Abstract
In this introduction to the volume An Ethical Modernity? Hegel's Ethical Life Today, its editors inquire into the nature of modernity. They emphasize a new concept of time central to modernity, and further they stress self-reflexivity and self-creativity as key aspects that delimitate the so called "modern" period.
But rather than being important dimensions of a certain time period only, they are equally main moments of the modern spirit as such, of a certain type of self-relation, and as such these moments may not be characteristic of a certain period only but can serve to specify a peculiar type of spirituality. Subsequently, the authors relate the moments of time, self-reflexivity and self-creativity to Hegel's understanding of modernity.
In their conception, Hegel is a proponent of modernity, possibly even one of its philosophical fathers, while at the same time he is an early diagnostician of its peculiar blind spots. In the second part, of the Introduction, the authors focus on the key points of the individual contributions included in the volume.