Perhaps now you will recognize what the question which I have raised and want to address in this lecture is aiming at: I want to investigate the irony of risk. Risk is ambivalence. Being at risk is the way of being and ruling in the world of modernity; being at global risk is the human condition at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But, against the grain of the current widespread feeling of doom, I would like to ask: what is the ruse of history which is also inherent in world risk society and emerges with its realization? Or more tightly formulated: is there an enlightenment function of world risk society and what form does it take?