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Temporality has increasingly become an object of study in the contemporary humanities. How cultures, philosophies, and religions organize past, present, and future has direct bearing on the intervention into social processes they prescribe and the overall hope for humanity they contain. Since the middle of the 20th century, modernist temporality, with its sharp break between past and future and its strong partisan tendencies, has struggled to maintain its interpretive power. Important ethical and postcolonial critiques have called into question modernism’s triumphalist idea that collective social forces and institutions inherently move humanity towards ever greater justice and prosperity. How can we believe this in the face of both 20th century and recent historical crimes? Yet, what have we lost with the fading of modernism’s progressive horizon?
This presentation briefly outlines the most important modernist philosophy of history, Georg Hegel’s, and a few insightful 20th/21st century critiques. Finally, we will look at Islam and the Baha’i Faith to ask whether there are ideas of collective ethical life (Islam) and progress (Baha’i Faith) that still supply hope and coherent social intervention in the face of an increasingly distressing international scene. An entirely new mode of historical time emerges, an expanding oneness that comprehends modern conflict without, like modernism, making it the very driver of progress.
Ney Grant lives in Chicago. He has his M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago and has a growing interest in independent Bahá’í Studies scholarship. Before returning to graduate school he worked as a case manager in acute inpatient mental health. He currently works as a substitute teacher while he is applying to philosophy and interdisciplinary humanities Ph.D. programs. His intellectual interests lie at the intersection of Islamic studies, continental philosophy, and theology. His M.A. thesis focused on Egyptian and North African Islamic modernists who worked to integrate these fields. Working on questions of temporality in these postcolonial and Islamic contexts, Ney became very intrigued by the unique articulations of modernity in the Bahá’í Writings and the works of Shoghi Effendi.
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