Abstract

The negative phenomena accompanying modernization are often put down to the fact that modernization is incomplete ana follows the path of economic and scientific- technological rationalization. We then expect these negative sides to modernization to be eliminated as a result of its completion via moral and/or reflexive modernization and through the moral or reflexive regulation of economic or scientific-technological development. A sober look at a number of the negative manifestations of modernity reveals, however, that moral modernization itself plays a part in them. In the course of moral modernization, "moral respect" develops as a medium of communication that has on the one hand a global range but on the other destabilizes particularistic moral communities and draws them into a moral community which is global in principle but highly unstable. In this way, moral modernization has unintended consequences which can be termed "irrational" if viewed from the standpoint of rationality in its broadest sense.