Modernity as the Last of the Grand Narratives: From the Social Philosophies of Crisis to the Crisis of Social Philosophies

Abstract

Social philosophies are important civilizational claims especially in times of crisis. There had been many social philosophies from various civilizations until the European colonialist domination. Modernity was constructed as the ultimate paradigm for humanity during the destruction of other civilizations and social philosophies during the colonialist expansion of the European powers. This paper claimed that Eurocentric modernity built itself as the last meta-narrative with the help of colonialist mentality and practice and imposed itself all over the world. Efforts to show the global difference between the West and the rest among social theorists helped to build a global other for Europeans. It also destroyed the opportunity to search for alternatives with the death of grand narratives because of the very failure of modernity itself. Today, Islamic civilization remains to be a potential challenging paradigm as it produced theories of the like S. Qutb and A. Shariati.