BORN-AGAIN PAGAN IN SEARCH OF MEANING OF MODERNITY

Anthony T. Kronman, Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2016) ("The most lasting of my obsessions has been with the meaning of the modern world." "Since I first began to think about such things in even a modestly self-conscious way, I have been haunted by the thought that destiny has placed me in a world with a unique historical identity and been anxious to know what this is. That the modern age differs form those that preceded it is obvious. Indeed, it is too obvious. There are too many distinctions that set it apart. Some are political, others intellectual, scientific or aesthetic. But do all these have a common explanation? Is there some one thing that connects them? Putting aside the endlessly disputed questions of when and why it came into being, does the modern world have a meaning that joins is diverse parts in a single, intelligible whole? This is the question that has obsessed me for many years now and I have feared that unless I had an answer to it, I could never be more than a tourist in the world in whiteout was my fave to have been born." Id. at 2.).