Abstract

This paper aims to question our relationship to what we call “modernity”, and mostly the way we call ourselves moderns, through the problematic, enigmatic and rebellious example of Spinoza’s philosophy. First, we try to reconstruct a general idea of what we usually name “modernity”. Then, we show how Spinoza’s philosophy is curiously always absent in this conceptual delimitation of modernity. Yet, when it comes to criticize it, when we try to criticize ourselves in our limited “modern-being”, we almost unconsciously tend to spinozism. Finally, we affirm that the meaning of this rejection implies not the reform of our concept of modernity but the redefinition and reinvention of the way we practice philosophy, conceive history in general and the history of philosophy in particular.