From the time of Bacon and Descartes, modernity has aimed at simple powerful principles that can be fully grasped, made completely evident, and used for comprehensive control of phenomena. As a result:
- To a degree unusual in a tendency of thought, let alone a historical period, modernity can be characterized specifically and its intrinsic tendencies determined.
- Those tendencies include extreme radicalism.
We are accustomed to think of modernity as normal. There can, however, be nothing normal about an outlook that like modernity rejects the very notion of normality.