Ускоренная рефлексивность — депрессивная социальность

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The article concerns the problem of distinguishing the key features that qualitatively define Modernity. Against the background of transition from industrial to postindustrial capitalism the original projective character of social thought changes. In the society of “late modernity” to the fore come not the critical projects of reconstruction or modernization but social and cultural reflection, that aims to help in local orientation in the increasingly complex world. Large-scale social thought narratives and research programs buckle under the onslaught of original authors’ approaches. As the result we face the fragmentation of theoretical social philosophy field and social frustration. The article aims to detect the common ground, on which the further theoretical discussion about the disciplinary boundaries and the subject of social theory can be developed. The author leans on the attempts made in the last few decades of the 20th century (Jürgen Habermas, Hermann Lübbe, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Scott Lash) to provide a common framework of productive understanding of contradictions and tendencies of Modernity. To these instrumental but simultaneously concrete ideas belong social acceleration and reflexivity of modernity. The acceleration of historical eventfulness led to a symmetrical response — it begins to see its task in keeping in pace with gained speed. This interpretative acceleration generates a situation of depressed sociality, when all the attempts to critically comprehend what is happening only increase the frustration. In the conclusion the author assumes that social acceleration understood exactly in the sense of reflexivity could be a turning point for redefining philosophical coordinates of the theory of Modernity.