Any attempt to grapple adequately with the crisis of meaning that has spawned the postmodern age must reach out toward the great thinkers of the modern era who struggled mightily with its ramifications. For this reason my text is sprinkled with references to Nietzsche, especially his Will to Power (Vintage, 1967) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Penguin, 1967). Equally we must refer to the only figure from whom Nietzsche admitted he had anything to learn, Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose searing exploration of the crisis of faith at the heart of the modern world is unrivaled. In contrast to Nietzsche, however, Dostoevsky sought to find his way back to Christ, most especially in the portrayal of "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" within The Brothers Karamazov. A parallel exploration is conducted slightly earlier by Søren Kierkegaard, any of whose works yield fruitful insight into what it means to communicate faith in a faithless world. In a still unrecognized way, Martin Heidegger is a curious heir to these great nineteenth-century explorers. It comes out best in his two volumes simply called Nietzsche (Harper San Francisco, 1979-1984). I am presently at work on a larger study of such pioneers whose struggles are ca­pable of yielding a fuller account of the transparence of the modern world.

The whole impact of this deepest reconsideration of the mod­ern world is to send us further back to the great and classic sources. We are directed to a rereading of classical philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle, in recognition that the philosophical mode of reflection is entirely their discovery and finds its preeminent expression in their hands. Equally, we are driven deeper into the word of revelation, the Scriptures that have been handed down, as well as the historical turning points of their ab­sorption. Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas are surely such mo­ments when all of the strands of the Western tradition, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Islamic, and Christian, are brought into conver­sation. Today we are at such a point of mutual engagement of the great spiritual traditions that now definitively includes the non-Western experiences. It is no accident that the most perceptive voices of the day are supremely conscious of the global reach of the conversation. Among such mediators I would certainly number Pope John Paul II, whose intellectual range is most fully evi­dent in his last three encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and Fides et Ratio.

Having drunk deeply of the great spiritual traditions and their philosophical expositions, we cannot overlook the necessity of authoritative political forms for our world. The liberal consensual language of individual rights may be at the core of such constructions but their implementation requires a fuller explication of the sources and significance. A reconsideration of the liberal political tradition is an integral component of the broader reconsideration of the modern world. The classic liberal sources include among others the works of John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill, as well as the American Framers. In the contemporary setting the conversation is carried on most interestingly by the transition from John Rawls's Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971) to his more recent Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1993). Those who are interested in my more extended study of such matters may consult The Growth of the Liberal Soul (University of Missouri Press, 1997).

Whether the search for meaning follows the narrower param­eters of political order or ranges through the depths of meta­physics, an irreducible dimension is constituted by the unmediated experiences of art. Some of the discussion in the text is derived from the particular strand of modern painting delin­eated by Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko (Thames and Hudson, 1975). On the spiritual in modern art, see Roger Lipsey, An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art (Shambala, 1988). For an approach to literary texts with wider implications for the philosophy of art, the work of Mikhail Bakhtin is to be highly recommended. Among writers, Walker Percy is surely of particular interest, not least of all for his short book of hilarious quirky meditations entitled Lost in the Cosmos (Washington Square, 1984). It is only one of the many instances of a genre I have had before me as an unattainable model for my own efforts. Short direct books that contain more than their simplicity belies include not only G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy but also C. S. Lewis's Abolition of Man and E. F. Schumacher's Guide for the Perplexed, to name but the most obvious candidates. Together with the preceding suggestions for further reading they constitute the royal road toward a wisdom to which I can only point.

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