Chapter 5

Freedom

FREEDOM AND MODERNITY

Modernity has largely been organised around a particular vision of the rational self who is able to guide his life through reason alone. We are intentionally talking about the lives of men, for with Descartes our inherited tradition of philosophy and social theory have treated reason as a masculine possession. Men do not have to prove their rationality for it is supposedly a gift of the gods that they can take for granted.

So it is that our visions of modernity have largely been cast to legitimate and confirm the visions of men. The universalism that goes along with modernity is an exclusive, rather than an inclusive, conception. It is a universalism that is grounded within the experience of men and it ...

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