This volume contains three historico-philosophical lectures on western man and his world, treating of medieval man, modern man and the man of the future. The reflections of one of German Catholicism's profoundest and most influential thinkers, they are described by the editor as constituting ""the most somber book to come out of Germany since the Third Reich died"". The work attempts mainly to depict in general outline the character and the promise of a new man, Mass Man, and a new world, a world of technological collectivism, which the author sees as emerging with the simultaneous demise of the modern age. Mass Man, lacing historical continuity with western man of the classical, medieval and modern periods, alienated particularly from the concepts of Nature, Personality and Culture which had dominated the modern age since the time of the Renaissance, is seen as dangerously poised between the possibility of total destruction and the possibility of the nakedest type of spiritual commitment. This is a book which expressly disavows oth a progressivist and a reactionary attitude and attempts simply to face what seem to be the facts about ""post-modern"" man and his world. Highly recommended to all serious students of western man.