Brand New 在线下载 pdf mobi 2025 epub 电子版

Brand New’s revolutionary innovation process is a proven road map you can put to work immediately to create successful new products, services, and business models. Written by leading innovation practitioners, and the coauthor of the bestseller Customers for Life , the authors of this tightly focused, highly entertaining book have nailed the issue perfectly when it comes to successfully introducing anything new. Research shows people like new products and services. Indeed they go out of their way to try to find them. Yet companies are truly terrible at providing new products and services that meet these customers’ needs. Why are companies so bad at giving customers what they want? Because they lack a simple proven process that makes sure innovation occurs efficiently time after time. No one knows this better than Mike Maddock and his team at Maddock Douglas, the Agency of Innovation,™ which has worked closely with more than a quarter of Fortune 100 . To solve the innovation paradox, Maddock explains the process his team has used to help the world’s best companies and shows you how to Find needs and opportunity in the marketplace Come up with significant market insights Create compelling communication (using the actual words your customers use) to convince people to try your new creation What has worked for some of the world’s most successful companies, when it comes to innovation, will work for you. Start putting the lessons of Brand New to work for you…before the competition does.

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书籍介绍

Brand New’s revolutionary innovation process is a proven road map you can put to work immediately to create successful new products, services, and business models. Written by leading innovation practitioners, and the coauthor of the bestseller Customers for Life , the authors of this tightly focused, highly entertaining book have nailed the issue perfectly when it comes to successfully introducing anything new. Research shows people like new products and services. Indeed they go out of their way to try to find them. Yet companies are truly terrible at providing new products and services that meet these customers’ needs. Why are companies so bad at giving customers what they want? Because they lack a simple proven process that makes sure innovation occurs efficiently time after time. No one knows this better than Mike Maddock and his team at Maddock Douglas, the Agency of Innovation,™ which has worked closely with more than a quarter of Fortune 100 . To solve the innovation paradox, Maddock explains the process his team has used to help the world’s best companies and shows you how to Find needs and opportunity in the marketplace Come up with significant market insights Create compelling communication (using the actual words your customers use) to convince people to try your new creation What has worked for some of the world’s most successful companies, when it comes to innovation, will work for you. Start putting the lessons of Brand New to work for you…before the competition does.

• 作者：喵喵奥特曼 发布时间：2020-06-19 21:57:56

  翻译太代入作者情感了 翻译出来的沈三白感觉就是个娘娘腔 整日没钱还要喝酒玩乐美其名曰寄情山水的没用的渣男 但再去看原文 却是一个重情却败于现实但依旧偷得浮生半日闲的男子 翻译给负分原文给四星 综合三星

• 作者：Young_天 发布时间：2019-10-10 19:58:58

  这套书自买来后陆陆续续啃了许久，几乎贯穿了硕士生涯。杨先生实在博学，注释可谓浩瀚。但若想感受古书，构建春秋历史体系，则非直面《十三经》不可。以杨注入门，殊为非易。

• 作者：普宁困意 发布时间：2020-03-01 22:23:21

  一本美国历史政治文学概览，还是挺好玩的 从哥伦布发现美洲新大陆➡️土著民➡️清教徒抵达殖民➡️奴隶制➡️美国独立➡️文学发展➡️内战爆发 1492-1914

• 作者：提亚马特 发布时间：2020-11-01 21:18:06

  很精致的一本小书，看起来很有意思。

• 作者：亢龙无悔 发布时间：2022-05-22 09:22:43

  马马虎虎可以看

• 作者：時代抗疫totoro 发布时间：2011-04-03 20:36:34

  看见这么多热血的正义之士在讨论死刑的问题，建议大家都认真读读这本小册子，先明确一下究竟什么是犯罪，惩罚罪犯的逻辑基础什么，现代刑事法律制度的目的是什么，刑法和刑事惩罚手段的功能和局限又是什么，自己先理清当中各个命题和不同因素之间的逻辑关系，拜托以后不要再大声嚷嚷什么”杀人偿命“之类的似是而非的话，别让自己老是困在”以牙还牙，以眼还眼“的同态复仇的原始社会阶段。

• 这可不是谁都能写出来的“照相”书

  作者：若弈 发布时间：2017-07-26 17:06:43

  这本书是教“摄影”，可不单单是拍个照片呀。

  摄影是会教你怎么把照片拍得好看的！

  本书的作者毕业于中央美术学院摄影系，是国家高级摄影师，北京电影学院客座讲师，也就是说，这本书是非常专业的，专业但不难懂，用深入浅出来形容再恰当不过了。

  值得一提的是，这本书虽然看起来小小的薄薄的，但分量却不轻，内页每一张纸都是铜版纸，质感非常好，相片也很高清，教学过程非常仔细，文字不多，但句句都是精华。

  推荐给每一个想学摄影想拍出美美照片的小伙伴！

• A Book Review

  作者：Uaral 发布时间：2021-12-05 17:31:16

  注：这个review是当时某门研究生课课程的作业，写作时间差不多在原书出版后不久。大概是首次写那么长的英文内容，可能会有需要修改的地方，但鉴于是多年前的东西（甚至我都忘了里面具体写了些啥），也懒得再改了...

  既然现在中译本已经翻译出版，还是放出来供有需要的人参考。

  ------

  Steven Smith’s recent book, Modernity and Its Discontents: Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow, examines one central topic in contemporary political philosophy, modernity. For Steven Smith, the core question in this book is: how did the idea of the bourgeois, once considered virtually synonymous with the free and responsible individual, become associated with a kind of low-minded materialism, moral cowardice, and philistinism?

  The content of the book is organized into four parts clearly: the first part is a brief introduction examining the development and the dialectic of the modernity, its origin, development, and the rising of its opponents; the second part consists of classic authors of early modernity and the analysis of their texts, including Machiavelli new manner of individualism, secularization of society raised by Hobbes and Spinoza, the creation of the modern idea of the self by Descartes and Benjamin Franklin, the international humanism of Kant, and the morality of the civil society by Hegel; the third part, examines the great critics of the modern project, from Rousseau’s critique of the culture of the refinement and the arts, Tocqueville’s account of two kinds of new despotism, Flaubert’s diatribe against the modern bourgeois, Nietzsche’s undermining of the idea of progress and his influence on Georges Sorel, György Lukács, Martin Heidegger and Karl Schmitt, Isaiah Berlin and Leo Strauss on the reconsideration of the track of the modernity, and at last two literary images of modernity provided by Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s

  The Leopard

  and Saul Bellow’s

  Mr.Sammler’s Planet

  . And fourth the conclusion part.

  1.The Outline

  How modernity comes to rise and how the modernity develops its opponents, are the central questions of this book. The etymological analysis of the term “modernity” shows that it first gained its appearance in the “quarrel between the ancients and moderns” over the proper ways of artistic production which quickly becomes a debate involving the issues ranging from philosophy, politics to economics. For the author, the modernity is more associated with a particular type of human being, the bourgeois. The typical bourgeois, not refers to a particular kind of production in Marxism context but means a certain way of life and set of moral characteristics, can be characterized as an individual with the quality of generosity, courage, nobility, love of fame, and self-assertion

  [1]

  . America is founded on the basis of modern philosophy and acceptance of the bourgeois morality. While the question is, as the history of political thought shows, how the rhetoric of modernity develops in the development of the modernity? How the once virtuous bourgeois is considered with materialism, moral cowardice, and philistinism?

  The book begins with the examination of the concept of modernity. The term “modernity” itself indicates a distinction to the previous ancients, while the beginning of the modernity remains a question. If we regard modernity as mentality, when does it exactly begins? It depends on the standard. Some traced it back to the age of exploration and the discovery of the New World, others to the scientific revolution by Harvey, Galileo, and Newton, or to the philosophical innovations of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Some identified it with the social and political revolutions in England, France, and the United States. Even others identify it artistic and aesthetic developments to certain writers like Proust, Joyce, and James.

  More disputes are associated with the coherence of modernity. It is believed by on influential opinion that we no longer have full confidence on modernity about the faith that the development of science, politics and law could serve as a model for humanity. Documents like the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and Universal Declaration of Universal Human of the United Nation proposed a universal society facilitating the health, safety, and prosperity of its citizens. But nowadays it receives attacks from other thoughts. Marxism and postcolonialism regard it as a Western imperialism imposing its way of life to the rest of the world. Historicism or relativism views these claims as a disguised kind of particularism. The September 11 attacks destroyed the utopian belief that the end of the Cold War follows the period of democratic peace. The resurgent nationalism and ethnic tribalism also break the belief that we all become liberal democrats. These problems force us to return to the beginning of modernity, i.e., the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.

  Machiavelli is the first author who confronts the quarrel in a systemic and comprehensive manner. Although the language of Machiavelli remains replete with biblical allusions, his realism put politics in a new foundation, free it from the illusions of the imagination, and provides a “lower” conception of human nature that better described the actual human behavior. And armed with right science or the right understanding of nature and history, we can free ourselves from dependence on fortune. And the ancient belief of endless cycle of history is altered by a program of progress. Progress involves a preference for the present over the past and demands transcendence. The scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provided evidence for this belief. Science for the first time is seen as a cumulative enterprise, an accretion of knowledge that is in principle illimitable. Along the belief of progress is the critique of theological politics, the once unquestioned authority of the church over the worldly authority became the target of the attack, religion regarded as the origin of turmoil and is requested obey the guidance of the government. Later, this critique served as the presupposition of the emergence of the national states. The states are sovereign in the sense that they control their own affairs including religion, which put an end to the universal church and build the new international system. The sovereign individual also emerged, people no longer considered to be affiliated with organizations like family, polis, guild or religious order but free and equal “by nature.” The individual also becomes the source of moral and political authority. The central claim of the Enlightenment was the belief that the increase in knowledge will necessarily lead to a better condition of society. The founders of modern philosophy explained modern politics in a long struggle of ascent from the state of nature to civil society, i.e., an original condition of fear and anxiety, poverty and ignorance replaced by way of a social contract protecting person and property. Civil society, distinctive from natural society, is immersed with property, science, and commerce. The progress itself inevitably involves the revolution in the modern sense. Revolution gained the meaning as a driving force of historical development, not the ancient idea of returning.

  Paradoxically, while the modernity is considered related to the ancient-modern quarrel, another side of the debate, if the debate exists, is not the ancient, but the counter-enlightenment. Historians have shown that modern concepts and categories are dependent on earlier Christian ideals. The counter-enlightenment, the term usually associated with Isaiah Berlin about the romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, here describes the movement of reconsideration and deepening of the idea of modernity itself. Each moment of modernity confronts its following counternarrative. The secularization of institutions give rise to fears about the rationalization and “disenchantment”; the market economy and the commercial republic is accompanied with an antibourgeois mentality; the idea of individuality and free subjectivity give rise to concerns about homelessness, anomie, and alienation; the achievements of democracy are together with fear about conformism, the loss of independence, and the rise of the “lonely crowd”; even the idea of progress faces the antithesis of the decadence, degeneration, and decline. The aim of counter-enlightenment, however, is not the restoration of the old order but the creation of a new order. They started as a reaffirmation of the nation as something higher than cosmopolitanism, the particular conceived as something greater than the universal.

  The origin of the counter-enlightenment is also the subject of the debate. One convenient landmark is the Rousseau’s

  Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.

  The aim of the

  First Discourse

  is not to condemn the development of the sciences and the arts, but to protect them from the inevitable vulgarization that uses them serving for the public education.

  The enlightenment began with the ancient-modern quarrel, while the counter-enlightenment began as a movement of opposition or reaction against the two core ideas of modernity—science and commerce. Science is asserted to limit the power of the imagination in metaphysical affairs and commerce to tame and pacify the passions and appetites. The new commercial regimes are believed to provide a safe and fair alternative to the ancien régime. At the core of the Counter-enlightenment was a critique of a new kind of civilization, the bourgeois civilization.

  The bourgeois itself presented a contradiction. It is between the natural man and the citizen, between desires and duties. Marx introduced the Bourgeois into the political vocabulary and told his story about the modern history of its struggle with the proletariat, but Marx did not hold a completely negative opinion on the bourgeois because of its early heroic struggle against the feudal aristocracy. It is Nietzsche who brought the hatred toward the bourgeois. Nietzsche traced the bourgeois civilization to its philosophical origin, the British philosophy. His portrait of “the last man” in the mass democracies fulfilled only with the passion for comfortable self-preservation. Nietzsche and his last man got great disciples among European philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, regarding the democratic world and the parliament government filled with superficial opinions and meaningless chatter.

  But the decadence of the democratic future and the hatred toward the bourgeois is only one version of the counter-enlightenment story. Authors like Tocqueville and Leo Strauss hold a critical view on modernity while did not radically reject the modernity at all. Tocqueville was skeptical of the middle-class democracies for its materialism, love of comfort, and belief in unlimited progress. But he saw the possibility of certain civic virtues based on the ethic of self-interest. The civic virtues, unlike the aristocratic virtues involving nobility and self-sacrifice, includes virtues such as cooperation, moderation, tolerance and self-mastery. Leo Strauss refused the modern association of Plato and totalitarianism and took great seriousness to revive the classical political thought. He did not simply regard the ancient as an alternative to the modern at hand or a resource providing ready-made answers but insist the possibility of the premodern thought to providing support for modern democracy. His thought on the liberal education suggested the image of the ancient “mixed regime.” The liberal education aimed at nurturing and the preservation of the “gentlemen” who could serve as a mainstay against the pressure of mass culture.

  2.The Method

  The main body of the book consists of the selection of important figures in the development of the thesis and the antithesis of modernity, A detailed text analysis of their works, not limited to the argument made by the author, but also focus on authors’ intention with the attention to the writing style and the arrangement of the argument, trying to understand the work as a whole. In the analysis of Descartes’

  Discourse on Method

  , unlike common reading of the book concentrating on its philosophical contribution of responding to the revived skepticism and regarding it the philosophical foundation of modern knowledge, the main idea is about the moral import of the work. According to Smith, Descartes deliberately chose the form of an autobiography in order to show an exemplary life of self-discovery. The reason of the publication of the

  Discourse

  comes from a desire to benefit the public as Descartes believed his work would procure the public good by providing his new ethics of humanity and generosity. Instead of going straight to look at the Cartesian proposal of the new way of understanding, the analysis faithfully followed the writing order which started with the story of the education of a young philosopher. Then the Descartes’s proposals for the reform of the understanding, his concerns about the practical consequences of the new method, and the brief tour to his metaphysics and physics. The analysis showed, although Descartes say nothing directly about the ethical implication of his making human the “masters and possessors of nature”, his aspiration to autonomy and self-sufficiency is an analogue to the Machiavellian princely self-creation: Machiavelli suggest the possibility for a prince to outwit fortuna and Descartes implies the mastering of one’s own fate.

  Another example is the analysis of Hobbes’s critique of religion in the third part of

  Leviathan

  . Most readings of Hobbes have focused on his first two parts of

  Leviathan

  , “On Man” and “On the Commonwealth”, in which Hobbes presents his theory of the state of nature and the social contract, while neglected the third and the fourth part, “Of the Christian Commonwealth” and “Of the Kingdom of Darkness”, in which Hobbes presents his critique of the religion and the Christianity. This kind of neglect, according to Smith, results in the loss of the theological dimension of Hobbes. Only the recent interest in political theology turned some readers to these parts of

  Leviathan

  and the role of religion in Hobbes’s theory. Instead of the opinion that Hobbes’s attention to religion is accidental or reading of Hobbes as a theorist of natural law, the critique of religion consists the core of Hobbes’s political philosophy. His aim was to rebuild the foundation of the religion so that the spiritual and temporal power could be united. In

  Leviathan

  , Hobbes actually provided two analyses of religion, one natural account, and the other prophetic account. In his natural account, Hobbes traced the origin of religion back to men’s curiosity about the cause of things. Men’s ignorance of causes results in anxiety and fear, which gave rise to the imaginary powers that human believed as the arbiters of our fate. Religion in this account is a projection of the imagination as a result of fear. The disposition of fear and anxiety by Hobbes was turned into the virtually universal experience of all mankind in the state of nature. The fear was redirected for the sovereign. The stability, prosperity, and even civil liberty provided by the sovereign helped to alleviate this kind of fears. It is based on this fear and anxiety that Hobbes created the bourgeois morality, a morality aiming at avoiding pain and violent death with the endless pursuit of desire. While more important is Hobbes’s prophetic account of religion which consists of twelve chapters of the second half of

  Leviathan

  , compared with two chapters of his natural account. The reason why Hobbes contribute great volume on this issue is that Hobbes fully understand the scripture offers the deepest, the most profound challenge to the claims of a scientific politics. He had to show the irrelevance between the religious teaching and reason but not the contradiction. Whereas his critique on the Kingdom of Darkness refused the authority of the clergy and provided the possibility of the sovereign power, his skepticism reserved the room for faith by limiting the reason. As a tolerationist understanding of Hobbes suggested, his worship consist of the combination of outward abeyance and inner freedom.

  Although the main method of this book is the detailed analysis of the text, this book not restricted to it and cannot be simply perceived as a Straussian history of the idea of the modernity, which excluding everything except major works of exceptional political philosophers. On the contrast, this historical tracing back also includes figures and their works like Benjamin Franklin and his

  Autobiography

  which is commonly read as an American literature. Famous readers of Franklin like Max Weber and Lawrence read Franklin and his

  Autobiography

  wrong because they fail to see the irony, the humor and the sheer joie de vivre

  [2]

  in this work, which results in a wrong interpretation of Puritanism from Franklin as Weber did in his

  Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism.

  According to Smith, this book should be read as a book of education, which is a story of self-improvement, involving the appreciation of fallibility and the imperfection of human being. Franklin provided his plan for the religious and moral reform and raised a new standard for them with the principle of toleration and the bourgeois morality, based on his pragmatism and his belief in progress and improvement. Although he did not mention politics directly, Smith analyzed that Franklin endorsed a conception of politics based on the ideas of progress and civic improvement. Best politics for Franklin is the politics which could achieve its goal through bloodless means of persuasion and negotiation, and his ideal party is the precursor of the modern political parties which includes the formed opposition.

  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.

  If we accept the assumption that these authors are in the same arena of modernity, whether they are precursors, pillars, critics or “discontents,” there should be the possible dialogue or the debate between their opinions. But since the argument of the author is primarily based on detailed text analysis, few concentration have been paid to this aspect. Look at the theme of the first three chapters of Part two. These three chapters dealt with three important figures in the modernity project, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Descartes. The analyses of their arguments are isolated with each other in some sense: after the analysis of Machiavelli on the virtue of the women and the family, the book turns to the Hobbesian critique on religion, and later the moral implication of Descartes’ ego and the characteristic of

  Discourse on Method

  as an autobiography. The modern moral standard, religious critique, and the self-identity, of course, are three important issues for the modernity, while we can see few connections between them except the idea of the modernity in author’s analysis. We can agree that the modernity is complex and presents itself in many aspects, but the author did not provide summaries to them. After all, the book is titled with “modernity” and thus is expected to present the modernity as a whole, but not mere a represent of opinions on modernity.

  The selection of the texts results in the discontinuity of the story. A traditional story of the modernity will also begin with Machiavelli, not focus on his

  Mandragola

  but his

  The Prince

  and

  Discourse

  and the discussion of his political thought; and following the discussion of Hobbes will focus on his social contract but not his religious critique. It sounds like a kind of cliché, but this kind of writing provides the continuity of the story. While Smith’s selection of authors and texts are untraditional which includes figures and works not central in traditional history. This kind of arrangement is helpful to broaden the landscape of modernity but results in the fragmentation of the story.

  The gap is most obvious when Smith finishes his discussion of part 2 and turn to the part 3, finishing the discussion of modernity and turn to its discontents. After analysis of Hegel, the book abruptly turned to Rousseau who was earlier than Hegel. Smith could reason that they belong to the different side and it is reasonable to put Rousseau after Hegel because modernity reached its peak in Hegel and Rousseau is the first who gave the counter-enlightenment its voice. But Smith did not provide detailed information about the context for Rousseau, then we cannot know what exactly Rousseau is discontent for, and the reason why he is discontent.

  Smith’s book is a Straussian reading of the question of modernity, and he succeeds in presenting opinions of figures he selected by detailed analyses of the text. But it is doubtful if he has reinitiated the debate because the debate needs the comparison and the contrast of the argument from each side, which is seldom shown in the book. Moreover, to understanding a debate means not only the issue and the argument but also its cause, i.e., why to debate. To say how modernity originates from the ancient-modern quarrel and to explain why modernity would originate from the quarrel are two different things. They are also two different things to analyzing the reasoning of the argument itself and the analyses of why the author would postulate in such way.

  So, to conclude, Smith’s book failed in three aspects: first, he does not conjoin the arguments from different authors; second, he does not present the scene of the debate and the two sides of the debate in a clear way; third, he does not analyze the cause of the debate. These three shortcomings can be overcome if the story is written by other method paying attention to the context, like the method applied by Cambridge school. What would a story of modernity from Cambridge school be and what is the potential benefit? There would three possible advantages.

  First, by putting the argument back to its historical context, we can better understand its origins. As Smith wrote in the introduction part, the debate about modern was initially from the ancient-modern quarrel, a literary debate about whether the rules of aesthetics and literary composition since Aristotle should still be obeyed. The spread of the debate to religion, science, morality and politics happened in certain context. By rebuilding the historical environment, the quarrel may not be “absurd”

  [3]

  to us. And we can see clearer how the basic belief of modernity is established, how it is novel from the previous thought. It also applies to author’s analysis on Machiavelli. The author compares Machiavelli to the ancient Roman, but this kind of comparison cannot show the novelty of Machiavelli correctly since the latter are so far away from Machiavelli. As a man of Renaissance, Machiavelli was immersed in the environment of Renaissance humanism and his contemporaries also committed themselves to the revival of classic legacy. To understand Machiavelli stands out from his contemporaries and contribute to the creation of the modern morality we should put him back to his context with his contemporaries.

  Second, the context provides the arena for the debate so that we can see the key points of the debate. In presenting Rousseau’s argument on sciences and arts, Smith has mentioned the Encyclopédistes and the Republic of Letters, who actually held opposite opinion to Rousseau, but he did not develop his discussion. It is not enough to just describe the situation and the influence of the Republic of Letters, but how exactly they reshape the taste and the morality of the public and what their arguments are. If we had the perception about the opinion of the role of the arts at that times, we could better understand the standpoint of Rousseau. But Smith did not do so. Instead, he provides a comparison of Rousseau to Plato, a comparison aimed at showing the similarities and the divergence of the ancient and the modern. We can see the difference between Rousseau and Plato in this way, but this difference is not the issue of the debate and comes like a castle in the air with no foundation. If the object of comparison is the Republic of Letters, we can see what points are Rousseau against because the Republic of Letters is the so-called modern.

  Third, by rebuilding the context of arguments, we can see clearly the development of the debate and the dialectic of modernity. Modernity is not a building built in a day and consistent at all times, it developed in the historical process and had its discrepancy. Smith provided pieces of the building and took pictures of the architecture at different times, but it is different from showing the process of construction and a documentary of modernity. Modernity as a project is achieved through generations of thinkers, the central issues of modernity emerged from certain historical context. The theme of modernity transits with the time passed. The opponents of modernity also faded in in certain context. Argument of modernity is always the argument of some aspects of modernity, disembedding the arguments from to their context and we will lose the whole story. On the contrary, putting the argument back will help us to recognize the picture. If modernity can be described with certain adjectives like individuality, toleration, progress, etc., by rebuilding the context of arguments we can figure out how these features of modernity come out. It also contributes to the understanding of the counter-enlightenment. How religious critique aimed at secularization met its antithesis of rationalization and “disenchantment”, individuality meaning self-liberation turned to the rhetoric of alienation, and democracy gave its way to democratic despotism, can be understood if we put the issue back to its historical context.

  4.Conclusion

  Steven B. Smith examines the concept of modernity by presenting the thoughts of great minds. He adopts the method of detailed analysis of text, a Straussian way of doing the history of political thought, to conduct his research. As a result of his research method, modernity under his evaluation is more a state of mind than a historical product. He succeeds in presenting distinctive characteristics of modernity including self-determination and progress. He also provides a clear-cut image of important critics and opponents against modernity. But his story is with shortcomings. This book is not so successful in reinitiating the old debate of two sides, and the analysis of each character are isolated to each other. As a result, the trajectory of development of modernity and the rising of its anti-rhetoric is not so clear. If we conceive this work as an attempt of depicting the opinions regarding modernity, it is a great book. But if we want to see how modernity developed through a historical process, the arrangement and the method of this book may not be suitable. This kind of story would be possible by adopting the method of Cambridge school. By putting more weight on the historical context of modernity and its transition, we would trace the development of modernity more easily.

  [1]

  Smith, Steven B.

  Modernity and Its Discontents: Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow

  . Yale University Press, 2016. Preface X.

  [2]

  Ibid, Page 113.

  [3]

  Ibid, Page 6.