Above the dogmatic ideologies and utopias that have proved illusory, there is a resurgence of ideals of/for humanity in the human spirit's urgent quest after measure and harmony of the dispersed threads of existence. Devalued in the sectarism of postmodern thought, they affirm themselves in their original freedom as the irrepressible swing of the human spirit within the all-embracing new field of the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition.
Preceded by the exploration of allegory in aesthetics and the metaphysics of the ontopoiesis of life, the present collection opens with Tymieniecka proposing the golden measure' as the ideal our present day humanity calls and strives for. Studies of the Ascension in troubled times', On the way', The search for harmony', `European message', and other sections, collect papers by: G. Vajda, M.A. Cecilia, E. di Vito, A. Balan, R. Kieffer, G. Overvold, L. Kimmel, J.B. Williamson, F.P. Crawley, P. Pylkkö, N. Campi de Castro, and others. Introduced by the editor: Marlies Kronegger.

Inhalt
Inaugural Study.- The Golden Measure: The Self-individualization of Life Bringing to Fruition the Ideal for a New Epoch.- One The Ideal: Ascension in Troubled Times.- Occult Ascension in Troubled Times: The Ideals of Mankind in Rudolf Steiner and Béla Hamvas.- Jean Anouilh's Thirst for the Absolute and His Formulation of the Ideal.- Francis Hutcheson: Political Ideals.- Human Kind in Literature: The Ideals of Fiction The Fiction of Ideals.- The Paradox of the Ideals of Humankind: Paul Ricoeur's Approach.- Two On the Way.- Narrative Identity: Situating a Postmodern Ideal.- Transcendence in Poetry, Music and Film: La Corona (John Donne, Ernst Krenek, Joan & Jean Strommer, 1609/1941/1987) Iconic Implications of Circular Structures.- Husserl, the Differend and Kafka's The Trial.- Roland Barthes and Critical Romanesque.- Le Clézio's L'Inconnu sur la terre: Man, Nature, Creativity and Cosmology.- Three The Search for Harmony.- Thinking about Harmony as Category and Value in the Aesthetics of Hegel and Krause.- Shesher Kabita: Tagorean Ideals Towards the Man-Woman Relationship.- L. Binswanger sur Hofmannsthal: L'Esprit et la souffrance.- The Human Face of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.- Dasein Naturalized.- Four Philosophy Focusing on the Human Being.- Materialistic and Poetic Humanism in G. Leopardi.- Subjectivism and Phenomenology.- Husserl, Mann, and the Modernist Crisis of Culture.- A Rock of Defence for Human Nature: Philosophical and Literary Approaches to the Causes of Violence.- Freedom and Philosophy.- Five The European Message.- Le Message Européen: Pierre Frieden (1892-1959).- The Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy Approached from a Phenomenological Angle.- European Scholars on Indian Music.- Be Nice to One Another!: Morality, theEmbattled Ideal in Eighteenth Century German Literature.- Index of Names.