Readings of modernity: Kant, Baudelaire, Benjamin e Foucault

Abstract

The modern attitude of questioning the time in which you live has challenged philosophy and history over the last two centuries. Kant, Benjamin, and Foucault, each in his own way, wrote original texts on it. Baudelaire chose a different path. Instead of merely juxtaposing readings, he offered Benjamin and Foucault the opportunity to establish a diagnosis: reactivating the analytical and critical approach to present time. In Les fleurs du mal, the poet examines the issue of modernity and, more specifically, its ambiguity, its crisis and its “criticism” as a way of rekindling a critical approach to present time. This movement lead to a return to Kant.

keywords: modernity; present time; criticism.