ABSTRACT
The Promethean Passion of Modernity
The Intellectual Origins of Modernity suggests that modernity and Enlightenment, far from being synonymous, are separate, different, and sometimes even contradictory concepts. Modernity is humankind's consciousness in the last two to three centuries, of being able to form themselves with their own hands. Some have sought do this in a context of freedom, and some in a context of repression. The Enlightenment, on the other hand, which typified major thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, promoted the idea of the universality of mankind, the principle of the liberty and equality of all, and the theory of progress whereby morality and the spirit of rational criticism were spread through education and the dissemination of knowledge. Modernity is a period marked by the Promethean desire to master the world, whereas the Enlightenment was a normative outlook on the world. Modernity could be enlightened, but it could also rebel against the values of the Enlightenment.
