Modernity as Experience and Interpretation

Peter Wagner is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona.

Preface vii

1 Ways of Understanding Modernity 1

Part I: Interpretations of Political Modernity: Liberty and its Discontents 19

Overture: Multiple Interpretations of Political Modernity 21

2 Modernity and the Question of Freedom 24

3 The Political Forms of Modernity 39

4 Modernity as a Project of Emancipation and the Possibility of Politics 62

Part II: Interpretations of Economic Modernity: The Endgame and After 75

Overture: Capitalism and Modernity as Social Formations and as Imaginary Signifi cations 77

5 The Critique of Capitalism and its Impasse 83

6 Towards a Historical-Comparative Sociology of Capitalism 103

7 The Exit from Organized Economic Modernity 123

Part III: Interpretations of Epistemic Modernity: Distance and Involvement 143

Overture: The Quest for Knowledge beyond Experience and Interpretation 145

8 The Critique of Science and its Prospects 149

9 Varieties of Socio-political Interpretations of Modernity 165

Part IV: The European Experience and Interpretation of Modernity 189

Overture: European Integration as an Interpretation of Modernity 191

10 Logics of European History 196

11 Regionalizing European Modernity 215

Part V: The Analysis of Modernity and the Need for a New Sociology 231

Overture: When the Light of the Cultural Problems has Moved On 233

12 The Social Theory and Political Philosophy of Modernity 235

13 The Conceptual History and Historical Sociology of Modernity 247

Notes 265

References 282

Index 297