"This book springs from a simple idea, shared by many. Norberto Bobbio is missing from the cultural and civil life of our present. His proverbial clarity is missing, which is not just a style or a gift for lucid writing, but a way of thinking and of addressing problems by going straight to their heart, by overcoming equivocations and confusions, involuntary or self-serving as they may be. However, and this too is an opinion shared by many, the ‘classical' breadth of Bobbio's immense legacy can offer guidance and insight into understanding our present reality, which in part has already changed with respect to the period, or better various periods, in which it was written."

Michelangelo Bovero begins from this premise and goes on to reflect on many major questions of our time, together with the other participants at the international convention who gathered to celebrate the centenary of the philosopher's birth. The discussion centres on the present conditions of democracy, human rights and peace; the destiny of the law and the Constitution in a globalized system; the fortunes of the major political movements of the twentieth century, such as liberalism and socialism, and the relationship between politics and culture in the new century.