Philosophers are often asked for their views on the "meaning of the times." But how should philosophy deal with world events? And what makes a philosopher more qualified than anyone else to editorialize in the daily paper? In this book, Descombes's intention is not to offer his own reading of the signs of the times, but to interrogate modern philosophers about how they come up with the barometers they use to tell us about modern reason and the spirit of the times. For Descombes, a "philosophical discourse of modernity" should be rejected, for the true subject of modernity belongs not to philosophers, but to writers, moralists, and sociologists of individualism.