The Age of Ambiguity

In early modern Europe, the willingness and ability of actors to deal with normative contradictions was more pronounced than in modern times. Pre-modern actors were more tolerant of ambiguity - and had to be. For since the late Middle Ages, behavioural expectations on the part of the church, the secular authorities and the social environment took on more concrete forms and were increasingly energetically demanded. However, no contradiction-free order of norms emerged, but rather ambiguities and contradictions. Thus, the early modern period was both: an age of unambiguity, of the ideal of purity and discipline on the one hand, and of dealing with norms characterised by ambiguity on the other. Around 1800, efforts to fundamentally overcome cultural ambiguity and create unambiguity increased - the age of ambiguity ended, even if in modernity the ideal of unambiguity would once again prove to be an illusion.