The 21st century may be considered the echo of a great detonation caused by the violence of the previous century, darkened by two world wars, traumatic civil conflicts and violent collapses of countries that have placed the position of world organisations in question because of their scant effectiveness and influence. The names Dachau and Auschwitz, but also the existence of the gulags, made possible the “public exhibition” of death on a massive scale, affecting the spread of nihilism and the construction of a society based on consumption, the ideology of well-being and the most radical individualism. Asking about these questions, discussing the role of new technologies, thinking about the situation of humanity, a new approach to the concept of time and the meaning of history, analysing the environmental situation brought about by the over-production of unnecessary goods and a failed economic globalisation are just some of the many questions raised in this Thinking the 21st Century, an era whose immediate destiny consists of healing and correcting what happened in the previous century and refuting the post-modern mentality that seems to have reached its end. We are therefore facing a “damaged era”, one fragmented by what have been referred to as a “necropolitics” what have hollowed out the essence of democracies and opened the doors to totalitarian ideas that come both from populisms and a neo-reactionary discourse (Nick Land) that fosters the erosion of the idea of the state and of public goods. 

The possibility of distinguishing between science and technology, the demand for a new language that accepts and harmonises the plurality of worlds flowing together in a single reality, remedying the ethical deterioration of society, exploring the meaning of work and production, witnessing the rise of post-humanism and detecting the cracks in post-anthropocentrism, studying secularism and neo-religious currents, as well as examining the vision of post-colonialism are all ways and proposals that have attracted the attention of the philosophers mentioned here, all of them with outstanding international reputations, distinguished by their solidity and by a wisdom of their own that gives them authority from different points of view to conduct a diagnosis of this century.