Modern State and Myth

Abstract

The lecture deals with the theories of the modern state and politics that emerged in the middle of the twentieth century and can be seen as a reaction to the rise of political totalitarianism of that time. On the one hand, it points to the theses of Horkheimer and Adorno about the threat to political and social modernity caused by the mixing of Enlightenment principles with mythical thinking. In this context, Cassirer's theory is also of interest, in which the relationship between the mythical symbolic figure and modern political thought is reflected on the level of a philosophy of culture. But it also examines another way of thinking about political modernity, which starts from the continuities between the pre-modern and the modern and identifies the critically highlighted part of the pre-modern myth as part of a historical, all-encompassing life that also includes the Enlightenment and modern political tendencies.