Representation and secularization

In his essay on “The Age of the World Picture” cited in the Introduction above, Heidegger proposed a theory of representation that has since provided the accepted interpretation of the relationship between the subject and the modern age. In Heidegger's account, the position of transcendental reflection as established in the philosophy of Descartes marks the transformation of the world from an allembracing cosmos into an objective representation, picture, or “view.” When faced with the historical question of whether the origins of modernity may be explained with reference to any other age, Heidegger responds that the world picture does not change from an Ancient or medieval one into a modern one, but argues instead that the fact that the world becomes a picture at all is what defines subjectivity and distinguishes modernity as an historical paradigm. As a result of this process, Heidegger argues, the cosmos is seen as a world of represented objects, and truth, as well as the discourses that follow from claims to truth (e.g., morality), come to be measured in terms of their adequacy to a subject who stands over against the world. In Heidegger's view it is this, the self-proclaimed priority of the subject in its transcendental stance, that is characteristic of the historical self-assertion of the modern age.