Examines the theoretical and philosophical contours of the modern era. The book traces the contemporary critiques of modernity back to their philosophical origins in the work of Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and others.

Introduction by Thomas McCarthy vii Preface xix I Modernity's Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-Reassurance 1 II Hegel's Concept of Modernity 23 Excursus on Schiller's" Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man" 45 III Three Perspectives: Left Hegelians, Right Hegelians, and Nietzsche 51 Excursus on the Obsolescence of the Production Paradigm 75 IV The Entry into Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Turning Point 83 V The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno 106 VI The Undermining of Western Rationalism through the Critique of Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger 131 VII Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Jacques Derrida's Critique of Phonocentrism 161 Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinction between Philosophy and Literature 185 VIII Between Eroticism and General Economics: Georges Bataille 211 IX The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault 238 X Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again 266 XI An Alternative Way out of the Philosophy of the Subject: Communicative versus Subject- Centered Reason 294 Excursus on Cornelius Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution 327 XII The Normative Content of Modernity 336 Excursus on Luhmann's Appropriation of the Philosophy of the Subject through Systems Theory 368 Notes 386 Name Index 423 Subject and Title Index 427