ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces several of the motivating ideas associated with modernity and shows how they have impacted on law and legal institutions. It analyses how modernity prioritised reason and progress ahead of superstition and tradition; how the break with pre-modern forms of economy and politics led to changes in the nature of the social bond; and how these developments led to the functional differentiation of society into a plurality of systems, including the relatively autonomous legal system. However, if “progress” was considered the engine of modernity, then what was done in the name of progress could also be either ambivalent or detrimental, depending on the perspective from which it was viewed. For the “Age of Reason” was also the age of empire, and colonial exploitation underpinned the development of modern societies. Hence the relation between ideal and reality is a further problematic introduced in this chapter, one that is taken up more systematically in later chapters.
