Prefazione. Intorno alla nozione di tardomoderno

[Autom. eng. transl.] The late modern is still a form of modernity and as such should not be confused with the postmodern, which from modernity holds instead to differentiate itself because it deems it now complete and conceives itself as following it. The main merit of the late-modern attitude consists in its ability to keep appropriately distinct, evaluating them differently, two elements (the first is the systematic ideal of philosophizing; the second is the Enlightenment project of modernity based on the admission of the value of reason in view of an ideal of human emancipation) that instead the modern and the postmodern agree in identifying, diverging only in the value judgment that they pronounce indiscriminately on both. The late-modern takes leave of the first element but it is careful not to reject the second element, unlike the post-modern which, instead, with its double refusal expires in an irrational position.