Existential Transcendence in Late Modernity: Edgework and Hermeneutic Reflexivity

Increasing attention to existentialist thought by criminologists and other social scientists in recent decades has created an opportunity to envision new possibilities in critical theoretic inquiry that extend well beyond the classical formulations of this tradition. In this essay, I draw on existentialist ideas to outline a critical perspective rooted in recent developments associated with Ulrich Beck’s notion of “risk society” and the related theory of reflexive modernization. I argue that, though the detraditionalization consequences of reflexive modernization give greater scope to agency in the risk society, transcendence in the existentialist sense is found in the hermeneutic reflexivity one experiences in high risk practices I call “edgework”. Finally, I explore several options for using existential transcendence in hermeneutic reflexivity as a reference for critical analysis and, in doing so, suggest an alternative to Beck’s own critical approach—cosmopolitanism—as a foundation for a critical theory of the second modern social order.