Modern

The problem here lies in the unavoidable use of the very concept of 'modern.' For this familiar term, which has expressed the hopeful essence of our specific type of civilization for almost five centuries, does not, as common parlance suggests, mean simply 'new,' but more precisely emancipated: emancipated, on the one hand, from the episodic whims and prejudices of 'mere' tradition and belief (those affects typically said to characterize the premodern universe) and, on the other, from the indifferent, averse, and wild unfoldings of the natural world. The essence of the modern 'type' of human that corresponds to this worldview is, in turn, expressed--to itself and in its own vision--as a creative freedom struggling in and within indifferent world to shape itself as it wills. That human will and human freedom should today be bound together in this way to assemble the new, modern human type . . . in fact already determines much of what is today possible to say and what it is possible to know. For example, we would not expect to find many in the west today . . . who sincerely believe that the mastery of nature, or of chance in general, is not the best means for improving the plight of the human species on the planet. (VC 90)