Affiliation:
1. Hillsdale College, Department of Economics
Abstract
Modern institutions rely on philosophical appeals – specifically the ideas of the Enlightenment Project (Modernity). Truth exists, along with natural rights, and we are to use the human faculty of reason to discover them and conduct our affairs accordingly. Institutions follow. After three centuries of dominance, the modern project is now facing serious challenges from two sources. First, the post-modern alternative rejects the notion of a knowable truth in favor of radical relativism; reason has serious limitations, and there is no absolute appeal. Second, a pre-modern claim, in the form of a fundamentalist religious revival, has been calling for a return