Abstract

Introduction -- On humanity's intensive introspection -- Liberalism, nature, and convention -- Liberalism, self-abnegation, and self-assertion -- Providential care for democracy -- On the mutual compatibility of democracy and marxian socialism -- Activity, philosophy and the open society -- On the dramatic end of Plato's Socrates -- Religion, the constitution, and the enlightenment -- On pleasure and the human good: Plato's Philebus -- The whole as setting for man: on Plato's Timaeus -- On ancients and moderns -- The end of history in the open-ended age? the life expectancy of self-evident truth -- Nature, God, and the enlightenment: what is at work in the whole.