MODERN LOVE: Something I’ve wondered for a couple years now: Why do different disciplines use the word “modern” to refer to such different eras? In history, as far as I can tell, modernity begins at the end of the Renaissance; but modern art starts much later. Philosophy generally uses the history definition, in my experience, or a definition in which modernity starts with the Enlightenment, or with Machiavelli; and then “postmodernity” kicks off with Nietzsche. I’d be interested in any emails about either a) the source of the divergence in these definitions of “modern,” or b) if the art-definition and the history-definition actually relate to one another, how are they connected?

And this is probably not a question about mods. Probably.