The title of this volume appears to suggest that modernity is somehow devoid of something of utmost importance. Sixteen years after the death of Leo Strauss, certainly one of the most profound thinkers in the twentieth century, the model of liberal democracy has been declared victorious, not to say final and true. Due to unrestrained acceptance of such a perspective, a real tension between human beings disappears as there is only one way of being “correct”. Having taken it into consideration, we point toward something that goes beyond the discussion about the pros and cons of liberal democracy. It would be presumptuous to believe that the current embrace of the liberal-democratic model of culture has definitely settled the question, “How to live?” And if modernity threatens to silence this most important question, or to neglect its importance as seen by common sense, it seems all the more important to show that the contemporary answers fall short of being self-evident.

The following authors, first invited to take part in the conference in Krakow, Poland, in June 2009, contributed to this volume: Heinrich Meier, Daniel Tanguay, Nathan Tarcov, David Janssens, Paweł Armada, Jürgen Gebhardt, Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz, Emmanuel Patard, Piotr Nowak, Till Kinzel, and Laurence Lampert.