ABSTRACT
In an attempt to characterise the nature of Modernity, Hans Blumenberg (1983) has argued that there is something irreducibly original about it, while Karl Löwith (1970) claims that its intellectual Gestalt is a secularisation of Christian theology. Both seem to have it at least partly right. Descartes’ cogito is prima facie an irreducible novelty, while ‘sovereignty’ in a Modern context is no doubt related to late mediaeval divine omnipotence. Following the latter, the claim that Modernity is a radically new period in history, in that it comes up with new problems, needs to be qualified. It is a different way of ‘understanding understanding’, a new form of consciousness of the perennial problems of philosophy.
