Abstract

The paper distinguishes between a free form of modernity and an ideological form of modernity, whereby the latter can also be called modernism. Free modernity aims at realising the modern, i.e. that which responds to the needs of the present and realises what corresponds to the state-of-the-art. Modernism as an ideology, however, believes in "the" ultimate modernism, in one final modern age of reason. The modernist Hegelian and Marxist philosophies of history and of dialectical metaphysics have come to an end. It demonstrates that we are living in a post-modern age that gives a new freedom for the Christian interpretation of history and for the theological and personalist form of metaphysics