ABSTRACT
Modernity is, admittedly, a multi-faceted phenomenon which valiantly resists clearcut definitions. It has been widely accepted that the phenomenon is intimately related to the ‘technological revolution’, to the drastic thickening of the artificial intermediary sphere stretching between Man and Nature, often articulated as a dramatic strengthening of the human ascendancy over Nature. At the same time, however, it is agreed that the phenomenon is not reducible to the technological explosion. Modernity is also a social and psychological phenomenon; its advent means momentous changes in the social system as well as in the set of conditions in which human action takes place. One can only surmise that however the advent of modernity affects the dimensions and the content of yearnings and utopias, the impact is mediated by these latter phenomena more than by anything else. As a background and a source of inspiration for human ideals, modernity means, above all, a modern network of human relations.
