ABSTRACT
Bernard Lonergan has correctly observed the premise of modernity: “the challenge of history is for man progressively to restrict the realm of chance or fate or destiny and progressively to enlarge the realm of conscious grasp and deliberate choice.” 1 The dominant theme of modernity has been to control chance through technology. Technical mastery has broadened our choice in consumer goods, relieved many of the necessity of burdensome toil, enlarged the amount of free time, and empowered humans to combat disease, hunger and even death. Indeed, technological mastery could be said to be above all an attempt to conquer our mortality. Rousseau, one of the strongest opponents of modernity, was at the same time paradoxically one of its partisans, though he advocated the control of human destiny by political not technological methods.
