This volume is an attempt to rethink Niccol Machiavelli, one of the most challenging political thinkers in the history of European political thought. In 2013, we will mark 500 years since Machiavelli wrote his puzzling letter to Lorenzo de' Medici, "Il Principe." This book is an endeavor to cover some of the most complex aspects of Machiavelli's life and work.

The book is comprised of essays that utilize Shakespeare as a productive window into topics of contemporary social and political relevance. Its interdisciplinary qualities make the book relevant for students of political studies, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and history.

Much of the debates in this book revolves around Milan Kundera and his 1984 essay "The Tragedy of Central Europe." Kundera wrote his polemical text when the world was pregnant with imminent social and political change, yet that world was still far from realizing that we would enter the last decade of the twentieth century with the Soviet empire and its network of satellite states missing from the political map. Kundera was challenged by Joseph Brodsky and Gyoergy Konrad for allegedly excluding Russia from the symbolic space of Europe, something the great author deeply believes he never did. To what extent was Kundera right in assuming that, if to exist means to be present in the eyes of those we love, then Central Europe does not exist anymore, just as Western Europe as we knew it has stopped existing? What were the mental, cultural, and intellectual realities that lay beneath or behind his beautiful and graceful metaphors? Are we justified in rehabilitating political optimism at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Are we able to reconcile the divided memories of Eastern or Central Europe and Western Europe regarding what happened to the world in 1968? And where is Central Europe now?

The Baltic philosopher Vasily Sesemann (1884-1963), rooted in the Classics and influenced but not dominated by Kant, Herder, Bergson, Husserl, and Lossky, was a first-rate scholar in the fields of aesthetics, epistemology, logic, and history of philosophy. But he is still relatively unknown internationally because he wrote mostly in Lithuanian and some of his many works are only now being translated into English. This successor volume to his Aesthetics collects eight noteworthy essays, ranging from the scholarly to the popular, on aesthetics, aesthetic education, national culture, and theory of knowledge. They reveal a sympathetic and responsive mind equally at home in Ancient Greek and modern French, German, and Russian philosophy; and capable both of untendentiously expounding their dominant ideas and fruitfully anticipating newer developments even as the latter began to take shape in early-to-mid-20th-century Western European philosophy. Hallmarks of Sesemann's thought are the Heraclitean preference for becoming (dynamism, change) over being (stasis, timelessness) and the idea that any culture, in order to survive and grow, must be intellectually deep and open to foreign influences. This insight has crucial relevance to the debates about multiculturalism today.

Das Buch befasst sich mit der oft beschworenen Krise der Moderne. Worin unterscheidet sich diese heute von anderen Krisen der Neuzeit? Donskis eroeffnet verstoerende Einblicke in die Problematik unserer desorientierten Identitat. Der Unterschied zwischen Privatheit und OEffentlichkeit verschwindet. Ein Unbehagen begleitet die Postmoderne. Aus diesem Unbehagen erwachsen AEngste. Der Autor erkennt aber auch deren Kehrseite, die oft geradezu zwanghaft anmutende Selbstdarstellungssucht moderner Menschen als ein Spiel mit Identitaten. Er richtet das Augenmerk auf den ins Wanken geratenen kulturellen Kanon Europas und die damit verbundene Zersetzung des Gefuhls kultureller Zugehoerigkeit. Donskis verbindet die Politische Philosophie mit einer Philosophie der Kultur. Er beleuchtet das Spannungsfeld zwischen Macht, Widerspruch und Ohnmacht in der europaischen Kultur der Postmoderne und ihrer Politik. Es ist der polemische Text eines mitteleuropaischen Philosophen, Ideenhistorikers und Publizisten, der die gegenwartigen Fragen zur kulturellen und politischen Identitat nicht nur fur Ost- und Mitteleuropa stellt: Was bedeutet uns Freiheit? Ist sie nur noch ein Relikt unserer Privatsphare oder erfordert sie im Gegenteil unsere Teilnahme an einer OEffentlichkeit, die immer mehr von den solipsistischen Erfahrungen eines virtuellen Publikums und von popularen Spektakeln beherrscht wird? Wie wird die OEffentlichkeit der Zukunft aussehen? Wird sie aus einer amoralisch technokratischen Politik uneinloesbarer Glucksverheissung bestehen? Oder gilt weiterhin, dass "mehr als Gluck letztlich das Gefuhl von Zugehoerigkeit zahlt? Denn ein Mensch braucht nicht den Weltraum zu erobern; ein Mensch braucht ein anderes menschliches Wesen".