Peter Wagner is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona.

• Preface vii1 Ways of Understanding Modernity 1Part I: Interpretations of Political Modernity: Liberty and its Discontents 19Overture: Multiple Interpretations of Political Modernity 212 Modernity and the Question of Freedom 243 The Political Forms of Modernity 394 Modernity as a Project of Emancipation and the Possibility of Politics 62Part II: Interpretations of Economic Modernity: The Endgame and After 75Overture: Capitalism and Modernity as Social Formations and as Imaginary Signifi cations 775 The Critique of Capitalism and its Impasse 836 Towards a Historical-Comparative Sociology of Capitalism 1037 The Exit from Organized Economic Modernity 123Part III: Interpretations of Epistemic Modernity: Distance and Involvement 143Overture: The Quest for Knowledge beyond Experience and Interpretation 1458 The Critique of Science and its Prospects 1499 Varieties of Socio-political Interpretations of Modernity 165Part IV: The European Experience and Interpretation of Modernity 189Overture: European Integration as an Interpretation of Modernity 19110 Logics of European History 19611 Regionalizing European Modernity 215Part V: The Analysis of Modernity and the Need for a New Sociology 231Overture: When the Light of the Cultural Problems has Moved On 23312 The Social Theory and Political Philosophy of Modernity 23513 The Conceptual History and Historical Sociology of Modernity 247Notes 265References 282Index 297