The Multiple Images of Modernity

Abstract The multiple images of modernity are used here to put forward and corroborate the possibility of the genesis of multiple modern civilizations and their very modernity while confirming the prior existence of modern Western civilization. In examining the complexity, inner tensions and contemporary predicaments appearing in the formation and evolution of earlier Western modernity, this paper reveals the basic mechanisms of modernity and the various possible approaches to it, that is, the fact that there are more possibilities for modernity other than the Western one. Economic globalization is the first step and the only pathway towards the modernity goals of human society, and any deglobalization or antiglobalization will hinder or check the progress of human society towards the ideal goal of modernity. History and the real-world economy demonstrate that “building a community with a shared future for mankind” is so far a more suitable and more explanatory guiding concept for seeking and approaching the human ideal of modernity; it surpasses existing concepts such as “ecumenicalism,” “cosmopolitanism,” and “globalism,” and is the latest understanding of the modernity of human society in contemporary China.