ABSTRACT
Kant's three critiques effect a division of modernity into scientific and philosophical knowledge; ethics and law; aesthetics and expression. The two-edged quality of the dynamic force which, to varying degrees, drives processes within these spheres and affirms their separation is encapsulated by Baudelaire as a tension between creation and destruction: something of the past is destroyed in order to create the new.' The proximity of these opposing forces is embodied in the refashioning of natural resources essential to modernization, and the inherent instability of the formula is intensified by the profit motive of commodity production. This volatility is revealed in the modes of thought characteristic of modernity and is unremittingly drawn out by Adornian critical theory.
