LA TROBE UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE/CHARLES UNIVERSITY, PRAGUE

authors like Voegelin and Toynbee ascribed to universal religions) link this claim

to some kind of supposedly universal world-view replacing more particular

perspectives. When this universalizing turn is identified in conceptual terms, its

core characteristics tend to reflect the Kantian demarcation of two worlds – the

natural and the moral – governed by universal principles of cognition and

conduct. Habermas’s evolutionary model of a definitive differentiation into three

worlds – objective, intersubjective, and subjective – is perhaps the most complex

variation on this theme.

A civilizational view of modernity must relativize this line of argument. Here

I can do no more than outline the main thrust of a debate that merits broader

participation. Those who prefer to analyze modernity as a specific civilizational

pattern (and therefore insist on specific contexts of the universalizing trends that

are also an integral part of the picture) can point to several aspects of the modern

cultural constellation. First, the presence of divergent or conflicting currents (as

well as of attempts to reconcile or synthesize them) within modern interpretations

of the world casts doubt on the idea of a unified and uncontestable world-view.

In particular, the complex relationship between enlightenment and romanticism

has been an enduring source of diversity in modern thought, and is still a key

theme for philosophers and historians of ideas working with pluralistic conceptions

of modernity. A further argument in support of such views is the role of dominant images or significations that confer a certain degree of unity on the cultural and intellectual field, but are at the same time open to conflicting interpretations

and thus conducive to a higher level of pluralism. Visions of human autonomy are the most obvious case in point; their central place in the modern imaginary is uncontested, but closer analysis encounters a whole cluster of different images with changing connotations and contrasting implications, on both sides of the abovementioned divide. Finally, it has been argued that modern transformations of the world-view – or, more precisely, of the general preconditions for world-view formation – are incomplete in the sense that they leave fundamental questions open, and that together with the ambiguity of key modern significations, this absence of closure leads to an ongoing appropriation of themes and arguments from older traditions. All these points strengthen the case for seeing modernity as a new tradition (related to others, as are the major historical traditions, but distinct from them), rather than an irreversible break with traditions, and that is already a significant step towards the idea of a new civilization.

In brief, the analytical distinction between culture and social structure presupposes

an interpretive context that becomes more visible when we move to the

civilizational level. With this in mind, the second step of the strong program

should now be considered. It centres on ‘the commitment to hermeneutically

constructing social texts in a rich and persuasive way’ (Alexander and Smith,

2003: 13). The hermeneutical aspect, latent in the first step, thus comes to the