ABSTRACT
From the present point of view, then, modernity is not simply another label for the ascendant West. Nor is it a universal cultural paradigm which, for contingent reasons, happened to emerge in the West earlier than in other places. Rather, we define the idea of modernity in hermeneutical terms: as an essential part of the self-articulation of the West, but a part which has the specific function of opening up a horizon beyond the existing social order of things. The self-transcendence which is thus made possible is, as suggested above, open to conflicting interpretations; it can appear as accumulation or critique, self-maximisation or selfproblematisation. In more concrete patterns of modernity, this horizon of indeterminacy is circumscribed by social and cultural forms which enhance certain possibilities at the expense of others.
