The modern person, unlike the postmodern one, possesses an extremely acute sense of history. Not only epochs and events are organized and dated within historical time, but even the Universe has its own history. Such concepts as evolution and revolution, progress and regress, becoming and development, etc., together with the orientation toward the future, and not to a golden age, are typical of the modern way of thinking. In late modernity, however, this same way of thinking triggers a multitude of antinomies. These usually emerge as conceptualization of our sense of history and of the irreducibility of historical rationality to “pure reason.” The debates on this issue begin in 19th century, but they continue with increased intensity into our own day.
Two of the key names in these debates are Sartre and Foucault. But if the first still tries to find a solution, reconsidering the controversies of modernity, Foucault, for whom Sartre is one of the best known philosophers of his father’s generation, tries to cast aside the whole paradigm of modernity with all its intrinsic aporias, although, finally, he remains linked with it. This link is not just reactive – in the way a historical nominalist reacts against the statements of historical universalism, but is more complex. It is evidence of intolerance, and at the same time, of the attachment to some of the major canonical modern assumptions, which, chased away through the door, come back in through the window. That is why the task of comparing these two positions, which Thomas Flynn has embarked on, is not at all easy. However, he has succeeded, thanks to his wide erudition and profound knowledge of the Continental tradition as a whole and of contemporary French philosophy in particular. His professionalism is of the highest quality and commands respect.