The Experience of Modernity:A New Version of Modernity Theory——A Review of Marshall Berman's Modernity Theory

Holding that modernity is something of the experience which is filled with varieties of para- doxes and contradictions,Marshall Berman,an American scholar,develops his own understandings of modernity by distinguishing modernity from modernization,post modernity and other similar concepts. Furthermore,he not only shows a way out for modernity and but also maps out its future through observ- ing the traditional resources and spirits accumulated by those thinkers in the 19th century,especially what is done by Marx.While making commentaries on Bernman's above ideas,this essay contributes something useful for shaping the pattern of Chinese modernity in the 21 st century.