Modernity represents a genuine rupture from pre-sixteenth-century European paradigms despite internal variation

Evidence

As my conception of central and peripheral domains contends (throughout chapters 1 and 2), the Enlightenment is neither a monolithic nor a consistent project, having encompassed multitudes of voices and representations, not to mention various internal “breaks” or “turns.” However, for all these varieties and permutations, it constituted, in its central paradigms of rationality, materialism, and a single-minded vision of politics, a rupture from what had preceded it, even by Europe’s own historical standards. To confuse the breaks and turns within its history with being continuous with paradigms from before the sixteenth century is to misunderstand modernity’s uniqueness as an epistemic, teleological, and colossally destructive project. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 538

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ongoing debates about whether modernity is continuous or ruptural with the premodern West—relevant to the reader’s background in colonial and postcolonial theory. — connects to: Radical break and continuity claims both fail without a temporal-analytic definition of modernity — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 558; Roman-world rupture produced a modern individuality no human form can express — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 841
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what specific ‘breaks or turns’ inside the Enlightenment does Hallaq count as legitimately internal rather than continuous with earlier paradigms?