Abstract: What makes the concept of political legitimacy necessary is a certain form of self-understanding, the conception that the individual is prior to political society. This self-conception of the individual is not “natural” reflection of social reality, but rather a cultural construction that comes into being along with the modern transformation of “social imaginaries” in the West. The origin of the problem of political legitimacy lies in the emergence of modernity. This article is to explore the emergence of the modern self-understanding by examining its philosophical basis and historical condition, and do so in a dialectic way that avoids simplistic explanations offered by either determinism or contingencism. It highlights the specificity of cultural contexts in which the modern transformation of self-understanding takes place and meanwhile explains the logic of practice inherent to the transformation.

Key words: Political legitimacy, Social imaginaries, Modernity