Entgrenzungen. Ein europäischer Beitrag zum philosophischen Diskurs über die Moderne

Three paradigmatic positions on Modernity crystallized over the course of the 20th century in Western philosophy (Europe/America): inspired by Nietzsche and the "will to power", emphatic critiques of progress exposed Modernity to be a planetary rampant power syndrome causing social and ecological disaster (Heidegger, Horkheimer/Adorno, Foucault); for philosophical Postmodernism, Modernity is merely one cultural phenomenon amongst others (Rorty, Lyotard); and finally, defenders of this very same Enlightenment see Modernity as the provisional endpoint of the rational evolution of mankind, the culmination of a learning process (Habermas, Fukuyama). Against this background, the essay takes a step back in time to the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Early Modern period so as to prise open such established narrow perspectives on Modernity on the one hand, while on the other constructively tapping into motifs evident in the critique of colonialism expounded in Latin American philosophy. In the genesis of modern thought we can observe that spectacular breakthroughs towards greater rationality and cultural visions are linked together from the very outset, both of which break with millennia- old notions of what constitutes a "good life". In this way, a complex of "dislimitation prior to and beyond reason" establishes itself in Renaissance philosophy, which may be distinguished into three fields: the idea of a limitless universe leading to a rehabilitation of insatiable curiosity (Nicholas de Cusa); a surpassing of the limits imposed by the essentialist anthropology of Aristotle, which culminates in the anthropological idea of the self-creative power of man (Pico della Mirandola); and the dislimitation of the geographical world view triggered by the explorations of Vasco de Gama and Columbus, which provoked the need for a global ethics of responsibility (Francisco de Vitoria). Initially emerging separately in cosmology, anthropology and geography, these three motifs are then explicitly brought together and transformed in late Renaissance philosophy (Seplveda, Montaigne), before flowing into 17th-century Rationalism. It is on account of this that rational breakthroughs are tied to cultural perspectives in the guiding ideas of Modernity. For Francis Bacon, the programme of an experimental science is combined with the vision of a complete unleashing of the productive forces of man and nature; Thomas Hobbes takes as the foil for the construction of the modern state the extreme scenario of the universal exertion of unfettered power by man; and John Locke`s justification of the money gives birth to the idea of limitless economic growth. The differentiation between gains in rationality and cultural moments within Modernity renders transparent the much- discussed ambivalences of Modernity on the one hand, while on the other affords a new perspective of the relationships between European and non-European cultures in which both the aporias of a radical anti-modernism as well as the Eurocentrism of the classical philosophies of Enlightenment may be avoided.