UNFEASIBLE MODERNITY

Abstract

We put the core of Modernity in the emerging phenomena of indi­viduality, understood as a process of emancipation from the ruling groups. Its two ways, always in tension, would be to develop an individuality autocratically or to understand the individual as a unique and autonomous human being, but only in reference to humankind. It looks like that the individualist model has imposed itself dominating the economical and political systems, supposedly self-made and self-regulated. Modern christians have always existed, but they had always to deal with the contradiction of the Church as institution. The Vatican II discerned that the human being is historical and while making history we form themselves; rec­ognized that the civilizing benefits propitiate human life, but they do not equate to true human development. This is only eschatological. The responsibility towards brothers and history, that we perform in our caring incarnation, is the new hu­manism. We go beyond modernity when we pass from the individual alone or in relation to humankind intrinsically relational, that becomes a person by acting as a son and brother while anchored in indelible individuality.