Agnes Heller -- What went wrong with the concept of the beautiful? -- Autonomy of art or the dignity of the artwork -- The role of emotions in the reception of artworks -- Joke culture and transformations of the public sphere -- The contemporary historical novel -- The metaphysics of embodiment in the western tradition -- European master-narratives about freedom -- The three logics of modernity and the double bind of the modern imagination -- The absolute stranger: shakespeare and the drama of failed assimilation -- The gods of Greece -- Self representation and the representation of the other -- Where are we at home?.