Introduction

Our world is a world of clashing perspectives, values, and principles. These clashes remind us ever more acutely that the prevailing self-understanding of modernity has lost much of its pertinence. This self-understanding largely relies, in my view, on clear-cut oppositions such as progress and tradition, reason and faith, the public and the private, freedom and terror, justice and power, nation and tribe. Whereas modernity has often acknowledged the potential conflicts between such contrary moments, it has equally often asserted its capacity to control, if not to resolve, these conflicts. There is no doubt that the history of the twentieth century calls into question this innate optimism of modern thought. The violations of human dignity performed in our midst can no longer be cancelled out, in the eyes of many, by the purported increase of freedom, wealth, or stability.