ABSTRACT
In this book we have followed Western thought from antiquity through the Middle Ages and down to our own time. What, then, is ‘modernity’ in such a perspective, and what is the critique of modernity? The problems of modernity have been implicit throughout our discussion, and in several cases they have been mentioned explicitly — for instance, in connection with the Renaissance and the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and also with Kant and Hegel — and critical views of modernity have been discussed in various cases, from Rousseau and Burke, through Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, to Durkheim and Weber. We will now outline one view of modernity, as the background to a discussion of Heidegger, Arendt, and Habermas; Gadamer and Derrida; and Foucault and Rorty.
