The present volume consists of eleven chapters coming from papers prepared by a number of different scholars invited to participate in a conference on the legacy of Leo Strauss. The conference was held at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, on June 4–5, 2009. The title of this book is the same as the title of the conference.

We are modern people. We find ourselves gathered “in the same boat” moving towards a hopefully better future. Our destination may appear to be a final state, a universal and homogeneous one, where the most important question is found to be resolved. That is the question, “How to live?” It was brought to light and explicated by the philosophers of the Socratic tradition. They bequeathed to us some truth about humanity itself, namely about the man who is participating in a constant struggle to answer the question, “How to live?” However, insofar as the question proves to be “infinite, absolute,” it cannot be answered in a definite way. The final state marking its final resolution has in fact never come and is never to come, indeed. But what if we are taught, or learned, undoubtedly to believe that it really exists or just emerges from the course of history? Even granted the Socratic truth, is there still enough space within the domain of humanity for our leading truly different ways of life? Is being a poet, or a prophet, not to mention being a philosopher in a very Socratic sense, something still possible and acquirable for us moderns? Is a political science stemming from the philosophic and poetic consciousness of the most important question still to be exercised?