The writer Peter Leithart:

“…modern philosophy arises from a rejection of tradition. Modern philosophy is a tradition of the rejection of traditions, or as Gadamer put it, a prejudice against prejudices. Seen from the perspective of Heidegger’s Pietist slogan, modern philosophy arises from a refusal to receive. Descartes sitting in his German room in front of his fire trying to escape every thought he has ever received from outside his own head – that is modernity’s founding act of ingratitude. In this respect, postmodernism (at least in some forms) is an intensification of modernity, an even more radical ingratitude toward the inheritance we have received. And much of modern and postmodern thought and culture have been an exploration and enactment of ingratitude – Freud’s Oedipal complex, Harold Bloom’s literary Freudianism, the various revolutionary ideologies and movements that have drenched the past centuries in blood, etc.”