The following paper was presented at the 2016 Telos Conference, held on January 16–17, 2016, in New York City. For additional details about this and upcoming conferences, please visit the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute website.
What is modernity? First, a period “occasioned by a peculiarly ahistorical view of the world, which is flattened into an eternal present. The world we experience appears to exhaust all possible worlds.” Second, modernity is deeply rooted in the three Kantian principles of Enlightenment: “‘What can know?’ the question of knowledge; of the ‘What should I do?’ which is the question of ethics, and of the ‘What can I hope?'”
The Western modern project is dependent upon both Greek and Hebrew antiquity. In ancient Ionia, Thales of Miletus predicted a solar eclipse, Anaximander predicted the changing of the seasons, Theodorus invented the ruler, the carpenter’s square, and the level, and Hippocrates began accumulating medical knowledge through trial and error. These “pre-Socratic” Ionians were merchants and artisans; they worked with their hands, whereas the Athenians were engaged primarily in contemplation.
Already in the first third of the 20th century, Karl Jaspers began formulating a philosophy that addressed the collapse of Enlightenment concepts of universal history and offered a perspective that could help us reformulate “universal history” as a viable concept. Jaspers’ work in this area is, I believe, underappreciated, and constitutes a realistic “cosmopolitan vision” that could help us address many of the thorny issues of global cultural conflict and diversity that we face today. 
In this article, I focus on the impact on modern Western thinking, ideas, and engagement with the world of the loss of the assumption of a creator, or an intelligent ordering agent, in conjunction with the emphasis on detail in preference to the whole in modern thought. I begin by discussing some of the critical dynamics contributed by Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome to the concept of Europe in an attempt to identify the source of the energy and vitality arising from this synthesis. I particularly look at the synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, specifically how each influenced the other and where the potential for synergy arose. This Western synthesis no longer operates in Europe and the West. 
This essay is built on the assumption that History is as much about the future as it is about the past and that there is a “politics of history” that determines the relationship of the past to the present and the future. The secularization thesis created a model of history in which human beings passed from a condition in which they were religious, primitive, and querulous to one in which they were moving toward a world that would be not only secular but also peaceful. At the same time, the end of History can be understood in eschatological terms in which we are always at the end of days waiting for the purging that will allow the purpose of History to be fulfilled. The return of religion destroys this narrative and allows others to return, including History as irony and the possibility of the story as a denial of History. Post-secular History reflects both the crumbling of this once certain narrative and the legitimacy of the modern state that was built on that narrative. It is a crisis of authority, as can be seen in the proliferation of views and ideas that can be found on the world wide web, and the seeming erosion of the capacity of historians to control History and structure its narratives. 
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