other schools extend modernity as late modernity and liquid modernity to comprehend the developments denoted by the term “post modernity”.
In sociology, the discipline that arose in response to the social problems of "modernity" (Harriss 2000, 325), the term denotes the social processes and discourses consequent to the Age of Enlightenment (18th c.), especially defined by 'rationalization': “The term refers to processual aspects, especially tensions and dynamics. Modernity is thus a particular kind of time consciousness, which defines the present, in its relation to the past, which must be continuously recreated; it is not a historical epoch that can be periodized” (Delanty 2007).
At its simplest, modernity is a shorthand term for modern society, or industrial civilization. Portrayed in more detail, it is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as open to transformation, by human intervention; (2) a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society — more technically, a complex of institutions — which, unlike any preceding culture, lives in the future, rather than the past. (Giddens 1998, 94)
Modernity describes "the loss of certainty, and the realization that certainty can never be established, once and for all. It is a term that also can simply refer to reflection on the age, and, in particular, to movements within modern society that lead to the emergence of new modes of thought and consciousness" (Delanty 2007). Sociologically, modernity aimed towards "a progressive force promising to liberate humankind from ignorance and irrationality" (Rosenau 1992, 5), yet Theodor Adorno and Zygmunt Bauman proposed that modernity commonly represents departure from the central tenets of the Enlightenment, and towards nefarious processes of alienation, such as commodity fetishism and the Holocaust (Adorno 1973; Bauman 1989).
Consequent to contemporary debate about economic globalization, the comparative analysis of civilisations, and the post-colonial perspective of “alternative modernities”, Shmuel Eisenstadt introduced the concept of “multiple modernities” (2003; see also Delanty 2007). Modernity as a “plural condition” is the central concept of this sociologic approach and perspective, which broadens the definition of “modernity” — from exclusively denoting Western European culture — to a cosmopolitan definition, thereby: "Modernity is not Westernization, and its key processes and dynamics can be found in all societies" (Delanty 2007).
The American Revolution (1775–83) and the French Revolution (1789–99) established republics upon explicitly modern political theory, modelled upon the earlier Republic of Corsica (1755–69) (Saul 1992, 55–61). Liberalism, the modern political system, empowered the disenfranchised Third Estate; elected political power supplanted traditional hereditary monarchy.
In art history, the term "modernity" is distinct from the terms Modern Age and Modernism; it is a discrete "term applied to the cultural condition in which the seemingly absolute necessity of innovation becomes a primary fact of life, work, and thought. . . . Modernity is more than merely the state of being modern, or the opposition between old and new" (Smith 2009).
In the essay “The Painter of Modern Life” (1864), Charles Baudelaire uses the literary, best-known definition: “By modernity I mean the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent” (Baudelaire 1964, 13).
Of the available conceptual definitions, in sociology, Modernity is "marked and defined by an obsession with 'evidence' ”, visual culture, and personal visibility (Leppert 2004, 19). Generally, the large-scale social integration constituting modernity, involves the:
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