In this major new work, Bernstein explores the ethical and political dimensions of the modernity/post-modernity debate.Bernstein argues that modernity / post-modernity should be understood as a kind of mood - one which is amorphous, shifting and protean but which exerts a powerful influence on our current thinking. Focusing on thinkers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas and Rorty, Bernstein probes the strengths and weaknesses of their work, and shows how they have contributed to the formation of a new mood, a new and distinctive constellation of ideas.;Cover ; Title Page; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 Philosophy, History, and Critique; 2 The Rage Against Reason; 3 Incommensurability and Otherness Revisited; 4 Heidegger's Silence?: Ēthos and Technology; 5 Foucault: Critique as a Philosophic Ēthos; 6 Serious Play: The Ethical-Political Horizon of Derrida; 7 An Allegory of Modernity/Postmodernity: Habermas and Derrida; 8 One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward: Rorty on Liberal Democracy and Philosophy; 9 Rorty's Liberal Utopia; 10 Reconciliation/Rupture; Appendix Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Healing of Wounds.