Anomie/Atomie: On the Impact of Secularization/Modernization on Moral Cohesion and Social Tissue

Imagine we divide human history in four phases, calling them “primitive”, “traditional”, “modern” and, then, “post‐modern”. In other words, “modernity” is not seen as the end of history, and certainly not as global market economy cum democratic polity; a social formation seen here as highly unstable. A fourth phase is added, the phase that comes after modernity, like the “middle ages” come between antiquity and modernity, and “metaphysics” comes above or after physics: the post‐modern phase. The term is frequently used; the following is an effort to give that term a richer connotation.