THE IDEOLOGY OF MODERNIZATION AND THE „TASK OF THINKING44 Kowalska Malgorzata

The ideology of modernization with its main slogans (those of innovation, informatization, economical growth, global competition, knowledge based society, etc.) is certainly the remainder of the more general and ambitious ideology of Progress, born in the XVIII century, prevailing over the XIX and a part of XX centuries and coming into crisis after two world wars, then the development and death of the two totalitarian systems, more specially of communism.

However, in the same time, since the end of the seventies, the new vague of liberalism and a new technological revolution seems to give a new force and future to the modern dream of dominating nature and remaking the world. This time, that should occur on the basis of capitalistic economy and thanks to globalization conceived mainly as expansion of the western model.

What is and what should be the position of philosophical reflection in such ideological context? There is no doubt it should be critical. But in what sense? Can we - philosophers - follow the example of thinkers such as Nietzsche or Heidegger, attacking the modern ideology in the name of non-modern and anti-modern values?

I will argue, in my paper, that what Heidegger called “the task of thinking” is not to reject the whole project of modernity, but to distinguish between different aspects or dimensions of it, namely between the questionable idea of the constant technological and economical development and the democratic ideas of freedom, equality and justice. The latter do not exclude but, on the contrary, require a search for equilibrium between future and past, or the respect of many local traditions.