ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century was adventurous in the sense that it had begun with the affirmation of progress, by then a two-hundred years old idee recue, – and ended with the suspicion of nocturnal man that optimism too may generate tragedies of inconceivable dimensions. The first symptom that nocturnal man discerned in the inexorable, rationalized-routinized world was his loneliness. The Nocturnal man of our times is the product of rationalism, itself a search beyond the human condition when driven by its inherent excesses. Modern man, beyond the rationalistic mirage, has plunged into the new nocturnal world. Western man is characterized by a relentless investigation of contradictions in nature and between concepts. This is the western method from Socratic dialectics to contrapuntal music, it is the structure of western thought in various tripartite compositions, in the tension between Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Thomas, the rule of the few and of the many, etc.
