The meaning of philosophy is deeply linked to reconciliation. And reconciliation to the world as it is today is no longer possible.

Living unreconciled opens the way for rejection. Yet, rejection can never carry out what it implicitly requests: a thorough transformation of life. Without the element of the general, rejection is doomed to certain failure. Only philosophy has been able to develop that generality. On the other hand, mere philosophical knowledge of how to grasp the whole, dies the moment it is faced with a world to which reconciliation is impossible. Today, then, we can neither reject the way we live, nor reconcile ourselves to it. In this book, reconciliation and rejection confront and illuminate each other, with the hope that, in their combined light, we can see our path into the future.

Reconciliation is best summarised in Hegel's dictum that what is actual is reasonable and what is reasonable is actual. Rejection on the other hand aims at creating a new life. A life in which I freely go out into the world and freely give, where I don't require your thanks and don't keep an account.

The book is written in a clear and gripping language, which avoids philosophical jargon, without losing the stringency of the deepest thoughts of philosophy. No previous knowledge of either Aristotle or Hegel is required.