Introduction: Modernity, Ethics and the Subject

Abstract

It is perhaps fitting to begin this volume by saying a few things, a few indeed — considering what can be said — about modernity and how it is generally understood in the pages of the present volume. This is particularly because the discourse on the ethics of subjectivity here is intrinsically affiliated with the emergence of modernity and its subsequent unfolding in human history. Also, the use of modernity in any discourse often has the annoying effect of stirring up the modern-postmodern controversy. Thus, I will attempt in the next few lines to at least hibernate such a controversy as much as I can as far as this volume is concerned by setting out a sense in which modernity is understood here and how such an understanding, rather than resurrecting an ugly modern-postmodern controversy, may in fact resist and avoid such.