Does philosophy serves a purpose? What human experiences propitiate the philosophical attitude towards reality? What is the difference between philosophy and the particular sciences? Do philosophy and poetry have something in common? Is a Christian philosophy possible? These are some of the hottest questions to which Josef Pieper responds by dialoguing Socratically with the reader, guessing all his possible objections, answering all the questions and provoking new ones, making him find the most satisfactory answers himself.

“If Ezra Pound sang of the in-utilitas of art,” writes Andrea Monda in the Introductory Note, “Pieper is the cantor of the futility of philosophy. Of its absolute freedom. In this he grasps the connection of philosophy with art and religion…. This common ground of the three dimensions is composed of many elements, the first of which is undoubtedly astonishment. It is here, from astonishment, that everything originates, as Plato and Aristotle already confirmed’.

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