Utilitarian justifications for modernity shape how individuals cognitively situate themselves in the world

Evidence

It is therefore the benefits that we claim to derive from the modern project that do the work of vindicating the moral basis on which the project itself becomes both rationalized and justified. This has been the cornerstone and thrust of Jeremy Bentham’s and J. S. Mill’s philosophies, among others, which continue to flourish in various, yet pervasive, forms in the twenty-first century, whether intellectually, institutionally, or materially. Their effects have not been merely practical, in the sense that they afford a guide to an actionable way of life premised on certain foundational conceptions of utility, pleasure, and pain. Rather, the effects have gone deep into the formation of the modern subject, determining not only the manner in which that subject understands and interrogates the world, but also, and consequently, how it cognitively situates itself in the world. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 460

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that claimed benefits retroactively vindicate the moral basis of modernity itself, and that this penetrates the formation of the subject’s cognitive self-location, is a dense and paradigm-shifting argument worth sitting with.