ABSTRACT
Having phenomenologically investigated the basic structure of human agency and the presumptuousness to which it gives rise, we can now return to the questions that spawned our inquiry. How should the challenges of modern life be conceptualized against the heroic model? What are we to make of modern societies’ promises of freedom, equality, and fulfillment? What opportunities for individualism does modern culture offer once this ideal is understood heroically? And just how desirable is individualism so conceived?
