References to the society of risk have become common and frequently tend to express more the spirit of uncertainty and insecurity of times than some properly defined sociological theory. The article briefly recalls the contribution of Beck and Luhmann, among others, to the sociology of risk and then moves towards the interpretation of risk as some aspect of the contingency of the modern society. Contingency awareness, though present in the occidental thinking since Aristotle, gained some accelerating impulse with Descartes’ methodical doubting, before dramatically imposing itself with the implosion of the grand metaphysical systems. Making references to Tomas de Aquino and Richard Rorty, the article proposes reintegrating its essence to its accidental meaning. In rescuing the paradoxical structure of contingency it can then come to a better understanding of the standards of possibility for technical modernity.
Risk; Contingency; Modernity; Technique; Post-modernity