"It would be a mistake to trace a radical distinction between the modern and post-modern paradigms and vilipend the modern as locus of everything that is repressive and retrograde and the post-modern as the way of the vanguard and of emancipation (...). We should combine modern notions of solidarity, alliances, consents, universal rights and institutional macro politics with post-modern notions of difference, plurality, multi perspectives, identity and micro policies." Steven Best & Douglas Kellner Abstract: The presentation of the "spirit of our time" has been achieved - above all in the academic and kindred fields - by distinct narratives that with more or less vigor defend or criticize notions and institutions registered in the modern tradition, or still, by arguments that so much modern as post-modern thinking have something important to say about our time. Independently of the plausibility of the classifications in relation to the basic repertoires of those narratives it is important to recognize that, in their relationship, they configure notable evaluations of our conceptual and institutional inheritances and as well as the radical transformations established in the courses of modernity. This text retakes, in a selective way, philosophical considerations established from the primordial times of the modern thought. Considerations that guide judgments and actions that rebound in the political and educational ambits. A part of philosophical differences, the spirit of our time is inhabited by notions and by narratives of the illuminist tradition and its counterpoints. Narratives that is prudent to consider because they present complex judgments about conceptions and institutions; because they expose notions that express, in a radical way, the experiences of the modern and post-modern philosophical spirit. A spirit that is established by narratives that affirm the human's finite condition; that known that we cannot control, in an absolute way, neither the gestures of despair of the reason nor the possibilities to guide the actions of the present oriented by reasonable notions. Narratives that consider the ingeniousness, the fragility and the finite character of the human choices. Narratives that do not revoke the human capacities to act and signify initiatives and institutions; that do not revoke the possibilities to establish "new worlds" in "this world". The modern and post-modern times are times of activity and crisis of notions such as rationality, progress, improvement, autonomy, freedom, equality, differences, plurality, rights and universal responsibilities. It is a time of social experiences marked by the competition among notions, by experiences that are, at the same time, continuities and ruptures of the notions and inherited institutions. Experiences of inherited crises from these traditions, but also experiences of evidences that is necessary to think, in a relational way, the meanings of the educational and political activities. Evidences related to the fact that, even in the countries inspired by the democratic and republican tradition the ideals of the autonomy, of the democracy and the universalization of the rights have been presenting, in an emblematic way, the real difficulties of achieving them in the political and educational spheres. All the same, with different statutes, two recent cases reveal how they are related to the political and educational notions. Such cases of the debates and decisions regarding the use of veils for the Islamic students in French schools and the university quotas for racial minorities and for the Brazilian poor social classes. Subjects of this order show, even in contexts of republican democracies, connections to the spirit of our time, established among philosophical, political and educational notions. It is import, in this context, to oppose, explicit and criticizes the inspiring principles of these traditions; that it is relevant to establish relationships and consequences between thinking and acting into the political and educational fields. The essential is to explore the argument that: to think the educational and political activities today, implies, above all, to bet in the notion that in the exercise of thinking and of acting in a reasonable and inter subjective way, rests the possibility of our best bets of avoiding the worst in the field of the political and educational activities. The political and the educational activities denote extraordinary experiences of the human ingeniousness; activities to which it is necessary, unceasingly, to give reasons and meanings. Key words: modern, post-modern, politics, education