Abstract

Kolb's purpose is to dispel a practical and theoretical illusion--promoted by modernity about its own uniqueness as a unified and unifying constellation of meanings which wholly defines us--and to put modernity "in its place" within that sustaining and limiting context which makes it possible, which cannot be described in "standard modern terms," and which suggests that we are not as free as--and yet more than what--modernity says we are. He begins with an examination of the "standard self-description of modernity and its basic dichotomies and divisions," in particular the modern preference for formal over substantive rationality, emphasized by Max Weber in his presentation of modern society as "a process waiting for content to come from the choice of its citizens"--the modern self relating "to itself and to others as a pure chooser, with no necessary substantive content".