Self-limitation of modernity? The theory of reflexive taboos Ulrich Beck & Natan Sznaider # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract This is not an introductory text in cosmopolitan sociology, but a next step into a cosmopolitan sociology, which preserves modernity, trying to construct taboos. It is a matter, therefore, of taboos and of which taboos can and should be justified, when it’ s a question of not abandoning the basic principles of modernity to erosion. An almost ebullient cultural criticism, which declares the concepts human being, humanity, freedom, individuality to be Western mechanisms of repression, argues and criticizes within the horizon of a stable economic-technical civilization and society whose existence was never called into question. But is that still the case? In the face of the new world risks will not the reflexivity of a modernity vehemently calling itself into question necessarily also become aware of its own limits? At issue is the problem of a self-limitation of modernity: How are post-traditional, reflexive taboos made possible? Modernity must become aware of its own threatened modernity, of its own sacredness, which also involves the question of a transcendental horizon. Keywords Second Modernity . After-modernity . Cosmopolitization . Human genetics . Holocaust Introduction and formulation of the problem: on the distinction between After-modernity and Post-modernity The purpose of this article is to elaborate an important, indeed indispensable stage of a theory of Second Modernity, but one thus far only developed in outline. We want to push forward an agenda already started in previous work (Beck 2005, 2006; Beck Theor Soc DOI 10.1007/s11186-011-9145-5 U. Beck (*) Institut für Soziologie, University of Munich, Konradstr. 6, 80801 Munich, Germany e-mail: u.beck@lmu.de N. Sznaider School of Behavioral Sciences, Academic College of Tel Aviv, P.O.Box 8401, Tel Aviv 61083, Israel