Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Contemporary Italian Philosophy: The Confrontation between Religious and Secular Thought  Maurizio Pagano Part 1. Marking the Borders: Historical Legacies 1. The Desire for Eternal Life: The Platonic Roots of Western Political Science and Its Ethical and Theological Consequences Carlo Sini 2. Philosophy, Poetry, and Dreaming Sergio Givone 3. Christianity and Nihilism Vincenzo Vitiello 4. Philosophy and Christian Theology Today: A Hermeneutic Circularity as Fact and Task Giovanni Ferretti 5.  Ontology of Actuality Gianni Vattimo Part 2. Crossing the Borders: Current Thematizations 6.  Metaphysics of Thinking, Metaphysics of Being Virgilio Melchiorre 7. The Truth of Existence and the Sacred (ethos anthropo daimon) Mario Ruggenini 8. Transcendental without Illusion: Or, The Absence of the Third Person Marco Maria Olivetti 9. Finitude and Responsibility: For an Ethics of the Finite in the Time of Risk Salvatore Natoli 10. Praise of Modesty Pier Aldo Rovatti Part 3. Opening the Borders: The Appeal of the World 11. Logics of Delusion Remo Bodei 12. Toward a Symbolic of Sexual Difference Luisa Muraro 13. On Virtue Emanuele Severino 14. Two Concepts of Utopia and the Idea of Global Justice Salvatore Veca 15. The World and the West Today: The Problem of a Global Public Sphere Giacomo Marramao 16. Names of Place: Border Massimo Cacciari Selected Bibliography About the Editors Contributors Index

"Benso and Schroeder's book is indispensable and a cause for celebration. There have lamentably been no collections that allow us entry into the Italian philosophical environment. This collection, in a way never done before in the English language, displays the majesty of the Italian philosophical scene. These philosophers are not epigones, but original and provocative thinkers. Contemporary Italian Philosophy single-handedly transforms one's sense of the continental philosophical terrain." — Jason M. Wirth, author of The Conspiracy of Life: Meditations on Schelling and His Time