Prologue
Introduction
Part One. Gratitude. The good of gratitude : dependence, acceptance and being at home in the world
A world of rights : the expulsion of love and gratitude from public life
"Endless gratitude so burdensome" : Christian theology and Western civilization
Part Two. Pride. Greatness of soul : Aristotle's philosophy of pride
Givers and takers : the good of self-sufficiency
The eternal and divine : what everything desires
The best life of all : politics and contemplation
Friendship : gratitude and human fulfillment
The first cosmopolitan : Plato's discovery of an invisible self
Preparatio evangelica : Stoicism on the way to Christian thought
Part Three. Salvation. Creation : making, begetting and creating
Will : human freedom and the problem of evil
Grace : divine omnipotence and the Augustinian dilemma
"Not a sparrow falls" : the abolition of the distinction between form and matter
The contingency of the world : that whose essence is to exist
The Pagan temptation : Aquinas and the Aristotelian revival
God unchained : Ockham's defense of divine freedom
Theology of the cross : the Lutheran reformation
The hatred of man : Augustine redux
The absolute spontaneity of freedom : Kant's Christian metaphysics
Our better selves : the morality of autonomy
God becomes a postulate : reason, freedom and Kant's defense of divine grace
Reaction : Joseph de Maistre's revolt against pride ; "Fantastic and satanic" : the illiberal theology of Donoso Cortes and Carl Schmitt
The oblivion of being : Martin Heidegger's reconstruction of Western philosophy
The disenchantment of the world : Max Weber and the problem of nihilism
Part Four. Joy. The worm in the blood : Spinoza's conception of science
The god of sufficient reason : physics after Spinoza
"Endless forms most beautiful" : Darwin's divine biology
The navel of the dream : Freud and the science of the mind
"Man is a god to man" : the modern research ideal
The world as an aesthetic phenomenon : art, truth and morality in Nietzsche's philosophy
The spider in the moonlight : Nietzsche's interpretation of the will to power as art
"The gift of transmigration" : the theology of the modern novel
Genius and sublimity : painting since the Renaissance
Theological, not political : John Raul's Christian defense of liberal democracy
Democratic vistas : Walt Whitman and the divinity of diversity
Epilogue : "Downward to darkness, on extended wings".