Modernity as Apocalypse

Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos

Modernity is viewed as an opportunity for discovering the self and encountering the radically other; but, as an ideology and as a quasi-religion, it amounts to the most sophisticated and unacknowledged play of shadows into which fallen man has thus far descended. Indeed, René Girard went so far as to identify the uncontrollable escalation of violence unleashed by our attempt to secure political order and peace—absent corporate repentance and obedience to the Gospel—as Apocalypse. With a questioning spirit not unlike that of Socrates, the “gadfly” of Athens, Thaddeus Kozinski here examines modernity through a variety of lenses—historical, cultural, philosophical, theological, anthropological, psychological, political, pedagogical—casting light on the Logos that the sacred nihilism of liberalism has so obscured, and unmasking its myriad counterfeits.