ABSTRACT
Previous chapters have dealt with the deep structures of the europic problematic and shown the opposing forces that work to shape its reproduction and transformation. The last chapter explored how these are manifest in the abstract conceptions of universal reason and how they are contested. The illicit naturalisation of abstract reason was seen to rest on anthropological presuppositions which inform the dominant forms of the modern imaginary. This chapter continues the critique of the nature and function of europic anthropology with a critical exploration of what Charles Taylor calls the ‘modern imaginary’. What follows is a discussion of civil society and humanism as aspects of this imaginary, the more substantive level of the general framework of ideological and theoretical thinking. This discussion takes its lead from an aspect of Louis Althusser’s work not yet discussed: his account of the modern tradition and the problems of what he called ‘theoretical humanism’.1
