ABSTRACT
In this, the last lecture, I would like to assess the develop-ment of modern thought as I have characterised it, more or less well, in the preceding ones. Could the return to the world
of perception – which we have observed in the work of
painters and writers alike, as well as that of certain philoso-
phers and the pioneers of modern physics – when compared
with the ambitions of classical science, art and philosophy, be
seen as evidence of decline? On the one hand we have the
self-assurance of a system of thought which is unfailingly
convinced of its mission both to know nature through and
through and to purge its knowledge of man of all mystery. In
modernity, on the other hand, this rational universe which is
open in principle to human endeavours to know it and act
within it, is replaced by a kind of knowledge and art that is
characterised by difficulty and reserve, one full of restrictions.
