The Modern Mind

Abstract

The modern mind gives voice to the re-formations of thought that have occurred in the history of Western philosophy. It is the mind that is now able to speak of itself as determined within the cultures of error, and as the actuality of the learning of this (self-) determination. As such, the modern mind is a present recollection of itself. This recollection can be stated in a number of ways. It is the retrieval of death in life, of the slave in the master, of truth in error, and of Hegel in Kant. It also retrieves the social relation in the metaphysical relation. Essentially, it is the groundlessness of modern thought whose ground or truth lies in this, its self-negation. In this chapter we will describe some of the shapes of this groundlessness from Kant and Hegel to Derrida. In the final chapter below we will think this groundlessness as the standpoint of the West in relation to God, to the other, and to death.