This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics.

This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics. These tensions are explored through the works of such eminent thinkers as Aristotle, Augustine, and Tocqueville, but the contributors engage a wide variety of texts from popular culture, American literature—Flannery O'Connor receives notable attention—and social theory to create a remarkably comprehensive, if far from harmonious, introduction to political philosphy today.

Chapter 1 Autonomy and Community in Aristotle
Chapter 2 Shakespeare in the Original Klingon: Star Trek and the End of History
Chapter 3 On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule
Chapter 4 Stoics and Christians: Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor on the Moral Contradictions of Southern Culture
Chapter 5 Leo Strauss, America, and the End of History
Chapter 6 End of History 2000
Chapter 7 The Ascent from Modernity: Solzhenitsyn on Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations
Chapter 8 Trevanian's Shibumi: The Perfect Postmodern Tale
Chapter 9 Aristoteles Revivus: Pierre Manent's Reflections on The Contemporary Political World
Chapter 10 A Postmodern Augustinian Recovery of Political Judgment
Chapter 11 Tocqueville, Girard, and the Mystique of Anti-Modernism
Chapter 12 Christianity's Epicurean Temptation: Reflections on Kenneth Craycraft's The American Myth of Religious Freedom
Chapter 13 Flannery O'Connor's Teaching on the Nature of Evil in The Lame Shall Enter First