The author selected here seven basic themes of western philosophical speculation as they appeared from the earliest times of systematic thought and have run through the centuries and civilizations to the present. Some of the themes are the "origin and its reflection," the "guilt of being," the "one and the multiple," the "temptation of mechanization, nocturnal man," etc.
The book is neither a chronological treatment of issues nor does it present a list of philosophical schools and movements. It reaches rather for the -archetypes- of philosophical thinking."